Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, absolutely.  Grandparents’ Day and Secretaries’ Day, good ideas.  Cousins’ Day, maybe?  It seems like they are always adding new holidays to the calendar.  Do we really need to celebrate all of them?  It seems to be more a scheme of the greeting card companies to sell more cards.  I mean today is Redheads’ Day -- talk about a made up holiday.
    Last Sunday was another new holiday:  Priesthood Sunday.  I didn’t get any cards, which is fine with me.  Not that I don’t think we should honor and celebrate the priesthood, but I think we can do it better by really understanding what the priesthood is all about.  I would have preached about it last Sunday, but the readings really did not lend themselves to a discussion about the priesthood, but this weekend’s do.
    Looking at the Gospel, it might seem as if Jesus is against the idea of a priesthood.  He says to call no one “rabbi” or “teacher” or “father.”  Now, Jesus was exaggerating to make a point, because in the Gospels he talks about fathers, rabbis, and teachers, and he allows others to call him Rabbi and Teacher.  The key is what he says next; that we have one Teacher, one Rabbi, one Father in heaven.  
    Theologically there is only one priesthood:  Jesus is the one and only priest, who offers the one perfect and eternal sacrifice.  The Church teaches that we all participate in that one Priesthood through our baptism when we were made priest, prophet and king.  We participate in the common priesthood of all the baptized when we offer prayers -- of praise, thanksgiving, and petition -- to God our Father.  When we offer something up as a sacrifice, we are really uniting it to the one sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.  
    There is another way in which some men are called to participate in Jesus’ priesthood in a special way; namely in the ordained priesthood, which is what I am.  The ordained priesthood is different from the priesthood of the baptized; not merely by degree (priests don’t just live the priesthood of the baptized more intensely than others), rather the ordained priesthood is a participation of a different kind.  The man who is ordained a priest is changed, on a supernatural level, so that he can act in the person of Jesus Christ.  The ordained priesthood has three sacred powers, given to strengthen and serve the priesthood of all the baptized, namely to Preach, to Sanctify, and to Govern.  These three sacred powers can be seen as being related to the three titles that Jesus uses in today’s Gospel:  teacher is to preach, rabbi is to sanctify, and father is to govern.  And Jesus’ lesson in today’s Gospel, and in the other readings is about how those sacred powers are suppose to be exercised, only in God’s name and in the manner in which God teaches, sanctifies, and governs.
    In today’s first reading, God, through the prophet Malachi, is criticizing the Levites, the priests of the Old Testament.  The people have recently returned to Jerusalem after being exiled in Babylon for 70 years.  While they have rebuilt their homes, the Temple of the Lord is still in ruins.  The Levites have not been teaching the people the Covenant, nor expecting them to worship God as God wants them too.  The Levites have been making things too convenient for the people, and for themselves.  They have been failing to teach the truth that God has revealed, they have been failing to sanctify the people by leading them in right worship, and they have been governing the people not in the manner of God, who is a loving Father, but as lords wanting to be served themselves.
    At the time of Jesus, there were still problems in the Levitical priesthood.  Those in the Sadducees party wanted to compromise the religion to make it more like the prevailing Roman and Greek culture around them.  They were “liberal” in their teaching, not following the Covenant too closely.  On the other hand, the Pharisees were very rule focused.  They took the Covenant in a very rigid way, going so far as determining how many steps you could take and still be keeping the Sabbath rest.  While the followers of the Pharisees did know the scriptures -- the Law and the Prophets -- better than the Sadducees, their “conservativeness” lost the spirit of God in the letter of the law.  The one thing that the Sadducees and Pharisees seemed to share was a desire to govern the people, to be in charge, more so that they had power and less because they wanted to serve the people.
    It was this situation that Jesus is addressing in today’s Gospel.  Jesus recognized that the priests of his time had taken the chair of Moses, so were responsible for teaching the Faith of Israel, and he acknowledged that at least the Pharisees were doing that, but he knew that more powerful than words is the witness of living the Faith.  That meant following God with all one’s heart, mind and soul, of loving God more than anything else.  It meant exercising a leadership of service, and not just enforcement of rules.  
    In other words, it means being a father as God is a Father to all of us.  God always teaches the truth, and often that truth is inconvenient for us.  Given our disordered passions, we often want things that are not really for our good in the long run.  But God teaches by way of invitation and coaxing, and not demanding.  God calls us to worship, not because it does him any thing, but because he knows that we need to re-center our lives on him, who is the only one who can satisfy the deepest longing of our our hearts.  God, as our Father, disciplines us not to show us that he is more powerful than we are.  He is of course all powerful, but he disciplines us because he loves us, and he wants us to share in his divine life.
     This weekend let us celebrate Priesthood Sunday a week late.  No, I don’t want any cards.  Rather, let us spend time reflecting on how well we are participating in the Priesthood of Jesus Christ; whether as in the priesthood of the baptized, or as ministerial priests.  Let us reflect on how we are allowing God to teach us, how well we are living his teachings, and how well we are sharing his teachings, especially by how we live our lives.  Let us reflect on how well we are worshipping God; do we give him our full attention at Mass?  Do we dedicate part of each day for prayer, of bringing to him our needs and the needs of those around us, of thanking him for the graces he blesses us with, and in simply praising him who is all good.  Finally, we should reflect on how well do we witness to God being a loving Father by being compassionate and loving to those around us.