Pray for Priests

When I preach at a wedding, I don’t necessarily aim my message at the bride and groom because they are usually so nervous that they don’t hear a word I say. Instead, I try to address the married couples in the congregation witnessing the vows of fidelity and love of a newly-married couple. I have to assume that every wedding represents an opportunity for a married couple to renew the vows of their own wedding day.
 
It is the same for priests when they participate in an ordination of new priests as I did two weeks ago when Cardinal O’Malley ordained seven new priests for the Archdiocese of Boston. As I witnessed the beautiful, ancient ritual of ordination, it was a graced opportunity for me to renew the promises I made forty-two years ago as Cardinal Medeiros ordained me as one of sixteen new priests. I remember vividly the long line of hundreds of priests who passed before me as I knelt on the step of the sanctuary of the Cathedral. Right after Cardinal Medeiros imposed his hands upon our heads to pass on the gift of priesthood, each of those priests did the same. Feeling their prayerful placement of their open palms upon my head, I could feel the sharing of the gift of ordination to priesthood that goes back two thousand years to the earliest years of the Church as the Apostles passed on the sacred gift of the priesthood to the next generation of priests. The Apostles had received this gift themselves from Jesus during the Last Supper on the night before he died. They were commissioned to take the same ordinary elements of bread and wine in their hands and bless them according to the example of Jesus so that they might become His own Body and Blood of Christ in the celebration of the Eucharist that is the source and summit of the life of the Church.
 
As I imposed hands on the seven priests ordained this year, I took a special joy in sharing the gift of priesthood with a young man to whom I was privileged to offer First Holy Communion twenty-one years ago at Saint Patrick Parish, Stoneham. I traveled to Stoneham the next day with Father Joe to concelebrate the First Mass of Father Michael Rora at his home parish. What a gift for me to receive from the anointed hands of this newly-ordained priest the same Body of Christ I had presented to him on his First Communion Day!
 
Father Michael Rora, took up his first assignment as a priest last Friday at a three parish collaborative of Saint Peter Parish and Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Parish of Plymouth and Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, Carver. Please pray for Father Michael and the other newly-ordained priests who take up Christ’s priestly ministry at a time of great challenge and opportunity for the Church in Boston.

I would ask you to pray as well for another young man from Saint Patrick Parish, Stoneham who has just completed his first year of formation for priesthood at Saint John’s Seminary. Paul Born will hopefully be ordained in five years. I will, God willing, rejoice in his ordination to priesthood once again as one to whom I was privileged to offer First Holy Communion. Father Michael Rora and Paul Born trace the first stirrings of their call to priesthood to their mission trips to Peru with the Youth Ministry Group at Saint Patrick Parish. Please pray that some of the young people of Saint Martha Parish and Saint Mary Parish may feel that same stirring of a call to priesthood or church ministry. I hope I will someday share in the Ordination and First Mass of one of the young people from our parishes. Maybe it will be Gavin Weiblen who was the first baby I baptized at Mass at Saint Mary’s Church five years ago. I look forward to celebrating his first communion in a few years.
 
Please pray that more young people will respond to Christ's call to priesthood for the Archdiocese. This priest is getting older and is eager to welcome younger brothers to share the priestly ministry of Jesus, the Great High Priest.