Prayer to Jesus Christ in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament plays a major part this January in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s effort to bring men toward priesthood.
“Without the priesthood, there’s no Eucharist, and without the Eucharist, there really is no priesthood,” said Father David O’Brien, the archdiocesan vocations director.
Parishes throughout the five-county area have been invited to choose a day from January 5-11 to invite parishioners to eucharistic adoration, specifically asking for prayer for the men who are discerning the call to holy orders.
“The last five years, parishes would be willing to host holy hours and pray for vocations, in particular through the intercession of St. John Neumann, to have saints in our city that we want to intercede for us,” said Father O’Brien.
“It’s something that (St. John) understood, and he spent most of his discipleship inaugurating these devotions to the Eucharist. It’s where the history of the 40 Hours devotion (began).”
The priest pointed to the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus, during the agony in the garden, asks his disciples to pray with him for an hour (Mt. 26:40).
Father O’Brien asks for prayers for vocations “at the start of a new year for more priests for the local church in Philadelphia.”
The call for adoration and prayer to support the growth of the priesthood also comes at a meaningful time, during the latter stages of the Christmas season.
Father David O’Brien
“It finds us leading up to the Epiphany and the end of the Christmas season, that Christmas reality where Christ wants to be fully in our lives and just to receive that gift,” he said.
“If Christ is the gift that we want to receive, and the priesthood is a gift that’s being given, the Eucharist is a perpetual gift for our lives that we can start to carry these gifts, like the wise men with us wherever we go (to) meditate on what the gifts are that we receive, and just to really hope that people would know that the priesthood is a gift. It’s a great gift.”
Father O’Brien describes how that priestly gift becomes a reality in the way a priest shares the gift of faith on a daily basis.
“It’s something that we are actually ordained to do– to preach and to teach and to sanctify — and that the sanctifying power comes through Christ, but primarily in these sacramental realities, their gifts of healing,” he said.
“What a privilege it is to be a servant to the people every time you celebrate a sacrament, every time you celebrate Mass or confession, just what that does for priests, just the reality that we don’t belong completely to ourselves.”
He added, though, that the prayer he calls the faithful to make in adoration this upcoming week isn’t just for finding new priests. It’s for the needs of priests who already are living the call.
“We are asking the Master of the harvest, and we’re saying we need more priests and we need holy priests, but then to also be praying for priests who have been ordained,” said Father O’Brien.
“Maybe they need prayers for support or for perseverance. Maybe they need prayers for thanksgiving, to be consoled by the Lord. It’s a conversation with the heart of Christ, saying, ‘Lord, we want you to be able to reach the hearts of young people so that they can grow. But we also need you to reach the hearts of people who are serving and trying to faithfully live out their vocations and just the daily grind of life.’”
Later in January, high school men who may feel the priesthood could be their calling will get a chance to encounter seminary and priestly life through a “Come and See” weekend, on Jan. 25 and 26 at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary.
“We’re hopeful that a couple of good young men will join the seminary by really getting to experience the life of the seminarians and some of the concrete reality,” said Father O’Brien.
Participants will live the daily life of the seminary community “with seminarians who are able to really share their story and share their experience, and then pray together in a holy hour and spend some time getting to know each other (with) room for silence, to let the Lord speak to our hearts,” said Father O’Brien, “just the ability to be in the place where they could be formed to be priests.”
Click here for more information on the Come and See weekend.
Share this story