“Whenever the divine favor chooses someone to receive a special grace, or to accept a lofty vocation, God adorns the person chosen with all the gifts of the Spirit needed to fulfill the task at hand.”
- St. Bernardine of Siena
Recently I travelled 215 miles to my alma mater, Mount St. Mary Seminary in Emmitsburg, MD, to make my annual retreat. Founded in 1808, it is our nation’s second oldest and largest Catholic seminary in the United States. There were 50 priests on retreat, 6 of whom were from our Diocese of Pittsburgh. Our retreat master was Fr. Brett A. Brannen, a 50-year-old priest from the Diocese of Savannah, GA, born in New Orleans to a Southern Baptist father and a Catholic mother. He spoke quickly with a southern drawl and kept us on the edge of our seats. He served as Vocations Director for 10 years in his home diocese, as well as Vice Rector of Mount St. Mary, which was the genesis of his book, “To Save 1,000 Souls – A Guide to Discerning a Vocation to Diocesan Priesthood” (Vianney Vocations 2010).
He encouraged us to make the following two resolutions at the onset of the retreat: start doing what Jesus wants us to do, and stop doing something Jesus wants us to stop doing. He asked the Holy Spirit to fill us. And just as we turn our coffee cups over when we go into a restaurant, he encouraged us to turn the coffee cups of our souls over to receive new graces, make new resolutions, and to give Jesus time through prayer.
He encouraged us to follow these seven objections of the retreat:
1. See the big picture by getting away from the daily grind of parish life and daily duties and responsibilities. Give ourselves time to be free from those burdens.
2. Laugh and have fun. Adults only laugh 17 times a day, whereas children laugh over 200 times per day. Humor, levity, and joy is good medicine for the soul.
3. Make time for listening - by making a holy hour, spiritual reading, or reading the Bible. Preaching is the primary duty of the priest and in order to preach well, we must be still and pray. St. John Vianney taught us that praying and preaching go together. We must be quiet men of prayer. People come to God through preaching, thus we must meditate and get into the habit of reading the Gospel for the next day so that when we sleep at night good thoughts go with us and evil is purged. One hour of prayer defines the other 23 hours of a day. A best friend of Jesus wants to come face to face with his presence in the tabernacle in church. Why see Jesus with a remote control when you can go face to face?
4. Offer good stories that are real gems that others can use for inspiration in writing homilies. The week was laced with many gems of the saints and wisdom that gleaned light through the ages.
5. He challenged us to be better priests. Jesus doesn’t call the best to be priests, but expects the best of those he does call. All that happens in life can make us better or bitter — it’s our choice. God orchestrates the good of our lives to bring about our salvation and others’. He challenged us to learn and grow in every assignment that we have been given. The purpose of being a priest is to bring Jesus to people and people to Jesus.
6. Go to confession. The Sacrament of Reconciliation gives us wonderful graces to experience God’s love and forgiveness no matter where we are or what we’ve done. We need to admit sin, confess sin, and let it go — move on! You can’t be a good confessor unless you first become a good penitent. We learn to do right by what we have done wrong. There is nothing worse than a proud priest. Sin makes us humble and a humble priest keeps his eyes fixed on Jesus.
7. Be excited to be priests. If we came tarnished, dulled, or indifferent, we could rekindle the fire and renew the spirit. Keeping enthusiasm up through the toil of the years is not always easy. He had us remember what we thought the priesthood was going to be like, and now, years later, ask whether we have lived up to those ideals and expectations that we once had in discerning and undertaking this noble vocation. At the ordination of a priest, the bishop places his hands over the hands of the ordinandi, and says the words, “May Christ, who has begun this good work in you, bring it to fulfillment.”
Walker Percy, a great Catholic writer said of the parish priest, “A priest is one of the heroes of our modern age.” Priesthood is a lifetime commitment. A priest is called and assigned to remain at the ‘battle station’, to take care of God’s people there on the "front lines" by faithfully fighting for Christ and his people against the onslaught of the world, the flesh and the devil. The priest blesses and strengthens God’s people by preaching, teaching, and the celebration of the sacraments. We live in a modern world that is often filled with violence, hatred, suffering, and death. People desperately need love. We cannot bring Jesus’ love into the world unless we know and believe in that love ourselves.
He encouraged us to put prayer first each day. He says there are morning people and night people. A morning person in prayer is like a rooster – God gets first place. But the night owl prays late at night, giving Jesus the last hour.
Fr. Brannen urged us to offer a rosary one day on the retreat. He asked that we pray for the humility to have an infusion of love for all the priests at the battle station for us in our time and on our course, who conferred on us the divine life of Jesus. We were to pray a rosary and offer each decade for:
1st: The priest who baptized us
2nd: The priest who gave us our First Confession/Communion
3rd: The bishop who confirmed us
4th: The bishop who ordained us
5th: The bishop who will bury us
It made me think as I prayed for these special priests who have graced my own journey of faith and who manned the battle stations.
As we descended on Mary’s mountain, we were coming back home to be refreshed and renewed in the work of ministry. Like St. Paul, we must all endure the hardships for the Gospel’s sake. God gives us different gifts, challenges, assignments. If we have to take a few licks, so be it! Life will soon be over and we must bear witness to the Gospel by being authentic, humble, holy, kind, and faithful priests, seeking daily conversion. It’s a great time to be a priest in the spring time of evangelization. May God who has begun this great work in us bring it to fulfillment!
