Cardinal Edwin F. O’Brien – Thoughts on Our Church

God is calling you to some definite service. He has in mind a specific vocation for you, and within that vocation, some specific work he wants you — and nobody else – to do. You might not be able to see this right away; sometimes you have to be a little older or maybe a lot older to see how God’s hand is guiding you through life. But make no mistake: God is calling you.

I’m delighted to celebrate Holy Mass this morning here at St. Mary’s, and on this occasion, to install Fr. James Boric as your pastor and as your pastor at St. Michael in Clear Spring. He’s been here, of course, more than a year, and in that time, you have come to know what I know: he is a faithful, singlehearted priest and pastor, or to put it another way, he’s the “real deal.”

So on this day of rejoicing and blessing, let us entrust our cares and worries & weaknesses to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, confident that he knows us and loves us more deeply than we could ever know and love ourselves, confident that he bears our burdens and heals our infirmities and that he lead us, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to the Father of mercies.

You are ministers not of ideas but of realities, the “really real” reality of Christ’s Body broken and his Blood outpoured. Ordination will render you a priest sacramentally, but it is in your life of prayer and virtue that you become priests after Christ’s own heart!