A number of priests in the diocese here reflect on different aspects of vocation, formation and priesthood in a series of articles published in the Leeds Diocesan Catholic Post during 2008 and 2007.

2008

1. Father Paul Grogan, Diocesan Vocations Director: "Embracing self-sacrifice lies at the heart of every Christian vocation." (February)

I was very encouraged to learn at the recent meeting of diocesan vocations directors that the number of candidates from dioceses in England and Wales beginning seminary has risen each year for the last five years. It is too soon to speak of a trend yet, but it is a pleasing development. In recent months, I have visited the three seminaries where the Leeds men are training and it is good to see extra refectory tables being brought into use and fuller chapels. It appears that our prayers in recent years are being answered and the Holy Spirit is giving young men the courage and the generosity of spirit to come forward.

More and more it seems to me that the secret of promoting a healthy culture of vocation in the Church lies in helping young people to see that each of us needs to embrace self-sacrifice if we are to be fully human. Anything worthwhile costs. As one young man said to me recently at the end of a discernment retreat, “God has given me my life and I want to give it back to him, all of it.” That is an incredibly stirring thing, to say, but it corresponds with our intuitive sense that if we simply focus on protecting our interests we will wither inwardly. What appears to be the rash the thing to do is in fact the only sensible thing to do.

This truth underpinned the renowned discernment programme which Cardinal Martini, the former Archbishop of Milan and scriptural scholar, instituted in his cathedral city in the eighties and nineties. Young people there entered into a year of discernment. They received excellent support and formation: for example, they were each assigned a spiritual director and came together regularly for catechetical talks. At the end of the year, each person had to make a personal declaration. Some said that they wished to become priests or enter religious life; some owned that they were still undecided; and some said that, if the possibility presented itself, they wished to make a radical commitment in marriage.

Radical life commitments are the stuff of the gospel. A man might think: do I dare to give my future into the keeping of this woman, whom I love, in the sacrament of matrimony? Every time a man masters whatever anxieties attend his choice and asks for the woman’s hand is a moment of evangelisation. He is declaring his confidence in God’s power. The same happens when young men contemplate becoming a priest. Do I dare to offer my life definitively to Christ for the service of people? Young men, dazzled by the multitude of opportunities which modern society affords, may understandably baulk at this question. Yet a single thought, echoing in the recesses of their mind, can lend a graced steeliness to their resolve: “Can I really let an opportunity such as this pass me by, when, as far as I can see, God himself is inviting me to accept this wonderful office and has simultaneously offered me all the strength which I will need to exercise it well?”

When discernment results in such clarity, apprehension remains, but desire predominates, a desire whose source is the Heart of Jesus. It has been one of the greatest privileges of my life as a priest so far to see this desire burgeoning in the hearts of young Yorkshiremen who are preparing to spend their lives on our behalf on their return from seminary. They know that through self-sacrifice they are attaining to authentic manhood, which can be gauged in one way only: the extent to which we love.

2. Mgr Peter McGuire, PA, who was formerly Vicar General and Administrator of Leeds Cathedral, and who is now Chaplain at The Convent of the Sisters of Notre Dame in Parbold near Wigan, recently celebrated his Golden Anniversary. Here he writes on, "Fifty years on: the perennial beauty of the Catholic priesthood." (March)

Some things you just never forget!  I recall ordination to the priesthood as vividly as if it were yesterday. The brightness of that early October morning when I walked across Rome with my classmates. We made our way from  our retreat at  Saints John & Paul to the Collegio  Pio Latino to be ordained by Cardinal Traglia. Then followed the completion of the academic year at the Gregorian University before returning to England to take up appointment in our home diocese. Yet none of this was yesterday, but over 50 years ago in 1956, and they have been wonderful years. They have formed an irregular landscape, a mixture of demanding work, challenges, mistakes and disappointments, but always tempered with joy, contentment and grace-filled opportunities.

