Kansas City Catholic has some wonderful photos of the Solemn Pontifical Mass and Ceremonies of Public Profession and Investiture of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles where 11 nuns made public profession.
The USCCB posted a large list of answers from the Priesthood Ordination Class of 2007 to the question Some of Our Ordinands Respond to the Question: “People would be surprised to know that I…” which is rather fun to read. Some of my favorites were:
…was named a vice-president at an advertising agency just as I finally realized that my true vocation was to the priesthood…Once I stopped resisting God’s will for me and began to trust, I found peace. I have never been happier.
…never really thought that I was called to be a priest…[I] wanted to work in law and politics…Through prayer and a devotion to the Eucharist, I realized that I had to set aside my own good intentioned plans for life, and follow God’s promptings.
…was not sure if I was going to remain Catholic when I first entered college seminary…after Theology 101, Introduction to the Catechism, spending time in Adoration, and a homily on John 6, I then KNEW that the Catholic Church was the true Church and that I could never leave Her.
…came to the United States for a vacation, to have a good time. God’s sense of humor is so great that He only changed one letter so that vacation turned out to be a vocation; and the best time of my life is yet to come – as His priest!
And one of which I wonder the connection.
…never thought about seriously about being a priest until my first semester at Harvard.
And here is a priest Tom at Disputations would love.
…was an olympic hopeful in the sport of Curling.
STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE — It was during the chanting of the litany of saints — 23 minutes of kneeling on the marble floor of St. Patrick’s Cathedral — when the Rev. Brendan Gormley asked God to help him and his sore knees make it through.
"That’s when I realized that’s what the priesthood will be," the Grant City native and former marathon runner said afterward. "I’ll be relying on God’s grace."
Father Gormley, 43, and the Rev. Kevin Malick, 27, formerly of New Springville, were among 14 men ordained by Cardinal Edward Egan yesterday morning.
Seven priests were ordained for the Archdiocese of New York; the other seven were ordained for the Community of the Friars of the Renewal, a Franciscan order celebrating its 20th anniversary.
"Our young men are commissioned, mandated, assigned, appointed the way St. Peter was, as a witness to proclaim the Gospel," the cardinal said during the three-hour mass and ordination ceremony.
It is rather interesting that half of the priests ordained in the Diocese of New York were part of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. The only advertising they have is of course themselves. It seems doubtful that anybody entering this order is under the illusion that it is something other than a sacrificial life given for others. Though living of sacrificial life of holiness is of course a good reminder to all of us.
Today is world day of prayer for vocations. We have long believed that the best advertisement for vocations are happy religious.
Go to Live + Jesus for just some examples of this.
Though I would go farther and say the best advertisement for vocations is joyous Catholics, whether they be ordained, consecrated, or of the laity.
VATICAN CITY (AP) – Pope Benedict XVI ordained 22 men on Sunday in St. Peter’s Basilica, including the son of the man who has been the Vatican’s official photographer for decades.
Juan Carlos Mari was ordained as a member of the Legionaries of Christ, a conservative religious order, the order said. His father Arturo has been taking photographs of pontiffs on pilgrimages and during ceremonies for decades for the Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. The elder Mari was among the faithful in the pews on Sunday.
Benedict called for prayers for the new priests to persevere in their ministry and remain faithful.
He also asked for prayers for more vocations for the priesthood. The Catholic Church has seen candidates for the priesthood decline in parts of the West, and far-flung parishes in developing countries are sometimes short of priests.
Papal Message for Day of Prayer for Vocations "Consecrated Life Is at the Service of This Communion"
From Bishop Vasa’s latest letter.
…There is no doubt in my mind that some of the young men in this class have considered and are considering a possible vocation to the priesthood as an option for them. Whether their initial hearing of that gentle call will ultimately result in a definitive affirmative response depends upon parental support, pastoral encouragement and prayers; lots and lots of prayers.
