HOMILY FOR THE MASS OF ORDINATION TO THE PRIESTHOOD OF REV. MR TAI PHAMFEA ST OF THE VISITATION
ST MARY’S BASILICA SYDNEY, 31 MAY 2025
Unparalleled in wisdom about our origins, lives and destinies, about the perennial battle between good and evil, and about the possibility of redemption… I am speaking, of course, not of the Bible or the Summa but the Marvel comics and films.
Connecting the stories told there is the theme of transformation, as ordinary human beings become extraordinary superheroes—or villains. Consider Tony Stark’s metamorphosis from self-centred weapons manufacturer to Iron Man protector of the weak; or the physically weak and socially withdrawn physicist, Robert Banner, made Incredible Hulk by gamma radiation; or mild-mannered teenager Peter Parker turned crime-fighting Spider-Man after a radioactive spider bite; or the frail Steve Rogers become Captain America due to “Super-Soldier Serum”…
Yet these examples of profound transformations in the Marvel Universe pale when compared to what is about to take place in the very being of our ordinand Tai Pham today. It is our Catholic faith that this sacrament leaves an indelible seal or character upon the soul of the ordained, one that cannot be erased.[1] It’s a change so profound it’s been tagged ‘ontological’, more complete than any dreamt up at Marvel.
Some baulk at such metaphysical talk because they distrust philosophical categories, especially from the same stable as Transubstantiation. Some fear it encourages an unhealthy clericalism that lords it over others and allows clergy to exempt themselves from ongoing formation, co-responsibility, accountability, even ordinary morality and courtesy. Some even attribute the clergy sexual abuse crisis to Catholic mythologising about ontology and sacred power.[2]
Others accept Church teaching that the Sacrament of Orders effects a permanent character in the recipient but minimise its implications to unrepeatability: you can’t be re-ordained a priest just as you cannot be rebaptised a Christian. Otherwise, you are the same thing after ordination that you were before.
Yet from today things will change for our ordinand. People much older than him will treat him with unaccustomed reverence, calling him “Father” even though he is younger and celibate. He will vest anew, sit in a special place, celebrate the rites, and serve himself Communion. There will be new pulpits, new sacraments, new charges. When gravely sick he will be anointed on the back of his hands, not the front. And when dead—hopefully many decades from now—he will be placed with head rather than feet towards the altar…
Is all this just spiritual elitism and pious myth? Or is there a richer reality to this talk of ontological change and indelible character? Let me suggest seven respects in which this man, our son and brother, will be different from today, so different that we will call him Father…
Today’s will not be the first ontological change effected sacramentally in our ordinand: it will in fact be his fourth. Baptism, Confirmation and Diaconate already made him a Child of God, Temple of the Holy Spirit, Servant of the Altar, Word and Charity. Today’s change builds on those three transformations by God’s grace.
Secondly, the Scriptures say priests are taken from among the people and set apart from their fellows. As baptism calls the faithful out of the rest of humanity to be “reborn” as “a new creation”, so this sacrament calls some of them to further renewal. The recent popes have warned against secularising priests and clericalising the laity: they have different parts to play. “Behold, I am doing a new thing” with you, God says to our ordinand today.[3]
Thirdly, this man is to be set apart from his fellows for the sake of his fellows, a shepherd for the sheep, a mediator to represent them before God. So, it’s a change of relationship captured by our title ‘Father’ and about “humble and gentle, patient and forbearing” service, as Paul says (Eph 4:1-13), not higher status, serving rather than being served.[4]
Our Blessed Mother stands today as an example of this. Rather than taking a break to digest her cosmos-shaking news, she wastes no time in hurrying to cousin Elizabeth’s side to assist her, eliciting backflips of celebration by the foetal Baptist in her womb! (Lk 1:39-56)
“To each of us Christ has apportioned a particular grace for some work of service”, Paul says today (Eph 4:1-7,11-13). What is the particular service of his fellows for which the character conferred at Ordination will fit or ‘order’ our new priest? The Church draws upon the biblical imagery of priest, head, shepherd and bridegroom to elaborate on this service.[5] Tai will now share in a new way in Christ’s munera of teaching, sanctifying and governing. And from Our Lady of the Visitation, he will learn the urgency of sharing the good news, monstrance-like bringing the Real Presence of the Son of God to those who most need Him.