I remember being intrigued the first time I heard the Church described as the “pilgrim people of God” and being taken aback when it was suggested that very soon the Mass would be celebrated in English! However, the Church is a pilgrim Church, and the priesthood itself a pilgrimage, an ever-growing experience, a mystery in which a man is immersed,  and  it remains always too deep for his limited understanding. In primary school I had thought that I knew the role of the priest, and nothing could be clearer, - it  seemed quite attractive.

I remember the 1960’s, and they were heady days. The genius of Pope John XXIII enabled the Church to take a fresh look at itself, and  things  began to change, including the uniformity of priests.  Priests began to grow beards  and wear T-Shirts : they strummed guitars and attracted the young with folk-hymns. Affluence altered people’s attitudes and they began to ask new questions. Yet faith remained the firm ground under  our feet to give security, and the priesthood  continued to announce that we are all pilgrims, called and loved by God, and our troubled world is not a God-forsaken place.

It seems an enormous privilege to have  served the Leeds Diocese for half a century, and a great blessing to have worked at the Cathedral for well over half those years.  Ministry at the heart of a city inevitably highlights the ministry of  both the Confessional and Hospital Chaplaincy.  In both tasks the priest is deeply aware of just how much his priesthood is needed and valued. It is good to recall those halcyon days when we could attract 100 people each week to an enquiry class and talks on the Catholic Faith !

But more than anything else I remember and pray for those people from whom I received so much – parents and family, priests with whom I lived and worked, the three Bishops I served as Vicar General, religious sisters, friends and parishioners.

The pilgrim priest gains ever deeper insights into the Mass as time goes by. He comes to see the Eucharist as the only valid drama of the human condition, where life is given and received, and what he has received the priest is sent out to give and to share. In a word the Mass is the very heart of priesthood.

I am, and shall be eternally grateful for the vocation which immersed me in the mystery of the priesthood, and have always found it the way to happiness and fulfilment.

3. Vocations Director Fr Paul Grogan says that Pope Benedict’s recent words to American bishops concerning promoting vocations can be applied to our diocese too. (May)

Many of us have had basic health checks at a doctors’ surgery. During his recent visit to the United States, Pope Benedict said that it was possible to make a health check of a diocese and one of the key indicators was its approach to fostering vocations. At a question and answer session with bishops at the National Shrine at Washington, he said: “Let us be quite frank: the ability to cultivate vocations to the priesthood and the religious life is a sure sign of the health of a local Church. There is no room for complacency in this regard. God continues to call young people; it is up to all of us to encourage a generous and free response to that call.”

His words help us to understand the importance of promoting these specific vocations within the general process of renewal on which we are currently engaged in our diocese. A natural outcome of concerted and serene evangelisation is that young men and women are seized by the thought that they can make a radical commitment to the mission of the Church. It strikes them that they would like to do something really significant with their lives, indeed to abandon their lives to God’s Providence. A wide variety of vocational possibilities present themselves – marriage, integrated careers, priesthood, the particular witness of religious life – and young people will opt for that which seems most attractive to them.

This is because vocation is first and foremost about desire. A young man said to me once that it was only when he met a young woman to whom he felt very attracted that he realised that he wanted to be a priest. The one desire triggered a greater desire. The Holy Spirit was drawing him to give himself in love for the service of God’s people. No human love could be an adequate substitute for this.

Fortunately, he was able to see things clearly and act accordingly. In the light of the Pope’s words, however, we have to acknowledge that our culture can undermine such generosity of spirit. The idea of self-sacrifice, which is fundamental to all relationships, can appear weird. I am sure that there are a good number of young men and women in our diocese who deep down want to embrace the wonderful and life-giving challenge of celibate loving as a priest or a religious but who are being held back by all sorts of needless apprehensions.

The Pope’s words are a reminder to us that we have a responsibility to help them. I remember that my university chaplain used to tell us all that we ought to become priests or religious. Clearly, he was being deliberately provocative, but his humorous approach acted as a useful corrective to the prevailing and deeply untrue assumption that human fulfilment hinges upon the act of sexual intercourse!

