From Fr Greg's Desk: 16th August

25 years of Priestly Service to the Church

Hi everyone!

The 13th August 2020 marked a real milestone in my life.  That was the day I recalled the unforgettable moment 25 years ago when I was laying face down before the altar of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of LLuc in Mallorca, Spain, receiving ordination to the Priesthood. It was a very significant event in my life, and still is; my priestly ordination, back in 1995, changed my life radically. It wasn’t just a 'cosmetic' or 'career' change; it was a profound focusing of my entire life into what I had always wanted to be: someone who spends his entire life in service to the Lord and to his people, if possible 24/7. Existing to serve. 

My reaching this milestone is the fruit of a long list of people. My mother, Joan Morgan and my Grandmother, Kit McCarthy, taught me about the goodness and the joy of serving.  

St Paul says a curious thing to Timothy in his second letter, indicating how his own faith had a lot to do with that of his family.

“I also remember your sincere faith, a faith which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice, and I am sure dwells also in you”. (2 Tim 1, 5)

I, too, recognise that I learned the value and the joy of gratuitous service from the faith filled examples of my maternal Grandmother, Kit McCarthy, and my mother, Joan.  My grandmother's tireless service in homes for the aged, dancing for them and singing those old songs they loved and knew so well brought joy into their hearts. She did all this, gnarled as she was with arthritis in her fingers and serious angina in her heart. In the end she died of a heart attack when I was about 20, as her body just couldn’t keep up with her. But what a good, joyful woman Kit McCarthy was, and what a rich legacy she left me.

My mothers’ service to us seven kids, widowed at the age of 46, with four of us still under the age of 16, was also the stuff of legend. A husband - my dad -  whose war service affected him permanently with what we would call today PTSD, would drink excessively, albeit quietly, and left her with the responsibility of raising and managing a family of that size. How tough was that? Yet Mum still just kept ploughing on. “Roll with the punches” was one of Mum’s motto’s to me. 

Yes, like St Paul, I remember their simple no-frills faith, and their utter goodness and love. A priestly missionary vocation has its roots in family members like them, and can be traced back to their contagious love.

I also had the example of the Patrician Brothers at Fairfield. I particularly remember Br Chris, and a former principal at Holy Cross, Br Anthony, who along with Br Mark, Br Celestine and others, helped shape my future priestly life. On Saturday mornings, I would happily mow lawns and rake up clippings alongside them. But I loved it, and it taught me the princely joy of gratuitous service. it marked me out for the life I now live. Br Aengu, too, has been a mighty example of leadership to me since becoming a priest, and especially of late in leading Ryde-the Gladesville Parish. I thank them for that.

In working in this Parish, their example still speaks volumes to me, when I feel really tired or particularly daunted by something.  But it is at the Lord’s service, that is what I was born to be. And that needs an audacious heart. For, as St. Paul tells Timothy, in that same reading I mentioned:

“God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but the spirit of power and love and self-control. So you must never be ashamed of witnessing to our Lord…” (2 Tim 1, 6-7)

Sound advice that, St Paul! Power and love and self-control. I think these are three qualities I still need from the Holy Spirit for the next 25 years. Pray for them for me, if you will, when you remember me in your prayers!

Ordination to the priesthood, however, has marked my life indelibly. Of that I have no doubt. Becoming a priest has changed the man who I was and has shaped and formed the man that I am now. My ordination was the moment I was thrust out of obscurity and into the light of ‘public service’, to others and to the Church. And it meant daily service, daily preaching, daily self-sacrifice, at a level I had never felt before.

I was almost immediately sent to the USA, in 1995, and I arrived there literally two weeks after my ordination, and was thrust into an apostolate that was utterly demanding. Weekend after weekend, between 80 to 150 people would come in an almost never ending series of retreats and what we call, convivencias, at which I had to give my priestly service. My first weekend there, I was the only priest confessing some 150 people. That Saturday afternoon, I heard confessions which began at 4.30 pm and finished some time after 1 am. Yet, I wasn’t tired or unhappy afterwards; actually I remember the satisfaction, joyful and fulfilled of being a full-time missionary.

