PARENTS AND FAMILY OF PRIESTS
(On the Year for Priests)

(Homily delivered by His Eminence Gaudencio B. Cardinal Rosales, Archbishop of Manila,
during the Mass on the Day of Parents and Siblings of Priests on May 17, 2010, at 6 p.m.
at the Manila Cathedral.)

The Holy Father Benedict XVI declared that the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus 2009 to the Feast of the feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus 2010 would be the celebration of the Year for Priests all over the world in order to memorialize the 150th anniversary of the death of Saint John Mary Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests. In many of our parishes and arch/dioceses, the priests have been prayed for; programs and seminars on the priesthood were held. The Second National Congress of Priests last January 25 – 29, 2010 was a most grace-filled celebration for, and among priests.

Lest we forget, there are still many people that, in the Archdiocese of Manila, we will have to thank for, pray for, and embrace in our priestly life and ministry --- they are our parents, our sisters and brothers and their families. Through sheer priestly ordination we have already made it possible for them to belong to the signal Levitical family. This afternoon we pause to celebrate with families the gift of the priesthood and their continuing role in our Priesthood.

Let us together celebrate the “immense gift which priests represent not only for the Church, but also for humanity itself”.

Let us not only cling to the claim that they, our parents, gave us life. We truly love our parents for the life they shared with us, and for mentoring us through this great gift of life from God and for accompanying us in the path of virtue, early enough almost as soon as we understand what goodness and right are. When we were young we learned to live with values from our parents. We heard with amazement the stories of goodness from our elders. Parents retold to us the stories of Jesus, Son of God, friend and lover of men and women.

It is first from our parents that we learned how to pray. And we learned prayer from them, both by example and struggle. Sometimes we totally take for granted the role of praying parents in the determining of our priestly vocation or the very beginning of liking to be a priest. “Parents should accompany the formative journey with prayer, respect, the good example of the domestic virtues and spiritual and material help, especially in difficult moments.” (PDV, 68)

No one can sufficiently value the example of prayer in the lives of parents. From the memoirs of the late Pope John Paul II we read this. “After the death of my mother and later the death of my older brother, I was left alone with my father, a deeply religious man. Day after day I was able to observe the austere way in which he lived. By profession he was a soldier and, after my mother’s death, his life became one of constant prayer. Sometimes I would wake up during the night and find my father on his knees, just as I would always see him kneeling in the parish church. We never spoke about a vocation to the priesthood, but his example was in a way my first seminary, a kind of domestic seminary” (JP-II, Gift and Mystery, p.20).

Praying parents are nearly all destined to be mothers or fathers of a nun, a brother or a priest. Parents who pray make the appeal of Jesus their very own: “I have revealed your name to those whom you took from the world to give me. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now at last they have recognized that all you have given me comes from you, for I have given them teaching you gave to me, and they have indeed accepted it and know for certain that I came from you, and have believed that it was you who sent me. It is for them that I pray” (John 17:6-9).

Parents who pray become aware that the children they pray for are in reality God’s children, who have just been entrusted to them only to care for. And so it makes sense that, sometimes, God will call them back to Himself to share His love with others beyond their family.

Generous Parents

Once I met a couple, a very fine pair of a beautiful young woman and an accomplished man, a professional, who truly love each other as young Christians. For more than ten years they prayed for a child. They were childless. Childlessness brought them closer to each other and even more so, closer to God who gave them that fate of childlessness. Their prayer was answered with a blessing and a beautiful daughter was given the couple on their eleventh year of marriage. I met them again and gave them a blessing, this time to a family. They announced publicly, that they are going to pray that the Lord will one day give a vocation to this little girl. Contemplative vocation, if possible, so that, after taking good care of this child and lavishing on her the love she deserves as a child of God, they could return her to whom she really belongs.

Parents of priests, that is exactly what you pray for and do, when you allow your sons to become priests. You return to God a young man whom God may freely use in order to reach out to others, and bring them the goodness and love of a caring Divinity.

More than this, a priest who comes from a family brings with him all the goodness and the uprightness he picked up from his clan. Like a little investment on a trade, the priest brings with him the reverence, the compassion, the honesty he learned to live with among his parents and siblings.

Parents and family elders “should accompany the formative journey with prayer, respect, the good example of domestic virtues and spiritual and material help, especially in difficult moments” (PDV, 68).

I will end with a conversation I had once with my aging mother and father. They admitted to me that when I entered the seminary for the first time, they shed tears, much tears and had experienced some troublesome sense of loss. I asked them why? They said that they had a fear of losing me, and would not be able to see me again (soon). “You will be difficult to see and to visit”. But then they laughed loudly together. But now we found out we were wrong. This time I asked them again, “Why?” your brothers and sisters are now all married and have their own families. They hardly have time to visit us, but as a priest, you find time to be with us.

Today, in this Eucharistic celebration honoring the Priesthood we all share, we brother priests take the time to be with you, our dear parents. We celebrate and pray with you that we may continue to see where God needs you and us. Thank You. God Bless.

+G.B. ROSALES
5-17-10