By Father Anthony F. Raso
I AM PARTICULARLY happy today to have the opportunity to offer this column to you because today is my 40th anniversary in the priesthood. I was ordained by Bishop Francis Mugavero on Saturday, May 10, 1975 in the Church of SS. Simon and Jude, Gravesend, where I had been serving as a deacon.
The night before, as I knelt beside my bed, I was surrounded by such a sense of happiness at what was going to happen to me the next morning that I was amazed by the purity of that joy. It was my heart most of all that was ready to assume the priesthood and that above all, was the greatest gift I’ve ever received from my Father in Heaven. That gift has sustained me in all of the years to come.
And there have been many times through these years when I did, in fact, need to be “sustained” by Him. I was not then, and certainly am not now, the best and brightest and strongest priest in the Church. I have made my mistakes, and still do. I have suffered in different times from physical problems that have left me somewhat crippled. I have also struggled with depression which has been the most difficult problem of all. Some of the challenges I have faced in a Church which has changed so much in the past four decades have left me with the realization that, without the help of God, I could not have made it through.
Still on the Journey
However, I have made it through. I’m still here – mistakes and all – and today I am giving thanks to my Father in Heaven for never having left my side, not for a moment. The priesthood has been a challenge but infinitely more, it has been an undiluted blessing. The joy I felt the night before my ordination was no false experience. It was a message from God that He and I were about to take a journey together filled with some surprising twists and some disconcerting turns but one that would be – and has been – filled with light and strength and peace.
Why has this been so? The reason is to be found in our readings this weekend.
Open to the Spirit
In the First Reading, Peter finds that as he continues his ministry, he still has a lot to learn (a feeling that I myself have felt many times in the past 40 years!), but he is ready to listen to the Holy Spirit.
Things had changed since the evening of the Last Supper and the morning of Pentecost. He is now ready to reach out, not only to those with whom he was surrounded when his journey began, but also to those new Christians among the gentiles who were hearing the call of the Holy Spirit. The Church changes, Peter realizes, but the Love of Christ never changes. “Amen to that!” Peter says and acts upon it with joy.
That joy, as St. John reminds us in our Second Reading, comes from love and love is from God for God is love. What was making me so happy on the night before my ordination was the unmistakable feeling that what I was doing that next morning was right for me and for all of those whom I would be, if imperfectly, serving in the Church.
There have been many times through these years when I suspected that God made an unprecedented mistake and allowed the wrong guy to be ordained on that morning in May. However, God does not make mistakes. His love is never wrong. When we feel His love as strongly as I felt it in my room that night, it is real and true, and we can depend on it always. I felt His love that night and, thanks be to Him, I was right abut that.
The key to it all, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel today, is to love one another. Even when it is hard to forgive and seems absolutely impossible to forget, we need to trust in Him because He loves us and knows whom He has chosen, even if we occasionally wonder about that.
In the Gospel, He’s speaking to His Apostles, giving them courage on the night before He dies. As a matter of fact, they will all let Him down that night – John just a little, Peter a lot – but He’ll forgive them and never stop loving them, just as He will never stop loving us and believing in us who have been baptized, confirmed, reconciled, married and some of us, ordained or accepted into the religious life, before the altar of God.
“Whatever you ask the Father in My Name, He will give you” (John 16:23) But remember: Love one another and never stop.
Faith, Joy and Hope
I still find it incredible that God chose me in the first place and that 40 years later, I am one of those who are still here. That is a miracle as far as I’m concerned, but it is a miracle of faith and joy and love.
It is also the miracle that takes place when God makes it clear that He loves you, He’s chosen you and that He will always be walking beside you. He made that promise to me 40 years ago and He’s kept it. Furthermore, I know that He will always keep it and it is for this that I thank Him most of all today, tomorrow and always.
Readings for the Sixth Sunday of Easter:
Acts 10: 25-26, 34-35, 44-48
Psalm 98: 1, 2-3, 3-4
1 John 4: 7-10
John 15: 9-17
Father Anthony F. Raso is the parochial vicar at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Dyker Heights.