60 Years

The ordination of a new priest reminds us that God’s grace is still actively raising up young men ready to lay down their lives. The celebration of 60 years is evidence that this same grace is faithful through time, and that God’s strength is indeed manifested most beautifully in vessels of clay.

Today I want to write a little about something that is meant to happen for priests between Day 1 and Year 60! Since I am at the 24-year mark myself, I can almost give a “half-way decent” assessment of the situation!

That “something” is a spiritual gift that Catherine Doherty called “the wounded heart.” Let me say right off that this concept is the furthest imaginable from sentimentality, melancholy, or self-pity!

Wounded Heart

Rather it represents a kind of progression that begins with the Spirit-filled proclamation: he has anointed me to preach Good News to the poor (Luke 4:18). Then it moves steadily towards an oblation—one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water (John 19:34).

During this progression, the inspiring homily gives way to the silent gift, and the well-springs of grace flow not less but even more freely thereby.

I spoke about this theme of the priestly, wounded heart last autumn at our annual Associates’ Meetings (for priests and deacons). The question I posed then was: “The wounded heart… key to evangelization?”

I noted at the time that one thing the people of God love most in a priest is “a wounded heart.”

Good homilies are appreciated, of course. But a priest who knows and embraces the suffering of Christ in humanity and in his own life, and who as a result, becomes, not bitter, but rather more childlike, trusting, and compassionate… is the most effective in proclaiming the Good News.

For You Personally

The foundation of this movement in a priest’s life is the same as for any Christian: to have one’s heart wounded by the love of God. This happens when, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you realize that the suffering love poured out on the Cross was directed at you personally.

I always pray that priests will not only have had this experience, but live out their lives by returning to it constantly.

There is a kind of hardened shell that priests often develop over the years, maybe as a kind of protection against the mountain of bewildering situations they face daily. Maybe it is also a shield against recognizing one’s own weakness and poverty in the face of so much that has to be “done.”

Whatever the reasons, the love of Jesus can crack open that shell and pierce that shield, and indeed it must do so if a priest is to be a true witness of the reality of salvation in Christ.

It is something that happens most often in stillness and prayer. In other words, you have to stop and look at Jesus and let him look at you.

What a blessing it is to meet a priest who knows and lives the truth of his own utter need for a Savior! He can give an assurance that no one who is “strong” can ever give. He may even cry from time to time. He may appear “weak.”

But there is a strength in the man that transcends his own efforts and even his own awareness of what is happening in his life.

What helps to guarantee this continual breaking open to God’s grace is the willingness to follow Jesus wherever he leads, in simple obedience.

In this, Our Lady is the best example of the perfect disciple. When she presented her Child in the Temple, the prophet Simeon told her that a sword would pierce her heart.

By following Jesus through his life, by witnessing his rejection, suffering, death, and burial, this prophecy came true, and who can tell the torrent of graces for humanity that flows even today through Our Lady’s pierced and immaculate heart?

In a similar manner, if a priest just keeps saying “yes” to the call to minister, the Lord himself will make sure that his disciple is broken open by the experience.

This movement has its hazards, spiritually speaking, because a man can become embittered and decide he’s had enough of the labor, sweat, lack of tangible fruits, endlessly unresolved problems of human suffering, etc. Even the so-called “success stories” can take their toll after a while, and do little to revive one’s flagging spirits.

Through it all, the Lord is inviting him to follow Our Lady in her journey of deeper trust in the Father, and greater compassion for Christ in his suffering people. Only grace can give the necessary increase in either trust or compassion.

This faithful following of Christ in the day-to-day duties of priestly love leads inexorably to being lifted up with Christ into a dimension of seeming helplessness that one never knew existed. The strange thing is that life will go on as before: sacraments will be celebrated, homilies given, meetings chaired or attended, mail answered.

But interiorly, the Lord will lead his priest to a place that unites him with his Lord on the Cross in a way that can be both frightening and consoling.

Whereas before you were simply following Jesus day by day, trusting that each day was part of his plan to form you and unite you with himself, now, even as this continues, another dimension is added.

Catherine Doherty writes about it this way:

“As you open to be engulfed by him, [you are] lifted up, made as if you were somebody to be mocked… Madonna House is founded on allowing itself to be cleansed, brushed away, if need be torn apart by God himself… God, the surgeon; Our Lady, the nurse.

“We” Not “I”

“God cuts deep, as well he should, because Madonna House is founded on a word called ‘we’ and not on a word called ‘I.’ The ‘I’ very slowly eliminates itself” (unpublished manuscript).

The events that surround this experience are multifold but can include such things as rejection, misunderstanding, ridicule, loneliness, failures of one kind or another, and weariness.

Of course, we are not promoting these situations (!). We are only saying that Christ enters these painful times to bring astounding gifts of grace and communion with himself.

Catherine would assure us (and she knew it from personal experience) that all of this was not for naught. Rather it is part of God’s plan for the spiritual fruitfulness of his disciples, a plan which is an imitation of the pattern of Christ himself.

The Journey

Because in the pathway of the priestly journey, as described here, there is a real dying to self that Christ might live more in the man.

Then whatever the priest does, in whatever activity he is engaged, Christ himself acts in a powerful new way. In Catherine’s words:

“There is a moment in each person’s life where they turn to God and say, ‘Here I am, Lord; speak, thy servant heareth.’ That means they have turned away from everything to God… Now, at long last, they have a wounded heart.

And a wounded heart, penetrated by love, means that now their heart is a door through which a hundred, a thousand, a million people are led to God” (Madonna House, What Is It?, an unpublished manuscript).

May the Lord grant us many priests who have the grace and the courage to make this journey. Kieran, we rejoice in your ordination and assure you of our love and prayers as you begin this new step in your service of the Master!