As we seek to become more prayerful local communities during this year of the Come and See process, we will automatically be creating appropriate environments for vocations to the priesthood and the religious life to flourish. Prayer is a deeply counter-cultural thing to do. It is of its essence a giving to rather than a taking from. It is always sacrificial. It orients our mind away from ourselves. It makes us want more from life.

A child in church is fascinated by a person praying near them. A young person is moved and impressed by the same sight. And more: he or she wants to emulate the other. Once the young person, supported by such wholesome testimony, is launched upon the way of prayer, the idea of the seminary or the convent begins to appear as a perfectly reasonable possibility. In other words, through seeking to be diligent in prayer ourselves, at home and in the parish, we are not simply growing in holiness personally; we are also creating zones of freedom in which our young people, guided by the Holy Spirit, can engage in serious discernment.

1. Father Martin Kelly, Bishop's Secretary and Diocesan Youth Chaplain: "Youth: a privileged time for discernment."

On Palm Sunday the Church celebrated the 22^nd World Youth Day.  In a special message to the young people of the world to mark the day Pope Benedict issued them with a challenge.  He invited them to ‘dare to love’.  He calls on them to ‘not desire anything less for your life than a love that is strong and beautiful and that is capable of making the whole of your existence a joyful undertaking of giving yourselves as a gift to God and your brothers and sisters, in imitation of the One who vanquished hatred and death forever through love’.  One of the things that I have become increasingly convinced of over the past 2 ½ years as youth chaplain for the diocese is that it is simply not true that our young people are unwilling to commit themselves.  We are richly blessed in the diocese to have young people who give of themselves with great generosity.  We, for our part, must ensure that we are offering them something worth committing to, nothing less than the truth.

There is much that our world offers us that it promises will make us happy, and many of those things are good.  But the Pope is reminding us that our true happiness can only be found in opening our hearts and lives to God.  It is there that we find our real selves, it is there that we can truly be the people we are called to be in the knowledge that we are loved, it is there that we find the courage to love in return and to love one another.

It is not easy to take the risk of loving others.  Often it can seem that there is no place for love in our world and it can be tempting to shut our hearts off for fear of hurt or rejection.  But what a sad state that leads us to, it is a path that leads to death rather than the true and full life that God offers each one of us.  There is also a temptation not to love in case we fail or get it wrong, safer not to risk it.  But in not taking that risk we cut ourselves off from that wonderful freedom of knowing truly that we are God’s beloved sons and daughters.

The theologian Karl Rahner once reflected that ‘tomorrows priests will be people with pierced hearts, from which alone the power of their mission will come.  Pierced hearts: pierced by life’s godlessness, pierced by love’s folly, pierced by the sense of their own weakness ... I say that tomorrow’s priests are people with pierced hearts because it is their role to lead people to the innermost centre of their beings, to the ground of their own heart – and this centre of being, this heart, can be found by themselves and by others only if its piercedness is accepted’.

God continues to call men and women to the priesthood and the religious life.  But in order to hear that call we must dare to love and to allow ourselves to be loved.  Often there can seem no place for God in our modern age but we only have to look around us to see the deep need for the healing touch of God for He is the only one who can truly heal and bring to life where there is destruction and death.  Rahner reminds us that we don’t have to be perfect to be a priest or religious (just as well!) but that we must be willing to open our hearts to God and to allow him to heal us and to use us to lead others to him.  The priest or religious is called despite their own inadequacy and doubts and fears.  They are called to love and to testify to God’s love.  It is here that we find our true fulfilment, our true joy, our life.

What a wonderful vocation ... to be called to love!  As the Pope reminds us ‘the horizon of love is truly boundless: it is the whole world.’  That is the vocation of all Christ’s followers ... to build a civilisation of love.  The priest and religious are called to live out that vocation in a unique and precious way.  We can only hope to do so by God’s grace and despite weakness and failure.  It is only by coming before God in the Eucharist and in the sacrament of reconciliation that we receive the courage to conquer all through love.  When we remain open to God’s call each day then he will show the world his love through us.

In the midst of all that the world has to offer us it is possible to miss that call, to become shut off from it, for it to be drowned out by competing voices that promise us so much.  And yet it is here that we will find all that we are, all that we desire.  It is here we find true love and dare to love in return.

