On January 9, 2010, Br. Ezra was ordained to the diaconate. This is the inagural homily that he preached to the community.

As the priest, so the people; as the shepherd, so the sheep. Many spiritual authors tell us that this is a general rule in the life of the Church: if a priest is a fervent man of God, he can help to make his people fervent, but if he is a cold fish, his people will almost invariably become wicked. This is because, as Fr. Joseph Fox likes to say, “Nemo dat quod non got”— if you don’t have it, you can’t give it. When we look to the lives of notable saints and sinners, we can easily find examples of the spiritual principle that good begets good and bad begets worse. Many of St. Dominic’s early followers have been recognized for their holiness, including Sts. Hyacinth and Peter Martyr and Bl. Jordan of Saxony, and on the nuns’ side, Bls. Cecelia, Diana, and Amata. St. Dominic himself came from a holy mother. Similarly, notoriously wicked families are often wicked for generations, as is well-attested in films about the Mafia. So much for examples of the more famous, or infamous as it were, — those on the extreme ends of virtue and vice. But what are we to make of people more like us, those who seem to be neither heroically virtuous nor incorrigibly evil? The priest Eli, presented to us in 1 Samuel chapters 1-4, provides a clue.

When we look at Eli’s work in relation Samuel, there can be little doubt that the older priest was what we could call a “good, solid man.” The reading from the lectionary contains hints as to his virtue. Recall that the narrative tells us that Samuel came to him early in the morning asking for advice. The old man was sleeping and this earnest whippersnapper woke him up. It could be that Eli slept poorly, often got up at night, and, like most of us, didn’t enjoy having his sleep disturbed. But he betrays no grumpiness despite what seemed to be a false alarm: his answer was full of patience: “I did not call you, my son. Go back to sleep.” Eli was a sort of spiritual father to Samuel and so he treated the young man gently.

As a priest and spiritual father, Eli not only housed Samuel and taught him how to perform the ceremonies in the temple, he also guided his interior life. The second time Samuel came to Eli, saying, “Here I am, you called me,” Eli understood that it was the Lord calling Samuel. So he taught the youth how to respond to the good Lord’s call: “if you are called, reply, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” This is a prophet’s prayer; we find similar phrases in the mouths of Isaiah and Daniel. Eli’s prayer is one of the great prayers of the Bible, along with “Let it be done unto me according to your word,” and, “Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.”

So Eli taught Samuel patience and gentleness, how to listen for the Lord, how to pray, how to be a priest and a prophet. If all we knew about Eli was what the lectionary editors gave us, we could conclude that he was a very good man. But here, as in many places, the editors leave out something very important. You see, in the original Scriptural account, Samuel’s growth in holiness under Eli is intertwined with a narrative about the decline and fall of Eli’s biological sons. We are supposed to read the story Samuel in tandem with the story of Hophni and Phinehas.

The first thing we learn about Hophni and Phinehas is that they were “sons of Belial,” that is, sons of lawlessness, sons of wickedness. “They did not know the Lord,” the text says. I could count at least three grave sins of these sons of Eli: they violated the laws about sacrificial offerings, they forcibly stole from the people of God, and they fornicated with women who helped at the temple. “Wherefore,” we are told, “the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord.”

Directly after hearing about the wickedness of Eli’s physical progeny, the scene cuts back to Samuel. He “ministered before the Lord,” Scripture reports. In contrast, Hophni and Phinehas did not serve the Lord. Even when corrected for their sins, they had no fear of God — they were unrepentant. Meanwhile, back to Samuel: like Jesus after him, he “continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and with men.”

Thus, from the good priest Eli came forth Samuel as well as Hophni and Phinehas — a holy prophet of the Lord and two sons of lawlessness. How could this be? How could a tree bear both good and bad fruit? It seems that Eli had in himself a stalemate of virtue and vice. Scripture indicates that some of Eli’s strengths were also the principles of his weaknesses. If he was gentle with his spiritual son, he was too gentle on his physical children: his frail correction had no effect. And again, if Eli was generous toward Samuel, he was too indulgent toward his children, which ultimately means that he was too indulgent with himself. The Lord condemned Eli, saying, “you honor your sons above me.”

Here we come to the besetting sin of Eli: not an ostentatious, in-your-face iniquity as that of Hophni and Phinehas, but a weak indulgence towards what he loved the most. Eli’s person is a warning to all who strive to serve God. It may be that Eli died a “good man,” but he nevertheless placed creatures before the Creator. From his lackluster example he teaches, first, that we must aim at heroic sanctity: “Be holy as I am holy,” the Lord repeatedly commands us. It was insufficient that Eli not only aimed at performing his duties and with Samuel went beyond the call of duty, for Eli was misguided in principle: he honored Hophni and Phinehas above God. Second, Eli teaches us that holiness starts at home or it does not start at all. Eli loved his children excessively, and thereby loved God the less. Finally, Eli teaches us that we cannot judge our virtue based on how well we help others or our external successes. Eli’s virtue and years of service as a priest, as culminating in his spiritual fatherhood toward Samuel, did not outweigh the fact that he had a principle of putting God second. It might be said of Eli that he helped others but he did not sufficiently help himself with God’s grace. Because of this, God cursed his household in perpetuity and allowed his sons to die on the same day, as we will find out tomorrow.

What a contrast Eli is to those saints who constantly abide in Christ, and in whom Christ abides! They daily die to themselves and, as Bl. Jordan said of St. Dominic, they keep God’s precepts, zealously observe His counsels, serve the Creator with all their faculties and light up the world by their blameless life. Those who love everything and everyone in Christ, with Christ, and for Christ, realize that by themselves they can do nothing, but when united to the true vine from root to branch, they bear much fruit unto life everlasting.