I tell people with some regularity that, while I recognize that I am not old by any stretch of the imagination, I am not as young as I once was. Thirty-two is not old, but it is also not twenty-five. I have been revisiting this perspective more
frequently lately, as the fifth anniversary of my ordination is coming up this week, and one wonders where the time has gone. We were often told in seminary that we would have two assignments of three years each as vicars to get our feet wet before we became pastors, so you can imagine my surprise at celebrating three years as a pastor before I got to five years as a priest. Every vocation is a blank check that the Lord fills out as He sees fit, and mine has not proven an exception to that rule.

I wish I had some deeper, more profound wisdom to share with you as I mark this milestone in my priesthood, but as it happens, I’m not terribly bright, and all I can offer you are the little pieces of wisdom that Jesus shares with me in mental prayer. To give you something from my personal store of wisdom would be presumptuous and foolhardy. Instead, I offer you something that has been consistently coming up during my Holy Hour over the last few weeks: the most important expectation we should have of our parish (or any parish, for that matter) is that it should help to make us holier.
 
All of the things that parishes have been in our time are for naught if this central purpose is not met. It is obviously a good thing that the parish often fills other roles such as social center, community outreach hub, and just a good place
in general for people who know they are in need, but don’t know exactly what they need. But if these things supplant or replace the emphasis on growing in a relationship to Our Lord, then we become something much less than what we were made to be. Jesus must be at the center, and everything else flows forth  from Him.

As we continue the Beacons of Light process, this emphasis, the emphasis on holiness, must be at the center of what we do. It is readily apparent that, given the much smaller number of both priests and lay faithful who are visibly incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ in our area these days, things will be much different by the time we get to my fifteenth anniversary of ordination. It might not be what we would have chosen for ourselves, but it is where we are. Fittingly, today the Church celebrates the Ascension, which by all accounts was an occurrence in Church history that the Apostles wanted no part of. Left to their own devices, they would have had Jesus stay with them forever, even though He tells them that it is essential that He return to His Father and send the Holy Spirit into their midst. The Apostles had to let go of their expectations to receive something even greater, something that they did not know they needed. As we, both as a parish region and as an Archdiocese, look to the future, we must adopt the same spirit of the Apostles. We must be willing to let go of the way things were in order to receive what God wants to bring out of it, even though none of us fully understand what that looks like yet. The question our Lord presents to us, both in our vocations, and in the Ascension, is this: do you trust Him? As we draw to the end of the Easter Season, we pray for an increase in trust. Place your life, and your cares for the Church and your parish in God’s hands. He will use that trust to make you a Saint.
 
Prayers always,
Fr. McC