[00:00] Praise be Jesus and Mary. The first reading today was taken from the book of Exodus. And toward the end of this excerpt from the book of Exodus, our Lord speaking through Moses says, you shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.

[00:35] We hear this repeated many times in the words spoken by our Lord to the Israelites, especially in that period from Exodus before their entry into the promised land. It's a repeated theme. You will be to me a nation of priests. So what does this mean? Well firstly, let's understand that this is fully realized in the church. Through baptism, each one of us has been incorporated into Christ and shares in what the church calls the baptismal priesthood or the common priesthood.

[01:11] When we hear the word priesthood, we naturally think of ordained priesthood and rightly so because this is the priesthood which is most evident to us. But we need to remind ourselves, and this is what we want to focus on today, that we are all sharers of Christ's priesthood through baptism. So we've got to distinguish here between baptismal priesthood and ministerial priesthood. So ministerial priesthood enables or habilitates the man who receives ordination, who is then

[01:41] by means of a sacrament incorporated into Christ's own priesthood and abilitated in him to offer his very sacrifice on behalf of everyone. That's what the priest does, the Holy Mass. Whereas the common priesthood or the baptismal priesthood, which is the priesthood that everyone shares in through baptism, has the same characteristics, the same character. So it's got a priestly, prophetic, and royal character to it. So we just want to understand how these things apply to each one of us through baptism.

[02:16] Firstly, the priestly character, and then we'll go to the prophetic and then the royal character. So the priestly character enables each one of us through baptism to offer, in our own name, sacrifice to God. That's what St. Paul says when he says, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. So whereas the ministerial priesthood allows a priest to offer the very sacrifice of Jesus

[02:48] on behalf of everyone, the baptismal priesthood allows you to offer yourself as a sacrifice to God, your own prayers, your own praise, your own body, your own sufferings and sacrifices. That's a priestly action. Offer oneself, offer something to God. So whereas you cannot offer Christ's own sacrifice in the same way that the ordained priest does, you can offer yourself to God as a living sacrifice, as St. Paul says.

[03:18] And in fact, to not do that would be to fail in this important character of baptism, which obliges us to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to God. And this is repeated every time we talk about offering sacrifices to God. This is a priestly action based on baptism, on the priestly character of baptism. Once again, you're offering them on your own. You're offering them to God and he can make use of them for anything, but you cannot do

[03:49] that in the same way, obviously, as the priest does it through ministerial priesthood. But then we have the prophetic character. So whereas a priest, an ordained priest, has a duty of, the prophetic character doesn't mean foretelling the future, that's a common misunderstanding. The prophetic, to be a prophet is to speak in God's name, whether I'm talking about now or future events, that's not the key issue. The key issue is that I'm speaking in God's name, I'm being a voice for his voice, for

[04:26] his words. So the ordained priest is called to preach the word of God and to be God's voice, so to speak, in a very unique manner, as an extension of the missionary duty given to the apostles themselves. But all of us, by virtue of the priestly character of baptism, are called to be prophets because we're called to give witness to the truth, wherever we are. Or parents, for example, they're called to witness the faith to their children, to pass

[04:59] it on to them, to teach them the truth. Catechists, as well, to teach the faith to the next generation and to bear witness to that. And all of us to give, to bear witness to the truth, to be the voice of truth. And this is, once again, in virtue of the prophetic character of the baptismal priesthood that we have through baptism. Then we also have the kingly office, the royal character of priesthood.

[05:33] In this case, the royal character of that priesthood that we receive through baptism. So whereas the priest is inserted into the clergy, the ministerial priesthood is part of the clergy, is part of the hierarchy, and there's an authority that goes together with that to govern the people of God, the kingly office that you have through the sacrament of baptism is to govern yourself. You're called to govern your own passions, to govern your own thoughts, to govern your

[06:05] own inclinations, your own will, so that everything be subordinated to God's will, everything be ordered within you. It would make no sense if the priest was governing you with God's authority, but you weren't governing yourself, because no order inside. That's something that you have to do on your own, and that is this royal, this kingly aspect of baptismal priesthood. And to keep in mind that to govern oneself, I think there's an old saying, I don't recall

[06:38] who said that, that to govern oneself is actually a greater thing than to govern a nation. In fact, if you don't know how to govern yourself well, you'll never govern a nation well either. Can't govern others if you're not governing yourself. It is an unruliness and a lack of order within your own passions and your own interior faculties. So here we have this threefold character of priesthood which regards ourselves insofar as we are baptized.