2. Monsignor Philip Holroyd, Parish Priest of St Theresa’s in Cross Gates, Leeds: "A priest’s path to holiness is intimately connected with his pastoral ministry."

Forty years ago many people, and many priests, found great help in the writings of a young parish priest in Le Havre, France. Michel Quoist’s book, Prayers of Life, was an inspiration. By letting his readers “listen in” to his prayer, two things were clear. His prayer was always rooted in the everyday lives of the people of the town. His prayer gave an honest glimpse of his own life as a priest, with his idealism, and his weakness. Quoist showed that the priest’s path of faith, of prayer, is mapped out in his service of Christ’s people.

 This should not surprise us. Every Christian is called to seek holiness. It is the gift of God making his home in us, through the presence of the Holy Spirit. The way each of us is called to holiness will be shaped by our own particular vocation - single, married, parent, widowed, religious – and by our daily life – training, employed, voluntary, retired. So too for a priest. His call to holiness is priest-shaped.

He listens with his heart to the Word of God, and tries to live by it, because he is called to help others experience God’s Word as life-giving. He takes part in the Mass and the Sacraments, looking to be nourished by Our Lord, as one who is to be the minister of this spiritual nourishment to others. He prays for himself and his people, as one who is asked to help others open their hearts in prayer. He turns to God for forgiveness of his own sins, as one humbled and privileged to offer God’s forgiveness to others. To paraphrase the ordination ceremony:  put into practice what you say and imitate the mysteries you handle.

Above all, his efforts to be of service to others in their joys and their sufferings drive him back into the arms of God in prayer.  This is what Quoist expressed so well, as he revealed his own vulnerability as he prayed, sometimes with humble gratitude, sometimes with angry protest. Lonely, he found support in his prayer. Exhausted, he found courage to continue. Tempted to wish his life was different, he found again his call to stay with God’s people. He was needed. Despite his failures, his tiredness, and his occasional disillusion, faithfulness and times of joy came through his priestly service of others. That is the priest’s path to holiness.

3. Mgr Frank Robinson recently celebrated his golden anniversary of ordination. He is the Parish Priest of St Francis’ in Leeds. Here he reflects on the privilege of being a priest.

The priesthood has had something of a bad press over the last few years, and we have all been tarnished by the few. Perhaps it would be a good idea to spend some time reflecting on some positive elements, to look at what is satisfying in the life of a priest.

At every priestly ordination when I was a boy growing up at Ushaw in the forties and fifties, the choir sang a motet with those sublime words from John’s gospel: “Iam non dicam vos servos, sed amicos meos.” – No longer shall I call you servants, but my friends. The same words were sung at my own ordination to the priesthood in 1956, thanks to the girls of St Francis of Assisi Secondary School in Holbeck.

But by that time, for me, that sense of service/friendship already had a sharp edge to it. I knew that I was not going into parish life immediately. Six years before ordination I was told to “keep up my Latin and Greek” because already the plan was that I should go back to the junior seminary after ordination to join the staff.

Very quickly I had to learn the hard lesson of obedience. At his ordination the newly ordained priest places his hands between the hands of the bishop, who asks him “Do you promise obedience to me and my successors?” It would be sixteen years before I was released into parish life.

There was much in those years to be grateful for – friendship of fellow priests on the staff, satisfaction at work achieved (even if not always appreciated by pupils!), acceptance of my own failings by forgiving students. Above all there was the opportunity to absorb the teaching of the Second Vatican Council through frequent argument and debate in the Staff Room.

For the last six years of my time on the staff I was fortunate to spend every weekend ‘on supply’ in the parish of Our Lady and St Cuthbert at Crook. There I learned still more about friendship, and even more about teaching the faith, both to the adult parishioners and to the teenagers who were eager to learn.

I learnt another valuable lesson there. I discovered the importance of communication, of talking with parishioners: involving them in major decisions. For example, we decided to tidy up the parish cemetery. More importantly we worked together to transform our worship from the Tridentine Rite into English, and in the enormous task of converting a Pugin church into a suitable vehicle for the liturgy of Vatican II.

