Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
March 29, 2021
My dear brothers, and brothers and sisters in Christ,1
First of all, I want to welcome all those joining our celebration this morning by livestream. I’m confident that next year we will all be able to gather as one family of God in this great Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.
But this year, we are just gathering together for our Chrism Mass. And as I said before it’s a joy for all of us to be together at this moment. We give thanks to God for that.
So once again this year, we are entering into Holy Week in a time of a pandemic. My brothers, we renew our priestly promises today in a world and a Church that is changing dramatically.
For a long time, as we know, we could not gather in a normal way in our parishes, to hear the Word of God and receive our Lord in the breaking of the bread.
In the last months we were able to start the process of coming back
to the celebration of Holy Mass, the Sacraments, and the different ministries in our parishes.
Now as the pandemic lifts, we are starting what we call a ‘new normal’ and we do that with renewed awareness of the great treasure that we have in each Parish community.
It specially begins with the real presence of our Lord in the Eucharist. Jesus makes himself a gift of love, offering his Body and Blood to become our food and our companion as we make our way on this earthly journey.
And as we know, the priest is the man of the Eucharist. This is who he is, before all else. Only the priest, through his intimate union with Christ, can bring us this bread from heaven that sanctifies and sustains us.
Brothers, I know that each one of you has felt the loss of the Eucharist deeply, and so have our people.
But, God bless all of you for your zeal and creativity during this long and challenging year! You found new ways to serve, new ways to bring
the hope of Jesus Christ into the homes and hearts of our people. Thank you all for your commitment and ministry to our people in the Archdiocese.
Now, as our society moves into the next phases of this pandemic, I think we need to reach deeper within. We need to find new enthusiasm and
new courage to serve God.
The prophet in today’s first reading is speaking directly to you and to me: “You yourselves shall be called ‘Priests of the Lord,’ ‘Ministers of our God’ you shall be called.”
This is who we are, my dear brothers. This is the beautiful privilege of our lives — to be called his priests!
In God’s providence, he is calling us now to be his priests in a time of a pandemic. He is calling us to be his ministers in a society where people have been wounded and feel abandoned, a society that has become angry and deeply divided.
And our Lord is calling us to share more deeply in his mission, as we heard in the Gospel today. Jesus reading the words of the prophet Isaiah:
“The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”
He is calling us, each one of us, to help our brothers and sisters to see that God’s beautiful plan of love continues, even in this time of sorrow.
So that they can live for God, and live for love!
My dear brothers, this is an exciting and historic time to be his priests! Yes, it is challenging, but we go with Jesus and he has so much that he wants us to accomplish!
This summer, as you all know, we begin a Jubilee Year to mark
the 250th anniversary of the first church in Los Angeles, La Mission San Gabriel Arcángel. And this coming December, we celebrate the 490th anniversary of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s appearance and the true spiritual founding of America.
So, it will be a time of the Lord’s favor, when God will pour out many new graces and blessings!
And all of us in the Church need to lift up our eyes, we need to see this new moment that we have to share God’s love and salvation.
My dear brothers and sisters, all of us, the second reading today says that all of us in the Church have a beautiful duty to bear witness to Jesus, “who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood.”
So, let us renew our zeal, our joy in being missionary disciples in our homes and families and society!
And, as we open our parishes again, we share the urgent task of calling our people to come home!
And let us make the Eucharist the heart of our parishes and the heart of every Catholic’s life! I think it is a special time for all of us in the Church to be amazed and astonished again by the love that God reveals to us in the Eucharist.
It is, indeed, a special time. That’s why I was saying that we need to go deeper in our commitment — all of us — starting with each one of us, my dear brother priests. To understand how important and beautiful this moment is as we help our people to come back.
Finally, and as we all know, this is the Year of St. Joseph.
So, as we prepare to renew our priestly promises, my dear brothers, we should ask St. Joseph to help us to be true spiritual fathers — help us to adore Jesus as he did, and to serve our people with a father’s heart.
And as St. Joseph loved Mary, our Blessed Mother, let us love her too, with all the love and devotion in our hearts.
And may our Blessed Mother Mary, Queen of the Angels, may she help every one of us in the Church to love her Son with a pure heart and proclaim him by the witness of our lives.
1. Readings: Isa. 61:1-3a, 6a, 8b-9; Ps. 89:21-22, 25, 27; Rev. 1:5-8; Luke 4:16-21.