4th Sunday of Easter

One of the things cheese often does to me if I eat it in the evening is wake me up in the middle of the night. And so, having enjoyed some delicious ‘manchego’ with Spanish ham, some nice bread and a glass or two of Tio Pepe during the Manchester United v Arsenal game on Wednesday, I found myself lying wide awake at 2.30. in the morning. Normally I sleep like a log, and so, when I don’t, I tend not to take very kindly to it. But on this occasion it proved to be a blessing in disguise in that, as I lay there turning things over in my mind, the confusion I had been feeling all week about today’s homily cleared up and I knew basically what I wanted to say to you on this World Day of Prayer for Vocations. I have been ordained forty years this year and what I want to tell you is how good it has been – most of the time, anyway!

There are several key moments in my story, the first being in the spring of 1957. That was the time when I came in from playing football on the piece of waste ground across the road to be greeted by these words from my mother. “Father Conway was here to see if you do want to go to Blairs.’ As she said this, I had one foot in the kitchen and one on the living room and in that split second I had, as I have explained to you before, the most powerful experience of God in my whole life. Even at the age of eleven, I knew with absolute certainty that the answer was yes, and as a result of that ‘yes’ a journey began which has brought me to this parish, to this Mass and to this homily here today.

The journey, of course, has taken me through many stages, and in just a few minutes I could not begin to tell the whole story. I spent six years in Blairs as a boy, moving from there in 1963 to the Royal Scots College in Spain. I loved Spain and made good friends there. And often, when I am sitting at a pavement cafe of a warm summer’s evening, either in one of its many beautiful cities or in some little village somewhere, I think of bishop McGee, who sent me there, and thank God for him.

But at the age of twenty four I left Spain, came home to Scotland and was ordained in Muirkirk on 5th July 1969. After spending a few weeks that summer in St Paul’s parish in Ayr – largely because the parish provided Mass in Butlins – I was sent to St Andrew’s, Dumfries, with the same Father Conway who had asked that question in 1957. On reflection, that wasn’t bishop McGee’s best ever idea and my first year as a priest wasn’t desperately happy. Basically I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing and spent many an afternoon driving around the town in a mini van rather than sit in the house doing nothing, an experience which proved useful later on when I was asked to provide help and support to the newly ordained priests of the diocese. I sometimes wonder, though, what would have happened had I been left in Dumfries at that time. But God, in his goodness, rescued me from the situation and I was sent back to Blairs to teach Spanish. From there I emerged in 1975, at the age of thirty, and came to St Michael’s here in Kilmarnock. Actually, I didn’t want to come to Kilmarnock at all. Ayr looked much more attractive to me at that time. Fortunately, though, we don’t always get what we want in life, and apart from five years in Sanquhar, Kirkconnel and New Cumnock I have been here ever since, twenty nine years in total.

During my time in Kilmarnock many important things have happened to me, the five years I spent as full-time chaplain to St Joseph’s Academy among them. God taught me so much during that time and I am grateful to him for it. But by far the most important thing that happened during those twenty nine years was the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius in 1989, twenty years ago this year, twenty years after my ordination and thirty two years after that day in 1957. So much happened during those thirty days of silence and prayer, but two things in particular stand out.

The first was the way God showed me the world as the God-filled place it is. Everything we see, touch, smell, hear or taste is filled with God. Everything we do is done in God. We are surrounded by God every moment of every day. God holds us in existence. We are experiencing God all the time except that it is such a familiar experience to us that we fail to recognize it for what it is. And to see this and know that it’s true was, for me, a life-changing experience.

And the second thing that happened was the realisation that, although I desperately wanted to, I could not share this experience with you back here; that, in the words of the Gospel story of the Marriage Feast at Cana, ‘only those who drew the water knew.’ And so, ever since then, priesthood for me has been about helping individual people draw that water themselves through retreats, spiritual direction and, above all, those same Spirtual Exercises. And it has been wonderful. I have seen miracles happen on an almost daily basis and every day I thank God for it.

But, of course, it hasn’t always been easy. The first few years here, for example, were very difficult. But the main source of pain for me during forty years of priesthood has been the Church itself. My friend Fr Eddie McGhee often says that he hates Catholics, and I know what he means. The back of last week’s bulletin carried a quote from the writer Carlo Carreto which expressed my experience exactly and I would like to quote from it. In it, he speaks to the Church and this is what he says. “How much I must criticise you my Church and yet how much I love you. You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than anyone. You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in this world have I seen anything more compromised, more false, and yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous, more beautiful.”

That, for me, says it all. It’s what priesthood has been about for the last forty years of my life. And what I want to tell you today is that it’s been great.


BIDDING PRAYERS


In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of how the Father knows what we need before we even ask for it. In Luke’s Gospel, he tells us that those who ask always receive, those who seek always find and that the Father does not give us a snake when we asked for a fish or a stone when we asked for bread. What many today call a shortage of vocations, therefore cannot be about God not giving us something that we need.’ And so we pray for the grace to know what it IS about...........Lord hear us

The reality we have to deal with, and through which God is revealing something important to us, is that we do have fewer ordained priests than in the recent past and that those we have are growing older. This is a fact, a truth staring us in the face, and it has implications for the way we function as a Church in the 21st century. Many priests today are well beyond retirement age and we pray for the generosity of heart to recognize this and give them the care and support they need.............Lord hear us

As communities centred on the Eucharist, our parishes will always need ordained priests. But there are many ministries to be performed within parishes which are not the job of the ordained priest. They belong, rather, to mature adults who, through baptism and confirmation, share in the priesthood of Jesus in their own unique way. And so we ask God to raise up many such men and women of mature faith willing to exercise their priesthood within our parish communities..............Lord hear us

As we move into a time when there will be fewer and physically less able ordained priests, it is obvious that some things will have to change. Parishes will have to close. Some will amalgamate and many will have to share a priest with another parish. And yet, despite these facts staring us in the face, many people stubbornly refuse to accept them. And so we ask God to give us the flexibility and openness to new situations that we will need in the coming years..........Lord hear us

St John, in the second reading, speaks of how what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed. He is speaking of what lies beyond death, but his words can be applied to life before death too. Our God is a God of surprises, a God who is always doing a new thing, a God whose dream for us is always infinitely greater than anything we can imagine. And so, at this particular moment in history, we pray for the vision we need to see this God at work in the Church...........Lord hear us

Although it isn’t possible that God is not calling people to priesthood in the numbers we need, it is possible that some are not recognizing that call. There are things in our culture which militate against their doing so. There is the struggle with permanent commitment, the excessive materialism of our age and the glorification of sexuality above every other aspect of what it is to be human. And so pray that those whom God is calling to priesthood will hear that call and respond to it.........Lord hear us