Vocations do come from families but vocations also come from Parishes. It often happens that several vocations will come from the same Parish several years in a row. It often happens that small rural Parishes produce three of four priestly vocations in a span of as many years. It often happens that a number of religious vocations will spring from the families of one Parish. It is, in part, a mystery of God’s grace but it is also a sign that, in those Parishes where vocations are prayed for, esteemed and actively encouraged young men are more likely to hear and heed the Lord’s invitation to be priests and young women are more likely to hear and heed the Lord’s invitation to serve as Religious. The promotion of vocations to the priesthood and religious life needs to be a routine activity of every Parish, a routine activity of every parishioner.
….Like it or not, full-service parishes will soon perish.
All 231 parishes in the Cleveland Diocese will soon change. The diocese will organize all parishes into groups that will share resources and priests.
I can see the bishop flipping through a thesaurus to find the right word to describe what he will do with the churches to combat the dwindling priesthood.
Hmm. Let’s see . . . Reorganize. Reconfigure. Reconstitute. Merge. Consolidate. Collaborate. Cluster.
That’s it.
Cluster sounds much better than Share A Priest, which is what clustering amounts to. It also sounds better than closing churches, which is bound to happen next.
We should’ve seen it coming. The trend has swept the nation as fewer men join the priesthood and more priests die and retire.
I still remember the letter from the bishop more than a decade ago addressing the shortage of priests. Our pastor read the letter and said we were to have meetings and talk about how to get along with fewer priests.
When he told us we were not allowed, however, to discuss the issue of married priests or women priests, you could feel a breeze as heads shook collectively in disgust.
We all knew there was a solution. Actually two of them:
Women priests.
Married priests.
End of shortage.
Unfortunately, every pope is deaf in one ear and can’t hear out of the other when it comes to ordaining women and married clergy.
Ryan Duns, SJ gives a fair critique of this article by Regina Brett of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
What always gets me about articles like this where the answer to any priesthood shortage is always married priests and priestesses. They never ask the obvious questions and seem to see this problem without addressing the past. Just exactly how did the Catholic Church continue to grow and be around for 2,000 years without priestesses and married priests in the Latin Rite? They never notice that this is a modern problem. There were no stories about a vocations crunch forty years ago, but now there are more and more of them. They also never want to analyze just what it is in our culture that is suppressing people from responding to their vocations to the priesthood or the religious life. In fact I can’t recall one of these articles ever talking about the shrinking number of nuns and brothers in the religious life. If is always focused just on priests and for them the lack of access to the sacraments. The contemplative orders that are holding up the Church in prayer – and their declining numbers does not seem to be a problem for them. In fact prayer just never seems part of their vocations strategy. Praying to the Lord of the Harvest to send workers in the vineyard to them is an outdated strategy regardless of the fact that this was the vocations strategy in the Gospels.
There are surely many factors in the suppression of the response to vocations. A society that focuses on pleasure and extreme selfishness is not exactly one that encourages a total giving of yourself to others and to the greater glory of the Church. Smaller families also contribute to the problem. Just how many of the great saints were the first or second born? Somehow we think we can both cut the number of children and at the same time provide the numbers of people in the priesthood in religious life as before. Isn’t it less likely that Catholic parents of a small family are going to encourage vocations in the first place? Most of us parents have all kinds of plans for the successful career of our children and the idea of losing access to them in a convent or to the busy life of a priest doesn’t fit most of our agendas. Few of us are like Louis Martin , father of St. Terese, who are willing to lose all their children to religious life. Relativism and modernism are certainly factors involved in this, yet their answers always seem to involve more relativism and modernism. Fighting viruses with dead viruses works in some cases, but is there a dead strain of relativism to fight relativism with? The vaccine to relativism is of course proclaiming and living the truth in the first place and this is a vaccine we can all produce.
While there are certainly factors that have lead to this decrease this does not mean we throw our hands in the air and just complain about these root causes. Our job is to pray for those who have vocations for the priesthood and religious life to respond with generosity and faithfulness. To encourage those we meet to discern whether they have these specific vocations. To fully live the Gospel and to not become a stumbling block to those who have been called.
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP is a great preacher on vocations and recently on this topic preached.
