My dear brother Jonathan, there is hardly a greater joy for a bishop than presiding at the ordination of a new priest and seeing stand before him the joy and hope of our Church as it stretches out into the generation ahead.  Our people already speak well of you as an earnest and humble worker in the Lord’s vineyard and, ever since I have known you, I have looked into the heart of your priestly soul and found there only a desire to decrease so that the Lord and His Kingdom might increase.  You are as ready as ever for the gift and work of the priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ as we thank Him from the heart for your Yes to His call.  Today I, along with my fellow priests, are given the gift of a new brother, and our people are blessed with a father and shepherd to guide them in their journey through this life to Heaven. 
 
Most men find joy in being ordained on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul and then, on their anniversaries, to draw strength and inspiration from these two great pillars of our Catholic faith.  You, however, are chosen to be ordained this day after, on the Feast of the First Martyrs of Rome.  It is Christ Our Lord Who ordains to confer His priesthood on you on this day so that He can speak to your heart about the priesthood He wants you to live on the strength of today's celebration.  He means to form your ministry as a continual unfolding of today's celebration. 
 
The first martyrs of Rome, as you know, gave their lives in the persecutions of the emperor Nero following the great fire of Rome in 64AD.  These Christians proved convenient scapegoats for the imperial politics of the time but their torture was particularly cruel and gruesome involving, as it did, being thrown to wild animals or tarred and set aflame as living torches to light up the Roman nights.  The story of their suffering and martyrdom is chronicled by the historian Tacitus and the saintly Pope Clement for all the world to read. 
 
The Collect for today's Eucharist, however, sees beyond the brutality of their deaths and reaches up to a higher glory.  The blood of these first martyrs of Rome represented a kind of consecration of the Roman Catholic Church and their blood nourished seeds planted by Our Lord Jesus Himself.  In God’s good time they would spring up as the abundant first fruits of the young Church’s remarkable evangelisation of the whole world and ensure that, in this first great struggle of the Church and the world, the Gospel would win an astounding victory to define a millennium of Western history.   The witness of these first martyrs of Rome, therefore, should give you and me courage and strength to be strong and full of faith in the present struggles between the Gospel and the worldviews of our times that so often set their faces resolutely against the values and vision of the Kingdom of God. 
 
This is the point emphasised by Saint Paul in his letter to that same Roman Church.  The Lord Jesus had already revealed to the Apostles how He saw Satan fall like lightening from Heaven to earth where, as the Book of Revelations says, he has been given dominion for a short time, before all that is good is gathered up into the eternal harvest and all that is left is thrown into the Fire that never goes out.  The world Paul describes then, and in which you are to be ordained now, is a world much in hock to the Prince of this world, convulsed in itself as we so often see, and at enmity, more or less continually, with the Gospel.  It is a world, Paul says, which continues to accuse and seeks to condemn disciples of Christ and it has its legion of powers and princes, here and there, who are sure to challenge, threaten or even attack us.  So, for us, real discipleship of Christ will bring with it a fair share of worries and troubles, and it may see some of us wanting from time to time for some of the basic comforts of life. 
 
But for all that the world tries to leave us out in the cold it is water of a duck's back -or dust to be shaken from our sandals - for the Church because we know God is on our side!  And we are sure in Him Who has given up His Only Begotten Son for our benefit.  We are convinced that, in the Passion, Death and Resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ, God has not only acquitted us of our sins, but has, in fact, chosen us for the highest of all possible purposes, to help Him save the world and win it for Eternal Life.  His Ascension to the Father's right hand pleading our cause is our unimpeachable guarantee that the Father will refuse us nothing we ask of Him.  He has sent His Holy Spirit as our assurance that nothing can, or ever will, come between us and the love of God. 
 
So God has already won the Final Victory on our behalf.  All we have to do is stand firm with Him to the end and we will see how our present trials are nothing but the occasion, in our place and time, for us to triumph by the strength of Him Who loved us.
 
Into this great struggle and victory, my dear brother Jonathan, God consecrates you today as He consecrated Jeremiah in his time.  The Lord has known you from your mother's womb and already appointed you even as you as you were being raised in your family home and, at this point, I want publicly to thank and commend your family, your parents Craig and Bernadette and your sister, Roisin, for being such good and faithful custodians of God's anointing of you and for passing down to you so lovingly our Catholic faith. 
 
But now any childish days are behind you and you no longer say you are a child because you stand before a people who look for you to be their father and shepherd as you go out into a world that needs, more than ever, priests to be holy leaders and wise guides. 
 
From now on, in your long hours of daily prayer and meditation, you will listen the Lord's voice speak to you and begin to form itself as a whole in your soul, and you will hear Him teach you how to say all He commands you in your preaching and teaching.  He will give you sharp words to tear down what is wrong but He will show you how to accompany these words with a life of pastoral charity, daily given to your people and world, in the attentive celebration of the Holy Eucharist for their salvation.  And He will show you how to be a kind minister of His grace in your love of the Sacraments of His Church that will plant seeds of healing and reconciliation and build up new life and hope.  So, my brother Jonathan, like the martyrs of Rome you are consecrated to give your life for the salvation of your people and for the reconciliation of the world and, in daily dying to yourself, to give new life to our diocesan family. 
 
Although I am reading this to you in this moment it was written from my room in Malawi where I was with our diocesan high school of St. Benedict's, on missionary exchange.  There I witnessed a church of laity and clergy, working their way out of impossible poverty, and teaming with life and hope, and I befriended their bishop who has, just this month, opened four new parishes in their ongoing work of evangelisation.   Our sister Church in Africa is not one dismayed by its material circumstances and neither should we be dismayed by the poor spiritual circumstance of our western world. Instead, assured by the Lord's protection, certain of triumph in all things by the love of God made visible in Our Lord Jesus Christ, and standing before you who are today God’s promise of hope to us, we journey confidently into a future which is ours for the taking.  I know you, as you join us in this work, are a brother full of faith in God and zeal for His Kingdom.
 
In this centennial year of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima, where I prayed personally for you this month, as I have done daily for you in my Rosary, I consecrate you and your priesthood to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, confident in Her promise of the re-evangelisation of our world and the triumph of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.   May God who has begun this good work in you bring it to fulfilment.