All of the surveys show that our diocesan Catholic population is increasing and the priest population is decreasing. The demands for pastoral ministry are increasing and we have fewer diocesan priests doing pastoral ministry.
So Bishop Dennis Sullivan has asked all of us to mindfully encourage vocations to the diocesan priesthood. He has asked priests to tell their own individual stories of their vocations.
Well, it is not easy to reconstruct the past. There is always the temptation to read into the past something that is not there. Yet, I think it is fair to say that my childhood and early life experiences, with the grace of God, had a great impact on my choice to become a priest.
I grew up on a farm in Ireland. There were cows, sheep, pigs, horses, ducks and hens. Milking the cows each morning before going to school and feeding the sheep each afternoon were done with the regularity of a paperboy doing his daily route in the neighborhoods in South Jersey.
The frequent trips on the tractor with my dad as he drove through the farm or went to the local market were always prefaced with a very deliberate sign of the cross on the forehead. This was a reminder that all of us live, move and have our being in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
My mom had a great commitment to first Friday devotions. In hail, rain and snow she had a fidelity to attending Mass and holy Communion. This was a visible sign to me of the value she placed in the Eucharist.
Prayer had a central place in our daily existence. The family rosary was a part of the daily regime. Sunday worship was never missed. May crownings and Corpus Christi processions were annual events. Altar server outings were always something to look forward to.
My neighbors next door, who lived in a small thatched cabin, were a widowed mother in her 70s along with her son and daughter who never married. They modeled how to be human and how to be holy. This remarkable household lived very simply on very little. I could recall that they had an old, well-used Bible from which they would read about the life of Jesus. They would talk about the kind of person Jesus was. They would talk about the stories he told. They would talk about the compassionate way he treated people. They talked about his outreach to the sinner; to the marginalized; to the lonely; to the poor and to the sick.
This family seemed happy to manage a small farm that supplied their daily food necessities. They saturated their daily living with readings from the Bible and praying the rosary. The morning rosary was for world peace. The long form of the rosary in the evening was for all the village people. I always felt special in their presence.
My childhood experiences and early family programming influenced my choice to enter the seminary. This early conditioning and encouragement helped me realize that there was a God. It helped me become aware, ever so vaguely, that I had one life to live and one journey to walk.
The people around me shaped how I saw myself and how I saw my life ahead of me. Their messages awakened me to the reality that God had a mission and a purpose for me.
So the apparent dramatic decision to enter the seminary was merely the outgrowth of a whole series of experiences. Childhood experiences affected my life choices.
Even though much of my time since ordination has been spent doing the same kind of work that other professionals do in other careers, like counseling, comforting, helping, teaching and administration, there was always one big difference. I do it all for someone. That Someone is Jesus. All along, God’s grace was quietly, and in a hidden way, flowing throughout my life, my decisions and my movements.
When you have abandoned all things that hamper the human heart.
And no human hope allures you, and you have forgotten yourself.
And when you have sought him alone and have been together with Christ from morning till night.
And when you have had him alone as guide for your heart.
And wherever it pleased him to lead you – looking ever upwards.
And when in everything you are in him and for him, then you can tell yourself: I am a priest.”
– St. Jakob Gopp
Msgr. Thomas J. Morgan is a retired pastor, Diocese of Camden.
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