THE grain, the grape and the olive reveal to us something about God’s power and presence, Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge said at Chrism Mass at St Stephen’s Cathedral last night.
He said the three were “found everywhere in the Mediterranean world”.
“They’re on every table,” he said.
“They could hardly be more ordinary yet it’s these things which God their creator takes to himself and invests with his own presence and power.”
Archbishop Coleridge said God transformed the ordinary into the extraordinary.
“The grain and the grape will become the bread and wine, which we bring to the altar to become, by the Spirit’s power, the Body and Blood,” he said.
“The olive will become the oil which, again by the Spirit’s power, we bless and consecrate.”
He said it was the way of “the Incarnate God who wants to meet us where we are”.
Archbishop Coleridge blessed the three holy oils last night and distributed them to representatives from the parishes of Brisbane archdiocese.
These oils will go to the parishes and clergy will use them to anoint thousands of people in sacraments across the archdiocese for the year to come.
The oils are the oils of holy chrism, the oil of catechumens, and the oil of the sick.
Historically, the blessing of the oils took place during the Holy Thursday Mass.
This was because Holy Thursday marked Christ’s institution of the ministerial priesthood and there are ancient links between priesthood and anointment.
Archbishop Coleridge, in his homily, said oil linked all three “saving institutions of ancient Israel – the priesthood, the prophetic movement, and the monarchy”.
“The priest was anointed to offer sacrifice to God, the prophet to speak the word of God, the king to keep the people United under God,” he said.
“The sacrifice was to ensure the communion of the people with God, the word was spoken by a God who never ceased to communicate with the people, and the unity was guaranteed only if the people obeyed God listened to their true king.”
Archbishop Coleridge said the anointed people were “ordinary people”, but the oil used to anoint them was infused with the Spirit of God “who alone could breathe life into his people”.
“Ordinary people were called by God into an extraordinary service of the divine plan and called by the God who could both equip and accompany those he called and anointed,” he said.
He said all three of these, priest, prophet and king, converged in Jesus Christ, who was fully God and fully man.
He said this divine plan of the anointed priest, prophet and king found its fulfilment in the God who offered himself as a sacrifice on the cross, who not only spoke God’s word but was the Word Made Flesh, and who gathered not only Israel but all nations to himself.
Archbishop Coleridge, addressing his brother priests and deacons, said they too were “drawn into the priesthood of Christ in order to offer his sacrifice on behalf of the Church and the world”
“And at their ordination, the bishop urges them to imitate the mystery you celebrate,” he said.
“The ordained are not just to celebrate the sacrifice but to become the sacrifice.
“Only in that way will their ministry serve to ensure that the entire community of those incorporated into Christ is being conformed to him.”
