Priestly character

I came across this festschrift that I wrote many years ago in honor of a highly esteemed diocesan vocation director I had the privilege of collaborating with. It seemed like a fitting way to honor the work of priestly formation as I begin my new work at Notre Dame Seminary…

            Is it not eminently true that the kind of men the Church needs in its ordained ministry are those who know themselves well – their dignity, their potential for greatness, their fragility – and, in that light, know the living God who has captured their attention in the Voice they hear beckoning them: “Follow me”?  Your work of formation has allowed these men to cultivate, first and foremost, an interior life, human and divine, from which all apostolic fruitfulness flows.  You allow them to see more clearly that action flows from being, not being from action.  Who they become is far more crucial than what they will do.  You allow them to see in vivid action that their ministry must be for the little ones, the poor of Yahweh, with whom they must identify themselves.  You allow them to see that in the smallest details of their humanity lie the greatest epiphanies of divinity.  You allow them to see that manliness lives in symbiosis with the Marian heart, receptive to the fruitful seeds of the eternal Word; that Yahweh roars his word from Zion and surrenders his spirit on Golgotha.  You allow them to see in the priest the nurturing of a mother and the strong hand of a father.  You allow them to see that the folly of humanity does not thwart the work of God, but rather permits it to shine more clearly as God’s redeeming work.  You allow them to see these things, and so much more.  But I felt compelled to say these things as a small token of gratitude to you for this service you render to the Church, of which I am privileged to be a small part.

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