Alongside all this was the work that is still the basic substance of priestly life, and that gives him lasting satisfaction. By this I mean, for example, spending time with the sick and elderly, helping to prepare them for a death without fear. I have also enjoyed going into the schools, to hear the anxieties and enjoy the humour of the young. Sometimes this is a daunting task, especially with the work of the Governing Body, as we try to do our best for the children placed in our charge. In addition we talk to young couples as they prepare for a life together and guide young parents as they bring their children to their first sacraments.

Over all else is the privilege of the sacramental life, - the power to bring the Word of God alive at the two Tables – the table of the Lectern as we struggle each week to unravel the mystery of the proclaimed Word, and the table of the Eucharist as we bring the Word made flesh to life once more. It is there that whatever is humdrum or tedious in the life of the priest is transformed and once more made new. It is there that whatever mess we make of our privilege is redeemed.

4. Father Michael McCarthy, Parish Priest of St Joseph's, Sherburn-in-Elmet, and Immaculate Conception, Scarthingwell (formerly Spiritual Director, St Cuthbert's College, Ushaw): "The place of spiritual direction in discerning vocation."

Our great task in life is to discover what our destiny is and try to live it as fully as we can. In other words, to discover and grow into the purposes of God. This is deeper than discovering what we are to do. It also includes who God has meant us to be.

As Psalm 139 says: It was you who created my inmost self, and put me together in my  mother’s womb. The discovery of our true destiny takes a long time, the whole of our lives in fact, and it is only at the very end we can say with Simeon: Now you can let  your servant to go in peace, just as you promised. Luke 2:20.

When we are young we try to imagine what we will be when we grow up. We want

to be the best we can be. In the course of our growing up we discover aptitudes, talents, possibilities that inspire us. Some people have the first inklings of what their life is to be about when they are very young. Pablo Casals went to a birthday party at age seven and saw a cello for the first time. His destiny was set from that moment. For most of us it is a much slower process. We discover gradually. This is called discernment, and having a skilled sensitive listener is invaluable as we seek to do this.

When someone goes to the Seminary or joins a Religious Order, one of the resources offered is a personal Spiritual Director. Someone with whom they can, in complete confidence, explore their deepest selves, talk through their hopes and aspirations, their fears too, as well as their doubts and confusions, their successes and failures. This helps them discern what God is doing in their lives, and what God is calling them to. In my time as Spiritual Director at Ushaw College about half of the students who came to discern their vocation became priests, the other half discerned that God’s call lay in other directions. But in that process of discernment they each grew in grace and maturity and were able to live fuller richer lives because of it. 

Spiritual Direction is not just for those discerning a vocation to the Priesthood or religious life. When we tell our story as those students did, we make discoveries which are liberating and life enhancing. We discover at a deep level that we are beloved of God. St Ignatius of Loyola called this the Principle and Foundation, because, until we have internalised God’s love our motives can be very mixed and

our self knowledge patchy. We can be over attached to winning external approval

and acceptance. When someone does hear this, as Mary did, as the great saints did,

as Jesus himself did at his Baptism: You are my son the beloved; on whom my favour rests, then that person becomes capable of great generosity and sacrifice.

Spiritual Direction does not mean directing someone in the sense of telling them what to do. Such decisions must always be taken by the person making them. Spiritual Companion is perhaps a better description. It means walking beside someone, with sensitivity and compassion, so that the one companioned can truly discern how God is loving them, and what God is calling them to. Saints such as Ignatius were models of this ministry. They were known as masters of the affections, because they knew the human heart and how God speaks there. They knew how to listen in such a way that God’s love and God’s call could be discerned.

Jesus is of course the great model of such listening. He knew what was in a person. As he listened to the Samaritan woman at the well he heard all the sorrow in her life. After he had seen Nathaniel under a tree he described him as: incapable of deceit.

The first task of a Spiritual Director is to put one’s self in the way of discovering God’s presence and purposes in our own lives. Only then can we become fit persons to companion others in their discerning the presence and call of God in their lives.