Fifthly, the character conferred at ordination conforms the ordained to Christ in a new way, so he might act in persona Christi capitis, in the person of Christ the head: effecting the Eucharistic consecration, absolving sins and anointing the sick. Aquinas characterises this as becoming an instrument, mediator or conduit of Christ’s graces, deputed to act in His place and according to His will, not our own. Ordinary instruments are themselves unchanged over time, except that they gradually wear out; but the more Tai fulfils his calling, the more he will become like his Manufacturer and be inextricably bound to Him.
Again, unlike a job or title, priesthood is 24/7 and for life, even into eternity. A priest never stops being a priest. I’ve heard a few priests say they can’t wait to escape their priesthood and get on with their ‘real life’. That strikes me as confused, even tragic. Priesthood is the priest’s life, his God-given way of being human and Christian. Retired, holidaying, or sleeping priests are still priests; even so-called ‘laicised’ priests can still give sacraments in emergencies.
Seventh and finally, as the sacraments of initiation incorporate a person into Christ’s body the Church, so ordination incorporates him into the body of priests, the Presbyterate.[6] Tai will now be transformed with superpowers not just for some unique service, but as part of a team of the 400,000 priest-presbyters sanctifying our world, 183 of them incardinated in our archdiocese.
Well, that’s seven dimensions of the ontological change about to take place: more than enough to be getting on with! Yet strangely, like the bread and wine after the consecration at Mass, Tai will look much the same as he did before. Perhaps that’s a mercy: we’d rather he didn’t go big and green like the Hulk. But his metamorphosis will be just as mysterious. Many times in the years ahead, he and his people will experience things that can only be explained by the grace of today’s sacrament, working itself out through him.[7]
My son, just as no two Marvel superheroes have the same origin story and experiences, so you come with your own. You heard the priestly calling at a tender age, living as a five-year-old in a remote Vietnamese village with your heroic priest-uncle and mentor, Fr Anthony Nguyen, and your aunty Phuong who taught you your prayers. They taught you, like Eli taught the boy Samuel, to say “Here I am Lord: I come to do your will!” (1Sam ch. 3) Even then, your superhero was not Superman or the Hulk but Jesus.
Yet your childhood desire to be a priest waned and, while studying IT at university in Hanoi, you contemplated marriage and a worldly career. It was another priest’s words about the importance of the encounter with Christ in Sacramental Confession that reawakened your sense of priestly calling.
You joined the local seminary, only to hear another call, this time to serve God’s flock in a faraway land. An encounter with the then-Father Danny Meagher provoked you to think that the vineyard to which you were called might be in Sydney! Your journey through 13 years of discernment and formation may have felt labyrinthine at times, especially when you first had to study Western philosophy in English: that’s why I decided to preach to you on Metaphysics today! You were sustained through thick and thin by the example of young Samuel responding to the divine voice “Here I am Lord, I come to do your will!” You have responded like Our Lady with her “Fiat: let what you say be done with me”, and by her counsel at Cana “Do whatever Jesus tells you”.
And so, dear brother, God will soon pour out on you the graces for a spiritual superhero. He will leave an indelible seal on your soul, tasking you with being a priest of Jesus Christ forever. Embrace this mysterious transformation with humility and gratitude, allowing Christ so profoundly to reshape your being that those you serve will encounter Him in you, as did Elizabeth and John when meeting Mary. May your soul, like hers, magnify the Lord and your spirit rejoice in God your Saviour for evermore (Lk 1:39-56).
Word of Thanks after the Mass of Ordination to the Priesthood of Fr Tai Pham
I echo Fr Tai’s words of thanks to all who have contributed to this beautiful liturgy. On our altar today was a reliquary of the six Dominican bishops who were the first canonised Martyrs of Vietnam. Tai comes, in fact, from a nation of martyrs, a people of deep and heroic faith. The blood of martyrs is, of course, the seed of faith. When the communists drove so many of them out of their homeland after the Fall of Saigon, they could not have foreseen how the seed of martyrs would be spread throughout the world. In fact, those who came to us from Vietnam have been like a blood transfusion—a Precious Blood transfusion—for the Church in Australia and elsewhere and we are very grateful to have received them. To all the Vietnamese-Australians here today, the Vietnamese-Vietnamese, and the other Australian well-wishers, thank you for your participation and congratulations on your new priest. Congratulation Father Tai Pham.
