APRIL 29, 2007

On Saturday of this week, May 5, I will celebrate the 34th anniversary of my ordination to priesthood for the Diocese of Pittsburgh. For some reason, we take special note of anniversaries that are multiples of 5, as though they are more meaningful than 21, or 17, or 34 or any other number. This mystifies me a little, since one of the meditations that was offered us in seminary was that if a priest celebrates just one Mass, he has justified all his years of training and God's call to him. I do not want to review my priesthood quantatively: how many Masses, baptisms, weddings, homilies, etc. are represented by 34 years of service. Nor do I have the presumption to evaluate the effectiveness or quality of this past 34 years. Only God knows how well I have served Him and His people, and I don't expect Him to tell me till I have breathed my last on this earth. Instead, I went "back to the roots" and surfaced some quotes that were formative for me at the time I was ordained. The question is whether I have measured up to them.

On my holy card distributed at that time appeared the following quote from Teilhard de Chardin: "To the full extent of my power, because I am a priest, I wish from now on to be the first to become conscious of all that the world loves, pursues and suffers; I want to be the first to weep, to sympathize and to suffer; the first to unfold and sacrifice myself to become more widely human and more nobly of the earth than any of the world’s servants."

On my First Mass program was printed this quote from Polycarp Sherwood, OSB:
"The specific role of the priest is to make the Paschal Mystery come alive in himself, in the people of God, by the ministry of the Word and of sacrament, and by what subsidiary means his personal capacity may suggest. To this he is commissioned in fellowship with others and only in fellowship with others it is fully operative. In fellowship with others: the bishop, fellow presbyters, and the people of God."

In my remarks at my First Mass, I quoted the following definition by Sydney Harris:
"An idealist believes that the short run doesn’t count; a cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter; a realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run. (Historically speaking, Jesus was the supreme realist.)"

In my wallet at the ordination ceremony were these words of Dag Hammarskjold:
"Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others can receive your orders without being humiliated."

These were the landmarks I set my sights on when my priesthood began. I just pray that I am closer to them now than I was then, and will be even closer as the years go on than I am now.

Pray for me. And for my classmates. We will be celebrating Mass Wednesday in the Strip District, then having dinner at a restaurant there , and finish up by gathering in the St. Stanislaus rectory’s upper room to pray over the city (and maybe have an after dinner libation.) Ad multos annos!