It is a joy to be with you, my brother priests and deacons, my beloved sisters religious and my dear people, for our annual Chrism Mass.  This Celebration is the most precious of our diocesan traditions and one that keeps us together as a family as the years go by and it is, indeed, a consolation to  see so many of you gathered  here together in our Cathedral tonight.
 
In this Mass our beloved priests will renew the promises they made on the day of their ordination.  Later we will receive and consecrate the oils that will become Sacraments to receive our new-born into the family of the Church, or to confirm them in their witness as they enter adulthood, or to strengthen our loved ones in illness before we send them home, at the last, as fragrant offerings to Our Heavenly Father.
 
In my foreword to this evening’s Mass I offered some reflections on the meaning of the Sacred Oils and of the great gift Jesus gave to His Bride, the Church, in Her Sacraments.  I hope you will forgive me if I now address my brother priests as we prepare ourselves to renew the promises of our ordination day. 
 
My dear brothers I invite you, with me, to think back to that day, many years ago now, when we stood as young men before our bishop in the presence of God’s Holy People with the rest of our lives and the adventure of our priestly service ahead of us.  On that day we willingly and joyfully pledged ourselves to live our lives in the closest union and conformity to the Lord.  Those promises which we now renew encourage us to make that day real and present again, as fresh as if it were yesterday, despite the years that have intervened.
 
The Lord knows, dear brothers, how we are but poor vessels of clay who hold an enormous Treasure, as indeed where Saint Peter and the first Apostles.  When the Lord called Peter He knew everything about the poor soul who was on his knees before Him as a sinful man, simply overwhelmed by God’s mercy.  Jesus was in no doubt as to Peter’s capacity for sin but He saw in him something more important than that.  He saw a man who was capable of loving Him more than any other and we know that, in the end, the Lord’s better judgement proved true!  In this Holy Mass tonight, dear brothers, the Lord Whom you loved once - and love still more now - stands before you saying with the same confidence as He did on the day when He called you first, ‘Come follow me and see how I make all  things new’.
 
Before you renew your promise to Him, then, this Mass is much more about how Jesus renews His promise to you: that you are the one He wants and no other; that He loves and trusts you more than ever.  Knowing He still sees that something He first saw and loved in us, and that He yet stands by it - without regret or even qualification - gives us all the courage we need to renew our choice for Him and our passion for His commission to Feed His Sheep.  We take it up for one more year with ready and grateful hearts.  Let us feel the Lord breathing His priestly Spirit upon us from Galilee so that His priesthood that brings good news to the poor, freedom to captives and a year of grace for all Creation, can be exercised today again in us - poor, sinful men that we are - even as our people watch on.
 
We promise to be loyal stewards of the Mysteries of the Eucharist.  In recent times, dear brothers, it is said that our Church has lost some sense of wonder at the Eucharist, which embodies the terrible love that made God become a Sacrifice to  save us from Death and a Banquet to strengthen us for Eternal life.  I hope it is not true!  In the Year of the Eucharist Saint John Paul reminded us how the Eucharist is a great mystery which must be celebrated well.  Holy Mass, the centre of our Christian life, always had to be celebrated in a dignified manner.  He reminded us we ought to have a lively awareness of Christ's real presence, both in the celebration of Mass and in the worship of the Eucharist outside Mass.  Christ’s presence should be obvious in our tone of voice, in our gestures, in our posture and bearing, in our moments of silence, in the way we treat the Eucharist with profound respect.  The presence of Jesus in the tabernacle must be a magnetic pole attracting an ever greater number of souls in love with the Lord, ready to wait patiently to hear His voice, to sense the beating of His heart and to taste and see that the Lord is good!.  As we renew our promises to be good stewards of the Mysteries let us renew our love for Our Lord in the Eucharist and the Blessed Sacrament.
 
This evening, dear brothers, we also renew our promise to be good preachers who teach our people with hearts of fathers, and who care for them with the solicitude of shepherds.  Pope Francis reminds us how our people attach great importance to our homilies, which they see as a sort of touchstone of our closeness to them and their daily lives.  Though we do not know it our words often bring our people some happy experience of the Holy Spirit, or a consoling encounter with God’s mercy, and they find in them a constant source of renewal and growth in their journey of faith.  So the Pope encourages us to renew our care for and confidence in our preaching and to be convinced that God Himself somehow reaches His people through our voices and shows His power to renew all things by means of our poor words. We need to preach and not to be silent, remembering how it was more by the drip-drip of his wise and gracious words than by those one-off spectacular miracles that our Lord won the hearts of many who came from all parts to hear Him, amazed at his teachings and sensing how, in a world that often sounded like a cacophony of noise, they were here and now listening to the authority of God Himself. By their preaching the apostles, the first priests, brought all nations to the threshold of the Church.  As we renew our promises let us renew our confidence in the divine power of a short homily.
 
The Preface for today’s Mass reminds us that it was with a brother’s kindness that Christ Our Lord chose us men to be sharers in His sacred ministry.  My greatest joy as your bishop, dear brothers, is the thought that we truly are all brothers, one and all, and that we share together, with one heart, the Lord’s mission.  After three years as your bishop I cherish nothing better than to share together with you our work as labourers in the Lord’s vineyard and to be among you as nothing other than one who serves.  Let us promise to continue to labour in the Lord’s vineyard together, shoulder to shoulder, side by side gathering in the harvest.
 
Dear brothers and sisters this evening the Book of Revelations reminds you how it is because Christ loves you that He left you a line of priests to serve.  I thank you for coming to be with our blessed line of men this evening to show your thanks to God for the gift of their priestly vocations and  their Yes to God’s call.  It is a warm encouragement to them as they gladly promise another year of sacrifice in service of you, their people whom, I can see, they love to the end.
 
May our Blessed Mother Mary, Mother of Priests, pray Her Son for a fresh anointing of our priests with finest oil, the richest of which He keeps till now.