[1] Magisterial sources for this proposition include:
- Council of Florence, Bull of Union with the Armenians (1439) [DS 1313]: “Three of the sacraments, namely baptism, confirmation and orders, imprint indelibly on the soul a character, that is a kind of stamp which distinguishes it from the rest. Hence they are not repeated in the same person.”
- Council of Trent, Decree on the True and Catholic Doctrine concerning the Sacrament of Order (1563) [DS 1609, 1763-1778], Ch. IV “Forasmuch as in the sacrament of Order, as also in Baptism and Confirmation, a character is imprinted, which can neither be effaced nor taken away, the holy Synod with reason condemns the opinion of those, who assert that the priests of the New Testament have only a temporary power; and that those who have once been rightly ordained, can again become laymen.” Canon IV: “If anyone says that, by sacred ordination… a character is not imprinted… or that he who has once been a priest can again become a layman, let him be anathema.”
- Vatican Council II, Lumen Gentium: Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (1964), 10: “Though they differ from one another in essence and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are nonetheless interrelated… The ministerial priest, by the sacred power he enjoys, teaches and rules the priestly people; acting in the person of Christ, he makes present the Eucharistic sacrifice…”; cf. 21, 28 & 29.
- Vatican Council II, Presbyterorum Ordinis: Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests (1965) 2: “The priesthood… is conferred by that special sacrament [of Orders]; through it priests, by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are signed with a special character and are conformed to Christ the Priest in such a way that they can act in the person of Christ the Head.”
- Code of Canon Law (1983) can. 290: “Once validly received, sacred ordination never becomes invalid.”
- Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992)1582: “On the Effects of the Sacrament of Holy Orders: The indelible character. As in the case of Baptism and Confirmation this share in Christ’s office is granted once for all. The sacrament of Holy Orders, like the other two, confers an indelible spiritual character and cannot be repeated or conferred temporarily.” CCC 1583: “It is true that someone validly ordained can, for grave reasons, be discharged from the obligations and functions linked to ordination, or can be forbidden to exercise them; but he cannot become a layman again in the strict sense, because the character imprinted by ordination is forever. The vocation and mission received on the day of his ordination mark him permanently.”
- Congregation for the Clergy, Directory on the Ministry and Life of Priests (1994) 5: “The grace and the indelible character conferred with the sacramental unction of the Holy Spirit, place the priest in personal relation with the Trinity”. DMLP 6: “The faithful who, maintaining their common priesthood, are chosen and become part of the ministerial priesthood are granted an indelible participation in the one and only priesthood of Christ. This is a participation in the public dimension of mediation and authority regarding the sanctification, teaching and guidance of all the People of God. On the one hand, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are necessarily ordered one for the other because each in its own way participates in the only priesthood of Christ and, on the other hand, they are essentially different.”
- St John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis: Apostolic Exhortation on the Formation of Priests Today (1992) 11-18.
- Benedict XVI, Omnium in Mentem: Motu Proprio Amending the Canon Law on Holy Orders, 26 October 2009.
Aquinas on the character conferred at Baptism: Summa Theologiae IIIa q. 63, a. 1, ad 1 & 2; a. 2, co.; a. 3, co; a. 5, co.; on the character conferred at Ordination: STh IIIa q. 63, a. 1, co.; a. 6, co.; q. 65, a. 3; Supp q. 34, a. 2, co.
[2] E.g. in various submissions to and statement’s by Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse ( Final Report, 2017); Douglas McManaman, ‘The myth of the ontological superiority of the priest’ Where Peter Is 29 February 2024 https://wherepeteris.com/the-myth-of-the-ontological-superiority-of-the-priest/; Connor Gwin, ‘Never stop improving and the myth of ontological change,’ Mockingbird 6 August 2018; Gabrielle Hunt et al., ‘The prevalence of child sexual abuse perpetrated by leaders or other adults in religious organizations in Australia,’ Child Abuse & Neglect 155 (2024) and sources therein.