Priesthood also gave me a platform to channel a missionary life that I didn’t know how to focus of myself. I needed a venue, a placement. Since I lacked courage, I needed something to make me respond, and it led me through many of my self-imposed limitations to grow in ways I had never dreamed possible. I, who had been the most frightened of public speakers, had to learn to swim in those heavy seas. It was and still is daunting, but priesthood has done that for me.

My priestly mission led me to the Philippines, to Rome, where I formed part of the international government of our Fraternity, and from there to a host of other countries (Spain, England, Ireland, Hungary, Germany, Mexico ...) 

The last seven years of my life as a missionary priest in Sydney has also been a real gift. Having to preach virtually every day and not repeat the stories, for years on end; that is something I now treasure. My homilies, nearly all of them written word for word, have formed a kind of Corpus Morganium which I never knew existed, but are very much mine, with a lot of help from my friends.

What I have also learned is how priestly ministry truly is a modern form of martyrdom. And I don't say that negatively... The sacrificial nature of the priesthood is not just in ‘saying the mass’ but in ‘being a living part’ of the sacrifice of the Mass. I cannot tell you how often it occurs to me that, when I say the words, “This is my body, this is my blood’, it feels that it is not only Jesus saying it through my vocal cords, but it is me as well that I am offering up. 

And it is real… A priest of my community once said to us that we are associating ourselves so closely to Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross in that moment of the Eucharist, that we are literally joining ourselves to Jesus, 'through him, with him and in him'. And to his sacrifice on the Cross. As we raise the chalice and the ciborium, Jesus is raising our priestly lives up to God, along with the lives of all those who are there at the Mass, concelebrating with us. For each and every one of us concelebrate the Mass, even if only one priest presides.

Anointing of the sick has also been a revelation to me of the power of the sacraments. And the experience of leading funeral services and requiem masses. I think that was the thing I was most dreading, as a young priest. It is now the place where I feel I am doing my best priestly and missionary ministry. It is there where you are given a unique opportunity to reach out to people who are wounded, hurting, and maybe feeling lost and bereft, and bring Jesus and his consolation somehow to them.

But, more than anything else, what I feel right now in my heart is immense gratitude because of the constant, endless patience, mercy and forgiveness of God towards me. I have probably tried his patience a little too much. There were times in which the grass did, indeed, appear 'to be greener on the other side of the fence'. I have put on my own 'spiritual tantrums', stamped my feet and put on a scrawled up face before God my Father, Mary my real mother, and all the rest of heaven. I have lived out the reality of the prodigal son way too many times in my life, and yet been welcomed back home into Jesus' arms, with something akin to a hero’s welcome each time, something that still astounds me to this day.

And yet, despite my glaring deficiencies, my calamitous faults and failings, my countless attempts to throw in the towel, here I am after 25 years, a testament to the tireless patience of God and, as St. Paul says:

"relying on the power of God, who has saved us and called us to be holy – not because of anything we ourselves have done, but for his purpose and by his own grace." (1 Tim 1, 8-9)

Never a truer word spoken. My life as a missionary and priest was the impossible made possible. When one of the Verbum Dei Missionaries first saw me walk into the Poblado of the Verbum Dei Community (Siete Aguas, Spain) for the first time, back in December 1986, told me – much later on – that when she first saw me, she had said to herself … “tich, tich, tich, 'este no durara ni seis meses.' which roughly translated means: 'this one won't last six months!"

That was back in 1986. 34 years later and, by the grace of God, we are still going strong, the Lord and !. And, if it be his will, perhaps another 25?? 

So thank you for all your prayers and support over the last 30 months of my time at Ryde-Gladesville. I am very glad to have been called and chosen for this ministry and I pray we can together do great things for our Lord in the coming years. 

Your brother, in Christ's service,  

Fr Greg