Homily
Ordination to the Priesthood of
Tru Duc Nguyen MSC
Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church, Henley Beach on Friday, 24th July 2015
It seems clear to all of us, Tru, that Pope Francis has put a new spring into the step of the
Church. Saint Paul expressed his delight to Philemon “how you have put new heart into the
life of the Saints.” Part of your vocation as a priest, Tru, will be to put new heart into the
Saints, as Pope Francis is doing, into a Church and into a world that needs the joy and hope
which are your gifts. Giving this new heart will be another special gift that you will give, Tru,
as a priest member of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, living that charism through the
sacrament of Holy Orders.
This is a day of great joy for your family, especially for your wonderful mother Lac and your
sister Tanh, and your wider family, and your brothers in the MSC and for all the friends who
have helped form you from your school days until now. We recall especially today the
presence in God of Mr Hanh Nguyen, your father who died when you were about two years
old. In the Communion of Saints, may your father intercede for you, Tru, so that many
blessings will adorn your ministry as priest.
The story of your family is also a lesson for Australia. When Australia had a more open
heart towards asylum seekers than it has now, look how the results have enriched this
country. Look at the example of yourself, and your family, Tru, how Australia is better and
richer because of your presence, and that of your family.
When we were speaking together, you spoke of the total admiration and wonder you have
for your mother, for her strength and courage and fidelity. Mrs Nguyen, your husband died
in the village in 1981, leaving you with two very young children, Tru being about two years
old. You wanted a better life for your son and daughter and so began that long pilgrimage
of trust and perseverance to come to a new land. You fled Vietnam and stayed with your
children in a refugee camp in Cambodia in 1988 and 89, and then there was the danger of
being a boat person from Cambodia to Malaysia, where you stayed in refugee camps until
1991. In that year, when Tru was twelve years old, Australia accepted you and your family
as refugees. After some time learning the language Tru studied at Northfield High in Year 8,
and then moved to Saint Ignatius College for the rest of your schooling. Towards the end of
your time there, you had a wonderful Headmaster, known for his genial spirit and fearless
control of the situation! You undertook your university studies and graduated in
mathematics and computer science. To this you later added a Bachelor of Social Work. This
was because your employment eventually took you to Sydney where you worked with
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people with disability, people suffering from Cerebral Palsy. God was calling you through
these people to deeper things. You were part of the Vietnamese community when it was at
Hindmarsh, and came into contact with the MSCs. You eventually undertook the retreat at
Douglas Park and entered the MSC noviciate in 2008. Clearly, the influence of your former
Headmaster was not as strong as he likes to think! It was the spirituality of the MSCs that
drew you in, the spirituality of the heart. Fr Tan MSC on Melville Island was an influence on
you, you came to acknowledge that the charism and spirituality of the MSCs was what you
were looking for. You were formed by the people whom you served, those with disabilities.
You found that they did not focus on their own problems but on living as well as they could,
and you came to see priesthood as a way of serving and being with such people on the
outskirts, a place where Pope Francis tells the Church it should be, and so we come to this
day now.
The readings you have chosen today are all about the calling to ministry. When you took
your vows as an MSC, Tru, you offered yourself as a man to be vowed to serve God’s people
as a member of the Society of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.
A few moments ago Father Provincial said to the Bishop, “Holy Mother Church asks you to
ordain this man Tru” and the Bishop in reply said, “Relying on the help of the Lord God and
our Saviour Jesus Christ, we choose Tru, our brother, for the Order of the Priesthood.” It is
the Church which now calls you forth, and which will pray, bless this man, bless this chosen
one, bless him and make him holy, bless him and consecrate him for sacred duties. It is
different to your vow taking. It is the Church which calls you forth, a deeper meaning to the
word vocation.
There will be two central actions in your ordination, Tru, the laying on of the hands and the
anointing with chrism. The gesture of the laying on of hands goes deep into the history of the
People of God, even to the time of Moses. Joshua was “filled with the spirit of wisdom” when
Moses laid hands on him. And in the New Testament, time and again, Jesus laid hands on people, as
in St Luke (4.40) “…. and laying His hands on each, He cured them.” Within a short time this action
was the accepted form for consecration, as when Paul later wrote to Timothy, saying “you have in
you a spiritual gift which was given to you when the prophet spoke and the body of elders laid their
hands on you.” The gesture of the laying on of hands is a symbol of commissioning and creating, of
bringing about a new reality in the person so chosen, be it for healing or for consecration.
