Hard to believe that I've been a priest for over four months! It's been a complete transformation of my life! Let's say a prayer for vocations - the world is hungering and thirsting for Christ. Have a question or trying to figure out your vocation - www.whynotpriest.org.
This is the first of eight reflections that I wrote for those accompanying at my ordination in Rome. I couldn't have done it alone. Comment and post replies on FaceBook. We’re all on a pilgrimage, and not just to Rome. I started out 31 years ago when God created me and placed me on this earth for a specific purpose. We all are created for something special, something more. God calls us to himself, and our life is a pilgrimage through time. It includes sorrow, tears, and difficulties but great joys as well, which is meant to culminate with him in heaven. This year means something special for our lives whether we realize it or not. Pope Benedict XVI declared a Year of Faith. One of his recommendations is pilgrimage. Pope Benedict points out that we are all at a specific point on our earthly pilgrimage. Maybe we’re going through one of those ruts, or we’ve been going uphill. Maybe we’ve reached a peak and are enjoying the view behind us or looking forward to paths to travel and mountains to conquer. In my life at least, it’s a mixture.
It's hard to write again after so long. I've been a deacon for just over a month. My life hasn't changed a lot, then again, it's been completely transformed.
I'm still studying, working, eating, sleeping, praying, and playing. Just that, I'm a deacon and will be forever. But what does that mean?
This seems to be the story of our lives. I shared this in one of my first homilies because we all experience it. Often the most meaningful moments of our lives come and go with the most normalcy. We spend hours, weeks, and even years preparing for something that happens in the blink of an eye. Then it's over, and nothing seems different though we know that everything has changed. Marriage, birth, death, and so on.
Perhaps it hit me hardest in the actual ceremony of the ordination to the diaconate.
