April 16, 2025 // Bishop

Bishop Rhoades’ Homily for the Chrism Masses: We Are Anointed to Be Christ’s Messengers of Hope

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades

The following homily was given by Bishop Rhoades at the two Chrism Masses during Holy Week – at St. Matthew Cathedral in South Bend on Monday, April 14, and at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Fort Wayne on Tuesday, April 15.

Every year at the Chrism Mass, we hear the readings just proclaimed. We hear the prophecy of Isaiah about the future Messiah and His mission. And we hear Jesus purposely choose this reading from Isaiah on His first visit to the synagogue of His hometown after His baptism.

After Jesus read the reading, He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. St. Luke tells us that “the eyes of all the synagogue were fixed on Him.” And then Jesus gave His first and shortest homily. He said startling and explosive words: “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Unfortunately, I’m not going to give such a short homily this evening.)

If we would read beyond today’s Gospel to what happened next, we learn from St. Luke that “the people in the synagogue spoke well of Him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from Jesus’ mouth.” But then they started to doubt. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” And they asked Him to prove He was the Messiah by doing a sign like He did at Capernaum. Jesus then responded about how the prophets were not accepted in their native place, giving the examples of Elijah and Elisha. This offended the people of Nazareth and filled them with such rage that they drove Jesus out of town to the brow of a hill to hurl Him off the cliff. “But He passed through the midst of them and went on His way.”

Our Lord went on His way. He went on with His mission and manifested by His words and actions that He was the Messiah King whom the people awaited. He preached the Kingdom of God and inaugurated that Kingdom on earth. And Jesus accomplished the coming of His Kingdom in the great Paschal Mystery that we celebrate this week. In this week we call “holy,” Jesus accomplished our salvation. By His cross and resurrection, He set us free. He did what Isaiah prophesied: He let the oppressed go free – those oppressed by the worst slavery, the slavery of sin. And He brought liberty to captives, to all held captive to death. He is our Messiah, our Liberator, our Savior. This is what God the Father sent His Son into the world to do. And this is what the Holy Spirit anointed Him to do. This was His mission, the mission of salvation accomplished by His loving us to the end, offering His life for us. It’s this love that redeems us and gives us hope, “the hope” that St. Paul says “does not disappoint.”

The theme of this Jubilee Year 2025 is hope. The ultimate object of our hope is salvation and eternal life. When we were baptized, we were cleansed of sin and were marked with the seal of eternal life. The seed of hope was planted in our souls. We were anointed with the sacred chrism, the chrism of salvation, which signified the anointing of the Holy Spirit. We received the name “Christian,” a name that indicates that we are disciples of the Christ, the Anointed One.

We not only bear the name of Christ, but we are also to participate in His mission. That’s why we were anointed with the chrism a second time, at our confirmation. The Holy Spirit came upon us again, giving us the strength and fortitude we need to be true witnesses of Christ, witnesses of Him who is our hope, witnesses to the hope that does not disappoint. In the world today, there is a lot of hopelessness, where many are searching for meaning and purpose in their lives but put their hope in things that ultimately disappoint, like material possessions and political ideologies. Or they put their hope only in science and technology, which are good things when used rightly, respecting human dignity and serving the common good. Science and technology can improve our lives on this earth, but they cannot provide ultimate meaning and purpose for our lives. Pope Benedict XVI famously pointed this out when he said that “it is not science that redeems man: man is redeemed by love.”

We have been anointed by the Holy Spirit to be messengers of the hope that has its source in God’s love. This is the hope of the Gospel. How do we do this practically? First of all, we do so by sharing our faith and the reasons for our hope, as St. Peter exhorts us to do in his first letter. He wrote to the first Christians, “Should anyone ask you for this hope of yours, be ever reading to reply, but speak gently and respectfully.” That’s true evangelization, which is the fundamental mission of the Church. But it also must be accompanied by our actions. For example, when we do the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, we are bringing hope to people. Pope Francis has called the works of mercy “works of hope.” The Holy Father says that “we are called to be tangible signs of hope for those of our brothers and sisters who experience hardship of any kind.” We are tangible signs of hope, indeed instruments of hope, when we reach out to those who feel lonely and abandoned, when we visit and show our affection to the sick and suffering, when we encourage those who are going through a difficult time, when we comfort the afflicted, when we walk with and support pregnant and parenting mothers in need, and when we welcome and show love to migrants and refugees who have left their homelands to escape war and violence, persecution, or extreme poverty. We give hope to people when we recognize their dignity as beloved sons and daughters of God.

