Catholic Diocese of Broome

Viewpoint - A vocation as a priest: chosen to serve

By Bishop Christopher Saunders DD

My work in parishes, communities and remote settlements in the Kimberley has passed its thirty-fourth year. I came here to Broome as a Deacon to take up my first appointment in 1975. It has been a marvellous experience, a privileged one, a life that has been lived in joy, without burden and always in happy expectation, filled with hope. Certainly it has not been without its challenges and demands. There have been sad times too. The loss of life among the young still takes its toll and when it is by their own hand I am sometimes overwhelmed with a deep anguish. The optimism in my life is momentarily stalled but always my faith intervenes to lift me up, to support, and to continue the journey. Happily, with Saint Paul, I am convinced that ‘nothing can separate us from the love of God.’

I am grateful for this conviction. Grateful to God. Grateful for his gift of the call to serve Him. I am especially grateful for the vocation, the call, to serve Him in ministry. I am grateful to parents, priests, teachers, religious, and others who nurtured that vocation. And grateful every day to be toiling towards a perfectly obedient love of God whose love for me is boundless perfection itself.

Just as all of us are baptized into the priesthood of the faithful so all of us are called to holiness, to that perfection that sometimes eludes us and that sometimes also embraces us. At times I am sorrowful at how poorly I serve my Lord and my neighbour. With Grace, such realization brings me to my knees in humble remorse. And then at times I surprise myself at just how noble in word and deed I can be. I am sure this is the same for anybody who earnestly seeks to live their life in faith, on a higher plane of consciousness, in active communion with God and humanity. We live our life and then review it, judging our well-being not by the standards of those around us but by the person of Christ, our companion and our perfect model of holiness.

It is difficult today to be a priest, especially in modern day Australia. Our secular and shallow society is based on popular culture, shaped by mediocrity and baseness. While there are good qualities among people that aren’t typical of post-modern Australia, we have still to realize as a society that the common good and higher good are best served by uncommon aspirations of altruism and selflessness. There is serious need among us for prophets and a prophetic voice.

As articulators of prayer and worship priests live to connect the Community with the Divine. In that sense they must be prepared to be counter-cultural. Unfortunately this is sometimes interpreted as withdrawing from the world as though the world is in some way intrinsically evil and not a creature of God. Some of the newer ecclesial movements may all too often reflect this prejudice. In fact the opposite is true. While being counter cultural, people of faith, and especially priests, must seek to engage the world and assist society to face its banality - to search out the sacred in the firm belief that it is in this engagement and in blessed communion with the Divine that humanity may be saved.

Now, as much as ever before, the world is in need of priests and the goodness for which their vocations stand. The effectiveness of the priesthood is enhanced by the fact that it is composed of ordinary men who through their witness, their work and their prayerful offerings share with the world an extraordinary message of Good News. As ordinary as they are, by word and deed and sacramental action, they demonstrate most clearly that God is reaching out to his people, to his creation, to Grace us and to assist us to become more fully human, more humanely authentic.

We have begun the Year of the Priest, so proclaimed by The Holy Father on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, 19 June. On that day I was in Rome and I ordained eight men from the Beda College as Deacons, in the Basilica of St Paul, the Apostle’s burial place and therefore a sacred space of resounding significance. I recalled the tireless efforts of this great missionary to the Gentiles and I wondered in my prayer at what a model for priests he continues to be. This year then is an opportune time for all the baptized to be thankful for the priesthood they share through their baptism and to give thanks for the ordained priests who minister to them. It is a good time for priests to be deeply grateful for their vocation, their special calling, to thank God for their ordination to a position of holy privilege born not out of power but out of service to God’s world and His people.

"May the God of hope bring you such joy and peace in your faith that the power of the Holy Spirit will remove all bounds to hope". [Rom 15:13]