My Dear Friends,
I am writing this bulletin letter a few days before the great event of a priestly ordination, but you are reading this presumably after the ordination has taken place. As you read this, if everything went as planned, we have two new priests in the Archdiocese of Hartford, Father Joseph MacNeill and Father Matthew Collins.
It is a time to celebrate in our archdiocese as these two men have answered God’s call to serve his church as priests. We rightly celebrate the other numerous ordinations that have taken place or will take place in the coming days as well. Our lector, Louise Cody, also is celebrating the ordination of her nephew that also took place yesterday. It is good for us to remember that we need priests in order to have the Eucharist, and we pray these priests, and all priests, are devoted to the Blessed Sacrament and to the reverent celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The following is a prayer by Cardinal Richard Cushing.
O Almighty, Eternal God, look upon the face of your Son and for love of Him, who is the Eternal High Priest, have pity on your priests. Remember, O most compassionate God, that they are but weak and frail human beings. Stir up in them the grace of their vocation which is in them by the imposition of the bishop’s hands. Keep them close to You, lest the enemy prevail against them, so that they may never do anything in the slightest degree unworthy of their sublime vocation. O Jesus, I pray for Your faithful and fervent priests; for Your unfaithful and tepid priests; for Your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields; for Your tempted priests; for the lonely and desolate priests; for Your young priests; for Your dying priests; for the souls of Your priests in purgatory. But above all, I commend to You the priests dearest to me, the priest who baptized me, the priests who have absolved me from my sins, the priests at whose Masses I have assisted and who have offered me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion, the priests who have taught and instructed me or helped me and encouraged me, and the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way. O Jesus, keep them close to Your heart, and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity. Amen.BACK TO LIST