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My Family, My
Priesthood: The
Annual Friends of FAMILIAS Gathering 2010
Guest speakers: Fr Daniel O'Leary, Fr Paul Grogan, Fr Graham Preston, Fr Paul Williment, Fr Moses Igba, Fr Graham Smith “Christian
parents, as also brothers and sisters and the other members of the
family.. should accompany the formative journey with prayer, respect, the
good example of the domestic virtues and spiritual and material help,
especially in difficult moments. Experience teaches that, in so many
cases, this multiple help has proved decisive for candidates for the
priesthood. Even in the case of parents or relatives who are indifferent
or opposed to the choice of a vocation, a clear and calm facing of the
situation and the encouragement which derives from it can be a great help
to the deeper and more determined maturing of a priestly vocation.”
Pastores Dabo Vobis 1992 #68 Chair's Report | Report by Katja Babei | My Family, My Priesthood Report
by Breda Theakston, Coordinator of Family Life Ministry, Diocese of Leeds
and Chair of the FAMILIAS Steering Group Today,
May 21st, is the feast day of St Eugene de Mazenod (1782 –
1861). If you have heard of this priest you may know that he is often
considered the saint of dysfunctional families. He suffered massive
upheaval as a young man because of the French Revolution which forced his
family into exile. His parents’ marriage broke down and they engaged in
a bitter wrangle over property. His mother tried to dissuade him from
answering the call to the priesthood as she wanted to marry him off to a
rich heiress. Sounds like an opera, real or soap, doesn’t it? His
early sufferings do not seem to have diminished, and may even have fed his
zeal for God. After a life of languor and grandeur in Italy, Eugene was
utterly dismayed by his reduced circumstances on returning to France. Yet
this was the man who became known
as ‘a second Paul’. On his death bed he said to the Oblates of Mary
Immaculate, an order he founded, "Among
yourselves - charity, charity, charity: in the world - zeal for
souls." Even
though they came from very different families, and some had more difficult
early experiences than others, a common theme came through in their
accounts: that of having experienced at some point a feeling of being
unconditionally loved. Three
priests from the Diocese of Leeds, Fr Daniel O’Leary, Fr Paul Grogan and
Fr Paul Williment, were our stars for the day and they contributed
alongside Fr Moses Igba from What
did we learn about family and the vocation to priesthood? The day for me
was best summed up by Fr Paul Williment, married to Sylvia, father,
grandfather and Chaplain at St Gemma’s Hospice, who said that if
anything, the very different stories told revealed in a fresh way the
truth that the ‘Holy Spirit blows where it will’. Eugene
de Mazenod’s fractious and insecure parents did not stop his answering
the call. Bereavement, poverty, aggression, doubt, anti-religious and
anti-clerical sentiments, did not deter the men we listened to in
Westminster that day, in their call to follow Christ as ordained priests. But
the day was even richer. In
the priests’ words I heard of the amazing power that already exists in
the world around us and that constantly speaks to us of God if we just
stop to listen. We
heard about the power of music to heal and to draw people in to the
sacred, even where human love was not as evident in early life. We heard
of the nurturing and sustaining love that married priests find in their
spouses and families and that celibate priests find in their role as sons,
brothers and uncles. We
heard of the power of a parent’s love, expressed in words or in
constancy and in fidelity and of how the Holy Spirit worked through the
extraordinary love (is love ever ordinary?) of a grandmother as she raised
a young man in poverty and faith. That young man, now a priest, said ‘my
Grandmother was everything to me’. These
unheralded, unheard of before today, people were, are, ordinary folk
living in the world we all live in: managing families, relationships,
budgets, jobs, illness, unemployment, poverty, grief, inadequacy. In and
through all those differing circumstances many of them also modelled a
priestly role, a priesthood of service to family, church and community.
They witnessed, in their very ordinary daily household actions of feeding,
clothing (or not if they were too poor), defending, caring, comforting,
guiding, to a love and faith which inspired and guided many of these
priests in their youth. The
priesthood of believers was present at our day, in the flesh and in the
spirit as we listened to these stories of humdrum heroism. For some the
call to priesthood was a call to forfeit the right to marry. For others it
is lived through marriage and family life. I
had never appreciated before today the sheer variety of the men called to
the ordained priesthood. Yet, it is always before our eyes and the Bible
is full of examples of the power of God’s love in the lives of very
different, and sometimes quite unlikely people. Yes,
the Holy Spirit blows where it will. It occurred to me that our task, as
the priesthood of the baptised, is to allow it to enter and transform our
lives as these priests lives are being transformed. We are also called to
nourish the priesthood of parents and married people that they may be able
to provide the warmth of unconditional love, the warmth that enfolds us in
love and feeds the spirit even when the body is hungry and cold. The
warmth that frees us to grow in love and wisdom and to answer the call to
love in whatever guise it appears to us, as family people, single people,
ordained people. People,
in other words, of the new commandment, who love one another as Jesus
loves them. Report
on the FAMILIAS
Event, 35
people attended representing the There
were six speakers, priests who ( very bravely! ) gave personal and deeply
moving testimonies on their journey towards priesthood and the role of
their families in influencing and supporting their decision to follow
their call to the priesthood, to develop particular aspects of their
ministry and what they continued to contribute in terms of sustaining
their vocation as a priest. Some
were inspired by the time given to powerful ritual and time given to
prayer, which was part of their experience of growing up in a
church-going, Catholic family and which had made a lasting impression. One
priest’s mother had died suddenly when he was aged thirteen, but her
nightly prayers and prayers to Our Lady remained strong in his memory. The
importance of allowing time for prayer and ritual in today’s families to
allow spirituality to grow in a child (not merely to allow development
towards the priesthood but the development of a fully spiritual human
being) was discussed. Some
of the priests stated that they had come from an ‘unlikely
background’, or without their family’s understanding or support. They
had grown up in lapsed, agnostic, Protestant, Anglican, Presbyterian or
even aggressively atheist or anti-Catholic families who, to quote one,
were “baffled, even angered” by their decision to become a priest.