The witness of the lay faithful is needed now more than ever! If the faith is to center our vocation efforts, then we need daily witnesses, daily teachers, and the everyday faithful. That’s you, folks! Ask one young man this week to consider the priesthood. Just one. Tell him he is needed. With Christ on board, put your nets into deep water and pull for all you’re worth. And do not be afraid! They are waiting to hear your word of encouragement, your invitation. Trust me! They are waiting to be caught. Fish long and hard and fish faithfully. But whatever you do: FISH!
A reader sent me this story from Fr Greg Shaffer.
As you may or may not know, we started a basketball team of Washington priests and seminarians two years ago called “DC ‘Hood” (short for DC priesthood). We have played 11 games against 8 different parish teams of coaches, teachers, and teens. Thanks be to God, it has been growing and growing, averaging about 200 fans a game. The games have been great nights of fun for families while promoting vocations.
The Catholic Standard wrote an article about DC ‘Hood a few months ago. The sales manager of the Washington Wizards read the article and generously called the Archdiocese to see if DC ‘Hood ever wanted to play at the Verizon Center after a Wizards game. Umm, yeah! Thanks, Wizards!!
So DC ‘Hood will be playing at the Verizon Center (against CYO coaches after the Wizards 3:30 pm game versus the Chicago Bulls) on Sun., April 15. After our game, there will a game b/w CYO 11th and 12th grade co-ed all-stars; the winners of the two (16 minute) games will play in a “championship” game.
This event is intended to a) promote vocations, and b) raise funds for the CYO / OYM (Catholic Youth Organization/Office of Youth Ministry). We are helping CYO to sell tickets to the Wizards game; they receive a generous portion of the proceeds.
I personally will be purchasing a large amount of tickets the week of Feb. 11. Can you help me? The tickets are $ 25 (Upper Level B), $30 (Upper Level A), and $85 (Lower Level). Buying two $25 tickets, for example, would help greatly! Even if you’re not able or interested in going, can you make a donation to our cause? The more tickets we sell, the more we promote the priesthood and raise funds for our youth.
You can order tickets online at www.verizoncenter.com/cyo or, for donations only, mail a check to me directly at: Fr. Greg Shaffer, St. Andrew Apostle parish, 11600 Kemp Mill Rd., Silver Spring, MD 20902 (I will give your tickets to kids in the school or parish).
CANTON Sister Mary Ishmael of the Eucharist grew up in Bankston, Iowa, just seven miles from what would become the "Field of Dreams."
Growing up in that idyllic Midwestern community, she did all the things she was expected to do. A devout Catholic, she married at 20, became a mother of three, and enjoyed a career as a registered nurse.
But life rarely goes according to plan. After 12 years of marriage, her husband sought a divorce, leaving her to raise their three sons as a single mother and the first member of her family to be divorced.
For 35 years, she devoted herself to nursing; then, she said, God informed her that he had another plan in mind.
HEARD THE WORDS
Sister Ishmael said she was engaged in adoration of the Eucharist in 2001 when, "I heard the words, ‘I want you to be my bride.’ There was a definite (prompting) from the Holy Spirit that½ God was calling me to be his bride. My immediate ‘yes’ was a surprise."
…At 10:30 a.m. Friday, Sister Ishmael, 55, will undertake her solemn profession as a member of the Order of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration at the Sancta Clara Monastery Church at 4200 Market Ave. N.
…Sister Ishmael describes her feelings about her decision as a "deep and abiding" joy.
"I had a full life. I was happy with what I was doing," she said. "When God gives the call, he also gives that exuberant joy that makes you want to follow him.
"I am so deeply joyful. The Lord has given me a lot of joy this past year. … I’m coming to know the beauty of the Lord and the depth of his beauty."
Sister Ishmael said that prior to seeking a religious order, Clares, she consulted with a spiritual adviser. Her adviser recommended that she seek a monastery that emphasizes Eucharistic adoration, wears habits and is unified with the pope.
"I asked him to pray for me. For 10 years, I had never said anything to him about being a nun," she said with a smile. "Six months later, I was here.
…beacons of light
Sister Ishmael said the flip side of an article given to her on the Holy Trinity, bore the name and phone number of a nun who recommended that she contact Sancta Clara Monastery.
