There is a story in the life of the Holy Curé of Ars that goes like this: St Jean Marie Vianney, was on his the way to Ars, his first assignment, when he came to a fork in the road. Not knowing how to continue, it so happened that a boy from Ars came along. The young...
A few months ago, when speaking to a fellow priest about my chaplaincy at St Patrick’s College, he asked me if I had been speaking to the boys about priestly vocations. The promotion of vocations was certainly behind much of my efforts in regards to the College, but I...
In his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Pastores Dabo Vobis, Pope St John Paul II dealt with the matter of “The Formation of Priests in the Circumstances of the Present Day.” Towards the end of that document he said this: Every aspect of priestly formation can be...
Professionalism and the priest. What a strange title for an article on the priesthood! Priesthood isn’t a profession – it’s a vocation. Agreed. It is above all a vocation, a calling from God from all eternity to serve souls in the ministry, making Jesus Christ present...
Where are they “coming from”? What attracts a young man? In our quest for more vocations to the priesthood we firstly need to understand what the contemporary seminary candidate is looking for in his pursuit of the priesthood. This in turn can help us, as priests, to...
Rabbi: You are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel. (Jn 1:49) This brief but resounding confession of faith by the apostle Nathaniel gives us the basis for Christ’s mission: his divine sonship. He is the Word Incarnate. This is one of the two hinges on which...
The great and abiding cause of the joy of the Nativity of the Lord and of His Epiphany to the nations through the Three Kings is clearly expressed in the First Letter of John. The cause of our joy is the testimony given by the Holy Spirit Himself: God gave us eternal...
Introductory remarks Having had the honour of previously addressing some members of this august body in Perth, Australia, a number of years ago, it is a distinct privilege to address you, in a more international grouping, “sub umbra Petri”, here in the Eternal City of...
From the vast patristic literary corpus, three works stand out as classic texts on the priesthood: Gregory of Nazianzus’ Second Oration, otherwise known as the De fuga; John Chrysostom’s De sacerdotio; and Gregory the Great’s Regula Pastoralis. These three works are...
In recent years, the notion of the genius of the Roman Rite has seen resurgence. That the Oratorian, Fr Michael Lang, and the Jesuit, Fr Keith Pecklers, have both published books called The Genius of the Roman Rite testifies to the usefulness of this turn of phrase....