Money, fame, and the priesthood - the true story.

Funny. Until the other day, I wasn’t thinking of starting this way. Coming back to the seminary, I stopped by a hotel, and there was a businessman getting out of a Mercedes sedan. He walked into the hotel, and the driver waited on him. Okay, I have to admit I did think, “Wow, wouldn’t that be nice. Having someone to wait on me hand and foot and take me everywhere.” I at least naturally tend to like these status symbols and the idea that others respect and admire me.

But then my mind wandered back to something else. “I’m going to be a priest forever.” Okay, I won’t have a Mercedes with a driver, but then again when I celebrate the Mass, Jesus Christ, God waits, on my word to come down to the world again in the Eucharist. When I sit in the confessional, he hangs on my lips waiting to bestow his forgiveness on a soul in need. Who is more important, the guy who has a driver or the priest, for whom God waits?

But there’s a little more to it than that. Why should God wait on me? It’s actually the opposite of our friend with the Merc at the hotel. The fact that someone is waiting on him is a consequence of the money, power, or fame he might have. In the priest’s case, God doesn’t wait on him because he’s important – he’s important BECAUSE God’s waits on him. God is the source and reason that I am anything. His love makes us really important.

I’m definitely not worthy of the priesthood, but Christ chose it for me from all eternity. He wants me to be his instrument in a very special way in the lives of hundreds, thousands, millions of other lives. There is definitely a lot preaching, working, and helping others, but there’s much more.

As the pope says, “through [the priests’] ministry the Lord continues to save men, to make himself present, to sanctify.” My vocation, my job, my life is making God present in the world and in souls. I will bring him down on the altar in the host to feed the world with his body and blood. I will administer his forgiveness to reconcile souls to him so that they can reach eternal life. I will bring souls to new life in faith and the Spirit through baptism. 

I will send souls to heaven, fed and nurtured by the graces of the Church. I will be there in the name of Christ and his Church to bless the union of man and woman in one flesh. I, no Christ through me, will bring souls to himself through my thoughts, words, and actions. I belong to him. “He must grow greater, I must grow less” (Jn 3:30). 

It’s a lot to take in, and they are things that I have been dreaming about for almost fifteen years when God revealed his plan to my heart. Some join the seminary thinking, “Maybe this is for me, we’ll see.” In my case, for some reason and no merit of my own, he instilled a certainty in my heart from the beginning. 

I have had my share of problems, doubts, difficulties, sufferings, and been lacking in generosity, but for some reason he has never allowed me to falter on my path to the altar. That has been a certainty and a guiding star in my life from the beginning: God wants me to be his priest, another Christ for the world.