"God led me to the Poor Clares," she said, noting that many religious orders don’t take middle-aged women.
Upon arriving at a religious order, a woman undergoes several steps to make certain her decision is right, not only for her, but for the order. They include aspirant, postulancy, novitiate, or "junior professed" and the final profession.
"In the church, we (monastics) are called to be the beacons of light in the heart of the Church," Sister Ishmael said. "It is an environment that fosters love. It can’t be contained, it reaches out. It draws people to the church."
Sister Ishmael said each step taken in a faith journey should be accompanied by prayer for spiritual direction.
"Trust in God," she said. "He is never outdone. He will always give you more than you’re expecting."
I just love reading stories like this one.
Though I could totally do without reading stories like this one.
A reader sent me a link to the following article:
Vocations to female contemplative orders in Italy are booming, according to the Italian bishops’ conference.
In 2005, 300 women took their solemn profession of vows, bringing the number of contemplatives in the country to 6,672.
Cardinal Camillo Ruini, president of the Italian bishops’ conference, welcomed the increase at a prayer vigil in St. John Lateran Basilica last October, noting that it is part of a wider trend.
“The number of contemplative religious sisters is growing throughout the world, but — and this is more significant — this is also happening in Europe and in our own Italy, which often seems so hardest hit secularization,” he said.
Others, such as Church statistical expert Brother Giovanni Dalpiaz, a Camadolese monk from Bardolino near Venice, Italy, caution that the trend is only a start.
“It is not good to deceive ourselves that all of the problems have now passed and a new spring has arrived,” he said, pointing out that there have been only incremental increases from 2001 to 2004.
But Brother Giovanni added that the recent increase “is good because it encourages hope that the Lord is still capable of bringing about strong and generous answers to his call.”
Cardinal Franc Rodé, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, told the Register Jan. 13 that Italy is the exception with regards to women religious.
PHILADELPHIA – Put the CD-ROM into the computer and you’re greeted by images of stained glass, heavenly music, and two video screens.
Click on the left screen, and the white-haired bishop of Trenton, N.J., appears, smiling and beckoning. "I welcome you with an open heart as you begin your journey of discernment," Bishop John M. Smith says. Click on the right screen, and you meet the Rev. Mick Lambeth, the diocese’s vocations director. He also makes a plea.
In person, Lambeth jokingly calls himself a "hound for heaven" who will walk right up to any young man in a Catholic high school jacket and ask: "Have you thought of becoming a priest?"
These are anxious times for most of the nation’s 175 Catholic dioceses, where the supply of priests has plummeted 25 percent nationwide over four decades, even as the U.S. Catholic population has swelled by 30 percent. Most are resorting to some combination of mass media, the Internet and software to woo vocations.
In the Philadelphia Archdiocese – where about 20 priests die each year, and about five new priests are ordained – priestly vocations have become a "super priority," according to the Rev. Christopher Rogers, the archdiocese’s vocations director.
This year’s drive to raise awareness "is more ambitious than anything we’ve done in a while," Rogers said last week. There are nearly 1,000 active diocesan and religious-order priests in the archdiocese. In 1990, the archdiocese had about 1,200 such priests.
On Thursday, the archdiocese placed billboards on Interstates 95 and 76 featuring a smiling young man in a Roman collar.
"Some calls are meant to be answered," they read, and invite anyone who feels called – or merely intrigued – to visit the archdiocese’s vocation Web site at www.heedthecall.org.
Their vocation website looks pretty good with lot’s of solid suggestions including Novena prayers and a set of suggested prayers for the prayers of the faithful at Mass. Combined with Eucharistic adoration and the showing of the excellent Fishers of Men video this is pretty solid. Though I think a true vocations program has to be more than a yearly event for a week, but something that needs to be emphasized continuously. The vocations director probably has the best of the ideas by pretty much encouraging any young man he meets about considering if they have a vocation to the priesthood. Advertising campaigns and billboards are fine as they go, but it is the personal encouragement by people who know them that is going to elicit a response for those who have vocations to the priestly or religious life.