Spiritual Direction can be a place of great healing. The Director accepts the person unconditionally, just as Jesus accepted people unconditionally. He did not break the crushed reed or quench the wavering flame. This ministry offers an extraordinary vantage point in seeing the miracles of God’s grace. It continues to be the most enriching and privileged part of my priesthood.

5. Mr Robert Finnigan, Diocesan Archivist: "Grounds for a Calling - The 1955 Leeds Vocations Exhibition."

6. Father Emmanuel Mansford, CFR, Servant of the St Pio Friary in Bradford: "A Franciscan vocation: Eucharistic Adoration and service of the poor."

In 1223, Francis of Assisi, in love with the fact that God became a baby, wanted to re-enact the scene of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem.  That year, Midnight Mass was celebrated in a cave with ox and ass, in a town called Greccio, with Francis as the deacon.  Thus began the tradition of the Christmas crib, a devotion which brings home the reality of Christ’s humanity.  Everyone loves the crib.  There is something beautiful and comforting about it.  In the centre is the Baby, with Mary and Joseph at His side.  The animals surround the Child almost adoringly.  It is warm and inviting.  And yet, as with the Cross, perhaps we have sanitised our cribs.  The cave or stable in which Luke’s Gospel tells us that Mary gave birth to Jesus, would have been dirty and damp, smelly and probably cold.  But it is here that God Himself chose to be born.  God became poor!  As St Paul writes, “Our Lord Jesus Christ… although He was rich, He became poor for your sake, so that you should become rich through His poverty” (2 Cor 8:9).  The wonder of Christmas that St. Francis marvelled at was God’s humility, His loving condescension, in coming so close to us!  The crib reminds us that in the mess of our humanity, into our weakness, sinfulness and pain, into the “dirt” of our lives, God comes to meet us there.  He is not afraid to get His hands dirty. This was the secret of the Gospel which had so penetrated the heart of Francis of Assisi – God can be found most clearly in the midst of my poverty.

As if this was not enough, God went further.  Towards the end of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that when we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick or imprisoned, we do it to Him!  The homeless man in Leeds City Centre is not like Jesus, he is Jesus!  Mother Teresa used to remind the world of this in almost childlike fashion as she talked about her motivation for feeding and caring for the destitute by pointing to her five fingers, as she recited Christ’s words, “You did it to me.”  As Franciscan friars we are privileged to be able to serve Jesus everyday in the poor people who come to our door.  Like our image of the crib, on one level this seems beautiful, but the reality is often more demanding.  It can be hard and challenging to see Jesus in the person who knocks impatiently and loudly on your door when you are in the middle of something. But He is there.

Recently I was in Edinburgh for a weekend mission; we had five minutes to stop into the Cathedral before rushing to catch our train back to Bradford.  At the entrance to the Cathedral a man stopped me and asked if I would give him some money to buy a bus ticket.  We don’t give out money and I had no time to buy him the ticket.  “I only have five minutes,” I said.  “I might be Jesus in disguise,” he responded.  “You are!” I shouted back at him, “but I only have five minutes.”  “Can you buy me a sandwich?” he continued.  As I entered the Cathedral, his words troubled me.  We took a quick peek into the church (it was during Mass), and I went back out to find him.  There is a café attached to the church building.  “C’mon,” I said to Jesus.  He ordered a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee.  It came to four pounds.  The exact amount a little child had given me as a donation after one of our mission Masses!

Mother Teresa explained that it is only by spending time in adoring Jesus under the form of bread in the Blessed Sacrament, are her sisters then able to see Him present in the poor whom they serve with such devotion and love.  As we gaze upon the Crib this Christmas, in the mess and busyness of our lives, let us ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to us the reality of Christmas – Emmanuel – God is truly with us.

In the hiddeness and poverty of the Eucharist, God is there.

In the mess and poverty of the crib, God is there

In the mess and poverty of my soul.  God is there

In the mess and poverty of the homeless, the poor, the addict, God is there.