50 Years of Priesthood
June 24th, 2009 by Br. Peter Totleben, OP
During our recent Provincial Assembly, the friars of the Province took the time to honor the jubilarians in their midst. Fr. Luke Tancrell, OP preached a beautiful homily at Mass, where he reflected on his fifty years of priesthood.
Brethren, awesome it is for me to be speaking to you. If you are wondering how this ever happened, so am I. You will have to address Father Dominic, our Prior Provincial to learn why.
This gospel we have just heard narrates strength beyond our strength, strength working through the preaching of the Word and healing at the very touch. “Go,” Jesus says, “proclaim that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, drive out demons.” To whom does Jesus speak? Today the liturgy commemorates among the first generation of Christians Saint Barnabas, who stood in support of Saint Paul’s exceptional conversion. The Sacred Scriptures manifest over and over again how human inadequacy is taken over by God. This day is no exception to the divine strategy.
We mark with honor our graduated ranks of Jubilarians. We are witnesses of that divinely free strategy of lifting human frailty beyond itself. I ask myself, now almost 77 years of age, now in the ranks of jubilarians, what lies ahead? What will eternity be? What will priesthood mean in the eternal homeland? I ask what most of my Ordination classmates already know, their having passed beyond this life. In the experience of being washed in the divine mercy, an experience in which we all place our trust, what purpose does the indelible mark of my priesthood carry in the homeland? Will eternity be spent, I muse, in distributing Holy Communion to endless lines of the redeemed? I jest, of course, for the wedding feast of the Lamb will fulfill all need.
Jesus, our High Priest, has gone before us. He is our anchor-hold in eternity. The indelible marks of Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders derive from Him even as we remain earthbound. Not all here present have received the charism of Holy Orders, yet all here present are baptized, are in grace, the grace from above. We trust that. This realization has to impact our understanding of our life now on this planet. The kind of life Bishop McManus [of Worcester] and Bishop Tobin [of Providence] and our friars have been speaking to us about. Let this teaching have its impact on us. Yes, by reason of the charismatic marks on our souls.
In my present assignment which is at the site of my early formation in the Order, as I sit from time to time in my old choirstall at St. Joseph’s church in Somerset, Ohio, I ponder the changes the Church in America has gone through since our class ordination in 1959. I think of my classmates and the pathways unknown to us at that time. Yet there is the present and there is the future.
Pope John Paul II, when still Cardinal, felt free to affirm: “We can say that in a certain sense the doctrine concerning Christ’s priesthood and our share in it is at the very center to the teaching of Vatican II and contains, in a certain manner, all that the Council wished to say about the Church, mankind and the world.” [quoted in Kosicki's Icons of Mercy, p. 79.] If we understand the priesthood of Christ as expressive of the self-giving love that is always happening in the Blessed Trinity, and our participation in that priesthood as a drawing of all things to its source, then what Pope John Paul II said does move us. [see "Josephinum, Journal of Theology", vol. 13, no. 2, pp.197-208.]
St. Thomas teaches the purpose of the sacramental character of Sacred Orders is ordered to divine worship in this life and in the next. [III, q. 63, a. 5, ad 3] After this life’s end, its purpose, in a different context, remains. Being a priest forever is not fiction. The ontological distinctiveness endures. Our first reading this evening from the Acts of the Apostles emphasizes the ministerial aspect of evangelization where the new converts are first called Christians. But their leaders could not have lasted very long if they defined their ministry solely by what they did and not by who they were.
In the sacramentary used at Mass there is a communion prayer to Our Lady which urges: “Mary, Holy Virgin Mother, I have received your Son, Jesus Christ. With love you became His mother. Gave birth to Him, nursed Him, and helped Him grow to manhood. With love I return Him to you, to hold once more, to love with all your heart, and to offer to the Holy Trinity as our supreme act of worship for your honor and for the good of all your pilgrim brothers and sisters.” As Dominican Friars, we can express that prayer with special intensity because of our vows, and our Order’s dedication to the Queen of the Apostles — whether our configuration to Christ is by reason of the common priesthood of the faithful or the ministerial anointing.
60 years of Ordination:
John Linus Sullivan, O.P.
Malcolm Sylvester Willoughby, O.P.
Adrian Ludger Dionne, O.P.
Vincent Ferrer McHenry, O.P.
Nadra Benedict Joseph, O.P.
Walter Urban Voll, O.P.
Edward Maurice Gaffney, O.P.
50 years of Ordination:
Thomas Vincent DiFede, O.P.
Paul Edward Seaver, O.P.
James Bernard Muller, O.P.
William Cyril Dettling, O.P.
William Luke Tancrell, O.P.
40 years of Ordination:
Joseph Anthony Scordo, O.P.
Bernard Frederick Langton, O.P.
Jon Stuart McPhail, O.P.
Eugene Matthew Rzeczkowski, O.P.
25 Years of Ordination:
Thomas Kevin Kraft, O.P.
Edmund Augustine Ditton, O.P.
Gerard Arthur Lessard, O.P.
Brother Jubilarians, we can testify from experience what today’s gospel relates: without cost you have received from heaven, without cost you are to give. Whatever village you enter, wish it peace, if not received, let your peace return to you. Matters did not always go well between Saint Barnabas and Saint Paul. Their collaboration had a falling out because of differing points of view. In the end, there was healing. First-century or twenty-first-century, we find our stability in the one same Lord.
We are told that Saint Barnabas bore the descriptive name “son of encouragement”. I conjecture he would encourage us that when all seems to fail, when the written words of Jesus seem worn from usage, should that ever happen, then simply behold His wounds. The wounds of Jesus. Let them speak. It will be enough. This is from the Holy Spirit.
Brother Jubilarians, we cannot help but be grateful that God has brought us so far, grateful for all who have helped us along the way, and made this journey possible in so many circumstances. We ask that Christ bless all those with whom our daily lives have intersected these many years. With the Jubilee comes an inner joy which no one can take away. We know from the grassroots that there is no happiness without the sacrifice. God keep us all in his peace. God bless you all.