[07:10] We're called to be prophets, witnesses to the truth, called to be, to offer sacrifice to God, the sacrifice of our very selves and everything that we suffer, to offer that, to unite that, to cut to Christ's own passion and death, and in this way to participate in the very action of Christ the high priest. Once again, just for clarity so we don't get confused, this is distinct from the way

[07:44] that the ordained priest does that. He does that through a sacrament directly united to Christ's own sacrifice, whereas all of us through baptism are called to offer ourselves, our own, the sacrifice of our very selves and to bear witness personally to the truth. Just passing on to the gospel, we see our Lord speaking of the abundance of the harvest but the lack of laborers. So that personal office of priesthood cannot be exercised if we don't have at the same

[08:20] time the ministerial priesthood, because they're the ones who are going to be the prime channels of that truth, who are going to govern us in God's name, who are going to offer the divine sacrifice from which we will obtain and draw the graces necessary for our own exercise of baptismal priesthood. But if they're lacking, and this is the duty that we have to pray for the ministerial priesthood, to pray for vocations, and in addition to that, pray for religious vocations, pray for

[08:52] catechists, that they be people who truly take to heart the transmission of the faith. There's no lack of harvest. Our Lord says that here, the harvest is abundant. By harvest we mean souls that are ripe for receiving the good news, souls that are just looking for truth, souls that feel so lost and bewildered and disorientated and confused and they need to hear truth, and they're seeking it, but there's no one telling it to them.

[09:23] So we have a rich harvest, souls ready to be brought in to the kingdom of God, but we don't have laborers. And our Lord says here in imperative tone, pray to the Lord of the harvest. In other words, this is not, you know, it would be nice, you could do this, it's commendable, he says pray to the Lord of the harvest. This is a command, it's a duty to pray for vocations. It's part of living the gospel, because there's a command here within the gospel that says

[09:55] pray for vocations. So we need to take this to heart as a key duty, one of the key duties of Christian life, to pray for vocations, pray for laborers for this immense harvest. Let us turn to our blessed mother, who in a very unique manner participated in the priesthood of Christ. You could say her priesthood is like halfway between the ministerial and the baptismal,

[10:29] because in a very unique manner, she was united to the high priest in that offering of the first sacrifice. And this is by virtue of her motherhood. She is mother of the victim, mother of the priest, united to him by a bond of charity like none other, and so abilitated to be united to him in the very offering of sacrifice as none other is. So I want to ask her for the grace to be more faithful to this character, this threefold prophetic kingly and priestly character that we have within us through baptism.

[11:03] Be mindful that it is a duty and part of living baptism to exercise these three aspects and to be faithful and generous in this, and that a lot is lost to the church and to the society and to souls precisely because we're not generous in this sense. And let's just keep in mind the last line of the gospel, without cost you have received, without cost you are to give. We've received the incredible gift of baptism by which we've become children of God, but

[11:36] this goes together with being faithful to it and using it, you know, by being faithful to it, we become channels so that others may receive this grace. We receive this grace without any merit of our own. It's a free gift. Baptism is a free gift. You can't merit baptism. It's a free gift. That's one of the reasons why children are baptized. No one had a say in their own conception and birth. Did your parents ask you before you were conceived if you were okay with that?

[12:10] No. Baptism, being conceived, which is the gift of natural life, is a gift to you. In the same way, the gift of supernatural life, becoming a child of God, is a gift to you. Others collaborate, but you receive this gift. It's not just up to your decision, as some people would say, and they push baptism until you're an adult. No, you're receiving a new life, a new generation. You're being regenerated as a child of God, and others take that decision responsibly for you, but there comes the point when we need to responsibly live out the free gift

[12:45] that we have received. So let us ask our blessed mother for this gift of living out our baptism, living as children of God, and being generous in bearing witness to the truth. Once again, that's the prophetic office. Offering ourselves to God as a living sacrifice, that's the priestly office. And so complete within ourselves this perfect conformity to Christ.

[13:16] Praise be Jesus and Mary. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.