Priests’ Pre-Lenten Day of Prayer
Holy Hour and Vespers
St. Mary’s Seminary and University, Roland Park
February 9, 2026
At this stage of life, I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of the fundamental option. Like all of you, I studied this concept in my seminary moral theology classes. In my 20’s, it was an abstraction. In my 70’s, it is very real.
I also think about it differently than I used to. For one thing, I realize more clearly who it is that first exercises the fundamental option. It is not I. It is the Lord who called me and chose me – called me to be his follower and called me to be his adopted son – and then called me to be a priest. “It is not you who chose me, but I who chose you.” The true fundamental option belongs to the Lord.
In the grace of the Holy Spirit, my lifelong task is to respond, to accept with every fiber of my being the call and grace of the call. It is my encounter with the Lord in the communion of the Church that has shaped the course of my life. I have learned by prayer, penance, and spiritual direction, that accepting the call of the Lord is requires a daily sacrifice of my will, and that it is possible, even in an instant, to nullify the call I have received.
It is the Lord who first acts, who first exercises the fundamental option. From our side, the fundamental option has to do not only with who one is and what one does – but how one lives, interacts with others, and serves, day in and day out. At my time of life, the characteristic pattern is clearer than it used to be. Characteristic strengths and weaknesses, virtues and vices, coupled with the hope that the Lord isn’t done with me yet, coupled with the hope that the clay hasn’t become hard and brittle.
They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. They say that, after a certain point in life, change is next to impossible – that people of a certain age are set in their ways. They are wrong! We might find ourselves stuck in one rut or another. We may have even grown old in one vice or another. But the Lord’s grace is alive, fresh, powerful, and always young! It is powerful enough to change us and to advance us in holiness at every stage of life.
That is why daily prayer, especially before the Blessed Sacrament, is so precious. Heart speaks to heart. The call is renewed. The fundamental option – God’s and ours – is affirmed. Grace is given. Life abounds.