In his first Mass of the Chrism as Pope in Holy Week, the new Holy Father took up that second
symbol of our priesthood, the anointing with Chrism. Francis referred to the Psalm which talks
about the precious oil flowing down the head of Aaron, down his beard onto his robes, and indeed
to the hem of his garments. Francis says that the image of oil spreading, flowing to the hem, is an
image of the priestly anointing through which Christ the Anointed One reaches to the ends of the
earth, symbolised by the robe. Our liturgical robes as we have them today are symbols of our office
as priest. We don them when about to perform a sacred action in the liturgy. Francis talked of the
symbolism of the High Priest’s robes. On the shoulder pieces there were twelve onyx stones, six
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each side, each with a name of one of the tribes of Israel inscribed on it. The names of the twelve
tribes were also engraved on the High Priest’s breastplate. Francis sees the High Priest’s robes as
the ancestor of our present day chasuble, and that as priests we carry on our shoulders the people
entrusted to our care, and we bear their names next to our hearts. When donning our chasuble it
might well make us feel, he said, upon our shoulders and in our hearts the burdens and faces of our
faithful people. The purpose of the precious oil was more than simply to lend fragrance to the
person of Aaron; it overflowed to the edges, to the hem, indicating that the anointing is meant for
the people on the edges, those on the outskirts, the poor and unheeded.
Francis tells us that “a good priest can be recognised by the way his people are anointed: this is a
clear proof. When our people are anointed with the oil of gladness, it is obvious. You as a Religious
and now soon a priest are to bring the light and the joy of the Gospel, the truth that all are loved in
Christ to a degree that the imagination cannot grasp. “The love of Christ overwhelms us…”, as Paul
wrote.
The spirituality of the MSCs will serve you well in this regard, Tru. The heart is the deepest place of
our encounter with God. In a world that can at times seem heartless, or appears to have lost heart,
you are to bring the gentleness and compassion of Christ, whose sense of compassion and
tenderness towards others the Church has fostered in the devotion to the Sacred Heart. Some claim
that there are new forms of that devotion, under the title of mercy. I am not sure of that. If the cry
is for mercy out of a fear of God and His punishments and His anger, then that is not the Sacred
Heart, not the charism of your Order, which would see the cry for mercy as a plea for help, not a
request to avoid punishment. It is more like the leper who said to Jesus, “If you want to you can
cure me.” And Christ gave back that answer than can only strengthen and encourage each of us in
our frailty, “Of course I want to”. To those people you serve on the edges, you are as priest to bring
the invitation of Jesus, that all who have to toil in life and are burdened with pain or affliction, He
says come to me, for I am gentle, and I will give you rest, and my yoke is easy and my burden light.
It is a battered Church we are called to serve, a Church rightly battered by the public response to the
story of sins of abuse and denial and indifference to victims, a Church whose prophetic edge has
therefore been dulled, a Church which must stand up and be accountable.
Despite all this, the Church retains a distinctiveness of identity and meaning and remains for us the
Home of the Word, the Place of the Saints, the Nurturer of the Frail, and the Giver of the Bread of
Life. No other community has all these attributes. That is the Church you are to serve and build up.
Pope Francis has told us that “we need a Church unafraid of going forth into the night of the
disillusioned. We need a Church capable of meeting them on their way. We need a Church capable
of entering into their conversation”. And he asks, “I would like all of us to ask ourself today: are we
still a Church capable of warming hearts? A Church capable of leading people back to Jerusalem? Of
bringing them home?” For this you are ordained, Tru. MSCs by vocation must warm hearts.
Being a good Jesuit, Pope Francis seems often to make three points in his homilies. He speaks of the
three sisters who guard the anointed priest – poverty, fidelity, obedience. He speaks of the three
temptations of the Church – making the Gospel an ideology, reducing the Church to functionalism
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where there is no room for mystery, and clericalism whereby the priestly vocation of the baptised is
not sufficiently recognised by the ordained. He talks of the vocation of the priest to listen, to walk
amongst the people, and to proclaim. He speaks of the oil of gladness bestowed on the priest, giving
a joy which anoints, a joy which is imperishable, and a joy which is missionary.
I conclude with a further reflection given by Pope Francis, where he talks about the need for “a
Church which makes room for God’s mystery; a Church which harbours that mystery in such a way
that it can entice people, attract them. Only the beauty of God can attract. God’s way is through
enticement which attracts us. God lets Himself be brought home. He awakes in us a desire to keep
Him and His life in our homes, in our hearts. He reawakens in us a desire to call our neighbours in
order to make known His beauty. Mission is born precisely from this Divine allure, by the
amazement born of encounter with God”, the Pope says.
As a priest, Tru, you will be called to be a bearer of mystery, a servant of the Church which harbours
that mystery.
May you continue to know this Divine allure, the call of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, “this amazement
born of encounter”, as Francis calls it, and may people continue to encounter Christ through you,
Tru, now by the laying on of hands and the anointing with sacred chrism to be priest ordained for
God’s people, especially the least of His brothers and sisters, we pray, ad multos annos.
Bishop Greg O’Kelly SJ
Diocese of Port Pirie
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