Pope Francis ordained 10 new priests and gave a homily emphasizing 3 key responsibilities of priests. Priests are called to: 1) Spread the word of God joyfully through teaching and example; 2) Bring people together as one family to lead them to God; and 3) Be servants who show mercy and tenderness to their people rather than managing functionaries. The pope urged priests to spread the oil of anointing by going out from themselves to strengthen their people with God's grace.

1. Priest Who Come to Serve
Homily, 21 April 2013

2. Context
Pope Francis ordained 10 men as priest from
Rome’s Major Seminary, the diocesan college
Redemptoris Mater and the seminary of the
Oblates of Divine Love in St. Peter’s Basilica.
The ceremony also fell on the 50th
anniversary of the World Day of Prayer for
Vocations

3. Priest are established coworkers of the Order of Bishops,
with whom they are joined in the priestly office and with
whom they are called to the service of the people of God.

4. Impart to everyone
the word of God
that you have
received with joy.

5. Believe what you read
Teach what you believe
Practice what you teach

6. The Word of God is not your property: it is
the word of God

7. Let what you teach be nourishment for the people of God

8. Let the holiness of your lives be a
delightful fragrance of Christ’s
faithful, so that by word and
example you may build up the
house that is God’s Church

9. For by your ministry the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful will be made
perfect, being united to the sacrifice of Christ, which will be offered
through the hands in an unbloody way on the altar, in union with the
faithful, in the celebration of the sacraments

10. Understand, therefore,
what you do, and imitate
what you celebrate

11. Never tire of being merciful

12. Do not hesitate to show tenderness

13. You are taken from among men and appointed on
their behalf for those things that pertain to God

14. Carry out the ministry
of Christ the Priest
with constant joy and
genuine love,
attending not to your
own concerns but to
those of Jesus Christ

15. You are pastors, not functionaries.
Be mediators, not intermediaries

16. strive to bring the
faithful together into one
family, so that you may
lead them to God the
Father through Christ in
the Holy Spirit

17. the example of the Good Shepherd

18. The Anointing of the People
Homily at the Chrism Mass, 28 March 2013

19. anointed ones:
suffering Servant
of Isaiah, King
David, and Jesus
our Lord

20. “being for” others

21. The image of spreading
oil…an image of the priestly
anointing…represented
by the robe
(the present-day chasuble)

22. The sacred robes of the High Priest
(Exod. 28: 6-14; Exod. 28: 21)

23. Liturgical things are not all about
trappings and fine fabrics…it
shows the glory of our God
resplendent in his people, alive,
and strengthened.

24. the oil is not intended just to make us fragrant

25. A good priest can be recognized by the
way his people are anointed

26. Our people like to hear the Gospel preached with “unction”; they like it when the
Gospel we preach touches their daily lives, when it runs down like the oil of Aaron
to the edges of reality, when it brings light to moments of extreme darkness, to
the “outskirts” where people of faith are most exposed to the onslaught of those
who want to tear down their faith.

27. We need constantly to stir up God’s grace and perceive in every
request, even those requests that are inconvenient and at times
purely material or downright banal-but only apparently so-the
desire of our people to be anointed with fragrant oil, since they
know that we have it.

28. We need to “go out,” then, in order to
experience our own anointing

29. Living our priestly life from one course to another,
from one method to another, lead us to become
Pelagians and to minimize the power of grace, which
comes alive and flourishes to the extent that we, in
faith, go out and give ourselves and the Gospel to
others, giving what little ointment we have to those
who have nothing, nothing at all.

30. Those priests who do not go out of themselves,
instead of being mediators, gradually become
intermediaries, managers