(Bishop Murphy’s column this week is the text of his homily for Holy Thursday’s Chrism Mass.)

The Holy Father has called for a synod of bishops for October of this year. The theme is “The Word of God in the life and mission of the Church.” The Word of God lies at the heart of our lives as disciples of Christ. It is what forms us and inspires us, teaches and admonishes us. “It cuts more finely than any two-edged sword.” It is light for those in darkness and life for us who thirst to know Jesus Christ and be transformed by the power of God and His message of salvation.

Ever since Pius XII’s great encyclical on Scripture studies, DAS (1943), the Church has benefited from a rebirth in the centrality of the Scriptures, the Word of God, in our lives. The work of specialists like our own Bishop Wcela has enriched us all and opened up to us the treasure of God speaking to us through the inspired writers. The formation of the Canon of inspired writings by the bishops of the Church has guaranteed that we will always be nourished by God’s Word and so be guided into all truth with the assurances that only the magisterium can offer to us. Securus judicat orbis terrarum.

The Word of God, our Bible of Old and New Testament, is given to us all for instruction and inspiration, for proclamation in the assembly and opening our hearts in private and communal prayer. Yet that Word of God is entrusted in the Church in a particular way to you and me, the priests who are ordained to serve the people and to bring to them the riches of God’s message of love, for the life of the Church and all her members.

Today in this Chrism Mass, I would like simply to remind us all but especially you, my brother priests, of the great responsibility and the great privilege which is ours to proclaim the Word of God and to preach it, break it open and make it live for our people. In a sense I wish to continue a meditation, begun here seven years ago, deepened last year at Montauk and one I will carry on by a letter I will send you priests after Easter to express again my love for you and my desire to serve you by word and example.

The Vatican Council instructs us most clearly. “The People of God is formed into one by the Word of the living God which is quite rightly sought from the mouth of the priests. For since nobody can be saved who has not first believed, it is the first task of priests as co-workers of the bishops to preach the Gospel of God to all…Priests then owe it to everybody to share with them the truth of the Gospel in which they rejoice in the Lord.” (PO 4)

Our first task is to bring God’s Word to His people. That Word is the truth of God’s plan of salvation. For He created the world “through His Word.” By His Word he called Abraham and gave him the promise. His Word came to Moses and by that Word set His people free. The Word of the prophets brought home God’s intent for His people and called them to repentance. And finally, “in the fullness of time,” His Word “became flesh and dwelt among us as the only begotten full of grace and of truth.”

Once the Word of God becomes man, the relation between God’s word and you and me becomes personal. We not only “receive a message.” We are made one with Him so that we become bearers of the message. We become transformed into the message, into the person, into the Son of God who infuses us with His Spirit of life and love. For us, ordained deacons and priests, that transformation into the Word includes a ministerial charge to preach the one we have come to know, to open up to our people the true dimensions of the mystery of God’s love become incarnate, to invite one and all to come to know Him as He truly is, by understanding the Word that is given to the Church for our life and our salvation.

What a tremendous charge has been given us! What an awesome responsibility! We have been entrusted with the inspired Word of God! We have been commanded to “preach it in season and out of season” to believer and nonbeliever, to the saint and the sinner, to all God’s people throughout the world until the end of time. You and I, gathered here today in this cathedral and in all our parishes, have been given the specific charge of unlocking and sharing the Word of God to the good people of Long Island in these our days within this our culture and to do so for the salvation of all our world.

I am convinced to the very core of my being that the people of this world of ours, this Long Island, are hungry for that Word. They thirst for the water of life. They desire with all their hearts to have their hearts set on fire and their lives set free by the power of God’s word making them one with Him.

Thank God, after almost seven years here, I can say with confidence and admiration that the priests of our diocese are good preachers. I thank you, my brothers, for the care you give in preparing your homilies. I thank you for your attentiveness to understanding the Word of God that you preach. I commend you for making that Word, not an exercise in erudition, but an exposition of God’s Word over which you have prayed and about which you have meditated before bringing it to your people.

This task, this privilege, you have embraced with conviction and commitment. You must also always embrace it with fidelity and with respect for its true meaning for the good of souls. This is a twofold responsibility. First, we have a solemn responsibility to the Word itself and to Jesus, the Word Himself. We must understand the Word, and we must present it faithfully because this is the Word that the Church must jealously guard and protect. We cannot play fast and loose with it. We cannot trivialize it. We cannot exploit it to express our own personal and individualistic projects or ideas. Second, we must be faithful to that Word for the sake of the people. When they hear us preach, they have a right to hear God’s Word, not our opinions. As the Council says, priests are to “teach not their own wisdom but the Word of God.” And we are then to apply it to the lives of our people so that they might receive a concrete, real message that will nourish them. We must seek to give them the Word that will strengthen them in living their lives of witness to the world that the world may believe.

May I conclude by giving you a singular but very apt example? Today’s Gospel! Has there ever been a shorter or more effective, briefer but more life giving, opening up of the meaning of a Scripture passage? The vision of Isaiah expressed the messianic hopes of the Jews. It is meant not just for Jews but for all humankind. To those who were thirsting to have the promise of Isaiah fulfilled, Jesus presents himself as the realization of that vision. He is the answer to their dreams and their hopes. He is the answer to the dreams and hopes of every human heart. What a wondrous gift Jesus gives his hearers, gives us, gives the world: “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

I pray that every time we priests stand before God’s People, we will proclaim His Word and preach His gospel. I pray that the Word of God might be fulfilled time and again in various ways in the hearts of our people through our faithful preaching, through the example of our lives. From us must come the proclamation of the Word, and the Word made flesh Who dwells among us for the salvation of the world, full of grace and of truth.