Some even stated having gone to Sunday school alone, as in the case of the
priest from Africa who, as the only male living amongst two generations,
felt a pull to work as a farmer as he had inherited the land belonging to
his father, meaning that his aunt and mother tried everything, even
converting to Protestantism, to try and block his subsequent ordination to
the priesthood. Thus, for many priests, the call to priesthood had been
very personal and unsupported. Some
priests had themselves been Anglican, and some had married. Some had even
been atheists, one priest focusing upon the opening genealogy within
Matthew’s Gospel, what he called the "crooked and the cracked"
of Jesus’ heritage, to
justify to himself his own calling to the priesthood in all his
imperfections. However,
one thing was common to all testimonies : love. One cited how a lack of
understanding, warmth and affection during his childhood had made him
defiant in giving that love to his own children and how constant love
received in adulthood from his wife had made him turn towards the
priesthood. Some spoke of the importance of the love of their family and
their support in sustaining their priesthood, and of the influence of
family members as role models, many stating the solid, loving
relationships of their own parents, quoting poignant examples of
demonstrative love that had stayed in their minds. Some quoted the regular
invitation of priests into their homes when they were children as
identifying, encouraging and inspiring, whilst others cited the
non-judgemental, open-door philosophy of their families as inspiring and
nurturing their faith and their call and which had, in turn, helped to
develop their view of the church as ecumenical. In
one moving cameo, a priest gave tribute to his father who not only took
time to pray with him at a village church whilst on a hike through the
moors but who taught him the comic dimensions of life, how to look beyond
the immediately visible as well as showing to him the power of
storytelling, how events are fleeting and never to be repeated. This
priest stated that what he had brought to his vocation as a priest was an
unwillingness to let the moment go unnoticed. Another priest also
remembered the wonderful stories told to him by his mother who had been of
gypsy heritage, while one gave tribute to a mother who had never been
hurried and always had time to listen and respond. Another fondly
remembered a father who had delighted in patiently showing him and
teaching him about nature. All of the above demonstrated what one priest
summed up as “the mystery of love” – little glimpses of what it felt
like to be loved by God, everything revealing the face of God, God being
revealed in the variegated richness of life and even in the most ordinary
of things, what another priest called domestic life “transfused with
transcendental significance.” Their parents may not have been
church-going, but their home was a deeply sacred place. Another said how
his brother’s death at the age of five had pulled his family closer
together and that a day never went past from then on without the family
expressing love for each other. The
above ideas link in with another theme of the day : how feeling
unconditionally loved and listened to was that which it was felt enabled
priests to feel worthy and focus on the wider picture and the
responsibilities and tasks of priesthood. Another
strand common to all testimonies was a commitment of the priests to their
call. Although some said they had been supported by their families (supported, not pushed), for others their own ordination meant the
subsequent conversion of their own parents and siblings. Some had been
alienated by their families because of their decision to enter the
priesthood. As one priest put it: nothing defeats God; He will find a
way, one attendee of the meeting commenting on how this was testament to
the extraordinary power of the Holy Spirit and how we do, but cannot
ignore this reality. The parallelism of marriage and ordination was noted,
with one priest saying he prayed for the awareness of marriage as such a
commitment. Another suggested the need for priests to attend marriage
preparation with couples, to increase their understanding of this
sacrament. The need of priests to be more open in their humanity was also
suggested. Another
spoke of the difficulties associated with becoming a priest, with which he
himself had wrestled. His salvation in his own priesthood was to balance
the theology of sin with the theology of grace – which he defined as the
acknowledgement of the wonder and beauty of nature and humanity - which,
he said, had transformed everything and made being a priest a joy. The
day ended with Mass in the crypt and a homily given by Archbishop Vincent
Nichols who stressed that it was important not to think of the Church as
an institution separate from the family and thanked us for our continuing
work. It was a truly wonderful day, the openness of the priests allowing
for a deeper appreciation of the different motivations and difficulties
attached to becoming a priest and highlighting the importance of the
family. |
