Diaconate Ordination of Dr. Joseph Chan

Published: May 26, 2015

Bishop Anthony B. Taylor preached the following homily at St. Boniface Church in Fort Smith on Tuesday, May 26, 2015. It is based on the following Gospel reading: John 12:20-33.

Bishop Taylor

"Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies it produces much fruit."

In the Gospel reading you just heard, Jesus is talking about his "hour." The "hour" of his glorification, lifted up from the earth, drawing everyone to himself — dying lifted up on a cross. How will this gruesome, humiliating death glorify him? 

• The cross will glorify him because by doing the Father's will he is glorifying the Father.
• The cross will glorify him because by accomplishing his God-given mission in life he will win our salvation.
• The cross will glorify him because through it he will break the power of sin and death.

Joseph, you know more than most of us how to glorify God by embracing the cross with sacrificial love. In your most recent self-evaluation you wrote: "I firmly believe that, for as long as I surrender myself to God's will, and desire nothing whatever (but) Christ, God will bring to perfection whatever I have initiated towards my vocation to the priesthood."

And you continue: "I thank him for my deafness and visual impairment, for these have taught me to listen and see with my heart. I have accepted that he fractured me so that I cannot run away from his call and only walk towards him as a living witness of his goodness, love, mercy and power, worthy to be praised, worshipped, and forever glorified!

"God permitted my memory to be impaired to teach me that it is he alone who can replenish the void for me to gain wisdom; he allowed my alimentary tract to be obstructed so that my appetite will be solely for his word; and he continues to inflict me with pain to remind me of his own suffering as a personal invitation to sanctity. I take and offer my fragmented entirety, prostrate at the foot of the cross, to be his, in full surrender to servitude."

Joseph, your words echo that of Jesus! "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies it produces much fruit." 

In Jesus' case, the Roman authorities will assert their political and military power, but their sentence of death is powerless to take Jesus' life because it is just an afterthought; it's already too late. Jesus has already offered it up freely — and therefore it is no longer theirs to take. The religious leaders will do all in their power to silence a man who proclaimed truths that undermined their authority and unmasked their hypocrisy, but when it came to the word of God, Jesus would not be silenced. He continued to proclaim God's truth undeterred. Jesus glorified God because he was "all in." 

And so are you. You glorify God by embracing your crosses with sacrificial love like Jesus did his. In this way, you will accomplish your God-given mission in life and do your part to break the power of sin and death in the world we live in today. Satan may do his worst — he can cause terrible automobile accidents — and, as with Jesus, appear to do us great harm, but he cannot prevail if you are fully united to the Lord.

And the same is true with any adversities you might encounter in the Lord's service. If you offer up your life fully and freely to the Lord, no one will be able to take your life from you because it's already too late, because you have already given it away. If you proclaim God's truth undeterred, no one will be able to silence you. Oh, it will lead to a cross, but that's where God's power lies and it is by embracing the cross with sacrificial love that we glorify God!

"Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies it produces much fruit."