My brother priests and I, because of our anointing in the Sacrament of Holy Orders, have received a specific and unique consecration and mission. We were configured to Christ the Good Shepherd, and our mission is directed to building up and leading the faithful in living lives of faith, hope, and charity.

My brothers in the ordained priesthood, we are called to strengthen our people in the virtue of hope by our preaching and teaching. We do so when we preach encouraging, not discouraging, homilies. We are to be prophets of hope, not prophets of doom. We have been anointed to share Jesus’ mission of bringing glad tidings to the poor. Like St. Paul, we are called to preach Christ crucified and the hope that springs from His cross. His cross became for us “a tree of life” through His resurrection from the dead. The new evangelization requires us to be heralds of the cross, our only hope, and witnesses of the joy that has its source in hope.

Our ministry in the confessional is a powerful ministry of hope. In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we act in the person of Christ who, as Isaiah prophesied, set free those oppressed by sin. As I visit parishes throughout our diocese, I notice how many of you have extended your hours for hearing confessions, and I am so grateful for this, as are our people. This past Saturday evening, I was out to dinner with a young adult couple, originally from our diocese, who now live in another diocese. They told me that when they visit their families here in our diocese, they are so grateful that they find confession so widely available in many of our parishes (and at Notre Dame). I know that hearing confessions for hours can be quite tiring, even exhausting, but it’s a good tiredness, a holy exhaustion. We have many priest saints to inspire us and intercede for us in this regard, like John Vianney, Alphonsus Liguori, Philip Neri, John Bosco, and Padre Pio.

As confessors, we show the greatness of the divine mercy. In so doing, we give people hope. When we are good confessors, we guide penitents to full trust in God’s merciful love, revealed in Jesus Christ, countering the sin against hope, which is despair. We also guide them to responsibility and to the commitment to continuous conversion, against the other sin against hope which is presumption.

In a few minutes, I will bless the oil of the sick. As ministers of the anointing of the sick, our priests are instruments of hope for the sick and the suffering whose hope may be challenged by the experience of sickness, pain, suffering, or impending death. While it is possible that the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick can bring physical healing, it is primarily about the healing of the spirit. That’s a deeper healing, one that brings hope. At the beautiful shrine of Lourdes, famous for physical healings, the greatest and most frequent miracles involve the strengthening of hope, which brings inner peace and joy to the sick and suffering.

The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick allows the person who is ill to unite more closely to Christ’s passion. This gives suffering a new meaning: a participation in the saving work of Jesus (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1521). If a person is dying, it is a preparation for passing over to eternal life, the last anointing that completes the anointings received at baptism and confirmation. I thank our priests for their dedication to the pastoral and spiritual care of the sick and the dying, strengthening their hope and courage when they are feeling heavily the weight of the cross. My brother priests, may you always strive to imitate Our Lord’s preferential love for the sick and all who suffer, strengthening their hope in His love, the love that is more powerful than death.

After the priests and I renew our ordination promises, and after the blessing of the oils and the consecration of the chrism, we will celebrate the liturgy of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a great sacrament of hope since every time the Eucharist is celebrated, the work of our redemption is carried out. As St. Ignatius of Antioch famously said, the Eucharist is “the medicine of immortality, the antidote for death, and the food that makes us live forever in Jesus Christ.” It is an anticipation of the glory of heaven, our ultimate hope. May the holy Eucharist nourish our hope and empower all of us to bear witness in the world to our hope, the hope that does not disappoint, the hope of eternal glory!