[3] Priests as “selected out” or “set apart”: Heb 5:1-10. Christians being “reborn”, “a new creation”, “a new man”: Jn 1:13; 3:3; 2Cor 3:18; 5:17-21; Rom 6:1-23; Gal 2:20; 6:15; Col 2:2:12; 3:9-10; Eph 4:22-24; Tit 3:5; 1Pet 1:3; 3:18-22; 1Jn 3:9; 5:18; cf. CCC 537; 628; 1214; 1265; 1999; 2852. “Behold, I am doing a new thing”: Isa 43:18-19; 65:17-25; Ezek 11:19; 36:25-27; Rev 21:5. On not secularizing the priesthood or clericalizing the laity: Vatican Council II, Lumen Gentium 10; Presbyterorum Ordinis 2; St John Paul II, General Audience, 31 March 1993; St John Paul II, Address to the Bishops of Antilles, 19 May 2002; Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Brazilian Bishops, 17 September 2009; John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis 3, 11-18; Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium: Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel Today (2013) 102; Address to Plenary of Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, 16 November 2019; Address to Conference “Pastors and Lay Faithful Called to Go Forward Together”, 16 February 2023.
[4] Shepherds for the sake of the sheep, mediators to represent them before God: Jn 21:15-17; Acts 20:17-36; Heb 5:1-10. We must come to serve, not to be served: Mt 20:25-28; 23:11; Mk 10:45; Lk 9:48; Jn 13:1-7 etc.
[5] Cf. Romanus Cessario OP, “Aquinas on the priest: Sacramental realism and the indispensable and irreplaceable vocation of the priest,” Nova et vetera 8(1) (2010): 1-15; Stephen McCormack, “The configuration of the sacramental character,” The Thomist 7(4) (Oct 1944): 458-491.
[6] Vatican II, Presbyterorum Ordinis 3; John Paul II, Christifideles Laici: Apostolic Exhortation on the Vocation of the Lay Faithful (1988) 51; Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium: Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World (2013) 104; P.J. Cullinane, ‘Character and ontological change in relation to ordination,’ Catholic Diocese of Palmerston North 15 July 2020 https://pndiocese.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020-07-15-REGARDING-THE-TERM-ONTOLOGICAL.pdf.
[7] See John Miller, ‘On the meaning of an ontological change,’ https://www.catholicdoors.com/faq/1000/qu1329.htm.
INTRODUCTION TO THE MASS OF ORDINATION TO THE PRIESTHOOD OF REV. MR TAI PHAM + FEAST OF THE VISITATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY – ST MARY’S BASILICA, SYDNEY, 31 MAY 2025
Welcome to the Solemn Mass of Priestly Ordination of Tai Pham. As we gather in joy on the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in this cathedral dedicated to her, we recall the urgency with which she went to share the Good News with her cousin Elizabeth and to assist her in her need—an example to our ordinand and to us all.
I acknowledge the presence of Bishops Richard Umbers, Tony Percy and Terry Brady; Sydney Vicar General Fr Sam Lynch along with Broken Bay Vicar General Fr David Ranson; Director of Vocations Fr Daniele Russo; vicars and deans.
From the seminary of the Good Shepherd, I welcome Rector Fr Michael de Stoop, with his staff; from the Catholic Institute of Sydney, the President, Professor Hayden Ramsay, and faculty; and from Redemptoris Mater Seminary, the Rector Fr Eric Skruzny, with his staff.
I also salute the priests of Sydney and beyond, who rejoice to welcome a new brother into their ranks. Also, our beloved seminarians, who today see the light at the end of their own formation tunnels.
I am delighted to welcome Tai’s Mum and Dad, Truong and Trung, who have journeyed from Vietnam to be with us; his siblings Tessie, Tung and Trong, along with their spouses and children from Melbourne; his uncle Thuoc from the US; and cousins from everywhere!
A special mention to Fr Minh, a priest from Vietnam and mentor to Tai; classmates and friends, Fr Thien and Fr Anthony; as well as parishioners from the parishes in which he has served.
To our candidate Tai especially, and to everyone present on this happy day, a very warm welcome to you all!
