“I am bound by the vows if have made, God, I will pay you a debt of thanks for you have saved my life from death.” (Ps 56:12)
One of the traditions of ordination is that you give holy cards to all who come to celebrate and participate in the Mass. I took this part of the preparation for ordination very seriously and thought long and hard on the image for the face of the card. I chose St. Joseph holding the child Jesus. I did this for the reason that my birthday falls on the Memorial of Joseph the Worker and his patronage and prayers for me during my life helped me to understand how I was to be a faith filled Christian man.
The second part of the tradition was the choosing of a piece of Sacred Scripture to place on the back of the card. This is a great challenge. But one line stuck in my head. It is the verse of the Psalm that is at the top of this reflection. It occurs in the Liturgy of the Hours in the daytime prayer on Thursday of week two and yet this line would cause me to pause and reflect on the blessing and generosity of God and how my call to serve Him and his holy people had saved my life from death.
We as a Church believe that prayer forms us. Prayer takes our soul and through the whispering of God’s love molds us into the people God has made in his own image. Prayer allows us to speak candidly with God and to humbly hear and act on his call to serve, to share and to bless.
In my vocation as priest I continue to discover the truth of prayer that forms the soul. Each day, for the past ten years, I have taken that short verse of the Psalm and offered it in thanksgiving to God. I offer prayer in the Eucharist, in each Sacrament I celebrate with the community, as a gift of thanksgiving to our God. It is in the repetition daily of this prayer that I struggle to do my Father’s will is living my vows and promises made at ordination. Yet, it is within this struggle that I truly discover the divine life of Jesus resting in my soul.
People will often ask, “What is the best part of being a priest?” I think each priest will struggle with this answer because God offers us so many blessings but I always come back to this one central moment: I am permitted to share the gift of prayer with others as a minister of God’s mercy. It is in prayer that the conversation of God’s love shines through the darkness and illuminates life with the peace that can only be discovered in the truth of Jesus the true Son of God. That is the true blessing, the best part of serving God and his people.
God Bless
Fr. Mark
God you did everything you promised and I’m thanking you with all my heart. You pulled me out of the brink of death, my feet from the cliff-edge of doom. (Ps 56:12) from “The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language”
