From the Pastor’s Desk
Dear St. Mary’s Parishioners:
For twenty years, I have been meeting with a group of brother priests once a month for prayer, fraternity and dinner. The format is simple. Usually, the gathering takes place at a parish; we take turns hosting the meeting. We meet on a Monday afternoon at 4p for an hour of Eucharistic Adoration and we finish up the hour praying Vespers (Evening Prayer). Then we retire to the rectory for visiting and dinner. We are usually done by 7p or 7:30p. Sometimes, there are only 3 of us priests. Other times, there as many as 8 or 9 of us. The members of the group have changed some over the years. As brother priests get assigned further away from the southern part of the diocese, the long travel distance to the meeting can be prohibitive. I have really enjoyed these priests’ gatherings over the years. It is good to pray with my brother priests and it is good to visit and check in with each other on a monthly basis.
As you can imagine, we talk about our priestly ministry, about world affairs and sports. And we talk about issues that touch on the universal Church, as well as, the local Church. A topic that came up at our gathering this week was our vocations poster for the Diocese of Sacramento. The vocations poster features the young men who are in formation to be priests for the Diocese of Sacramento. You can see the most recent poster in the vestibule of our church. This year, there are only 7 men on the poster because we presently only have 7 seminarians. As you can imagine, we priests lamented that we don’t have more seminarians. We worried that there will not be enough priests to staff our parishes. And, we worried that because of the lack of ordained priests, the priests still young enough to carry out active ministry will be stretched even thinner.
That the Church needs vocations to the priesthood and religious life is a no-brainer. I have always been impressed by all of you who hunger for the grace of the sacraments. You want to go to Mass and receive the Eucharist. You want to receive the Anointing of the Sick when you are ill and you want to be forgiven of your sins in Confession. You want to be confirmed and you desire to be married in the Church. And, you want to have your children baptized. For all of this, we need priests. To respond to the needs of our Diocese, we should really have 30 or 40 or 50 young men on our vocations poster.
As you have heard me say before, I don’t believe that God is calling fewer men to the priesthood than, say, a century ago or even 50 or 25 years ago. It’s just that fewer are responding to His call. Why are fewer responding to the call? To be sure, there are a number of factors. One factor is that parents are not as generous as they once were when it comes to bringing children into the world. Without getting into the reasons for this, it is clear that families are smaller than they used to be. And, my hunch is that parents don’t talk about the beauty and the goodness of the priesthood or religious life much with their children, maybe because they prefer their children to marry so that they can have grandchildren. Who knows? You tell me. Another factor would be the secularization of society. While it is true that fewer young people are intentionally discerning a vocation to the priesthood or religious life, it is also true that they are not thinking much about marriage. Fewer young people are not only not marrying in the Church, but also they are just not getting married at all.
What can we do about this at St. Mary’s Parish? One thing we can do is follow the direction of the Office of Vocations for the Diocese of Sacramento. On the Sacramento Vocations website ( https://www.scd.org/vocations/fosteringvocations ), three major tasks are identified for promoting vocations to the priesthood and religious life. First, we need to intentionally pray and fast for vocations. We can pray for vocations during Mass at the Prayers of the Faithful. We can have a holy hour for vocations, which we do once a month. We can personally pray for vocations and even fast for vocations. Second, we can promote vocations awareness by talking about vocations and in other ways. I think that you can see that Fr. Steven and I are very happy being priests. We find the priesthood to be very fulfilling. If you were to ask us, we’d say that we could not see ourselves doing anything else in life that would make us so happy and that we are so glad that God called us to be priests. But, it’s true, perhaps we need to talk more explicitly about our love for the priesthood. Finally, third, we can invite young men in our parish, who we think have the qualities that would make a good priest, to consider that God might be calling them to the priesthood. In my case, I’m pretty sure that God was calling me all along to be a priest. But I really liked the idea of marriage and I struggled to give a possible calling to the priesthood the more serious consideration it demanded. But once I realized that if God wanted me to be a priest, it was because He had a plan for me and that His plan was going to make me happier than any other plan that I might have come up with on my own. Thankfully, God was patient with me and I got around to answering His call eventually.
As we embark on this new year, we pray for the young people of our parish that they know God’s will for them. We pray for those who, in God’s design, are meant to be marry that they find holy spouses who help them get to heaven. And, we pray for those whom God calls to the priesthood and religious life that they may respond generously to His call. During 2021, may we as a parish commit ourselves even more to fostering God’s call to the priesthood and religious life. After all, it’s a matter of life and death. And, as faithful who want life, especially eternal life, we know that without the grace of the sacraments and without priests to minister the sacraments, it will be all the more difficult to prepare ourselves well for heaven.
Blessed Christmas and fruitful New Year!
Father Berg
