To educate all Catholics on the importance of encouraging others through prayer and activities to promote vocations.

Follow along on Facebook, YouTube and their blog.

“The world is in dire need of priests to celebrate the Eucharist, the heart and the source of our faith,” the archbishop said. “We want to join the Holy Father at the start of this ‘Year of the Priest’ by answering Jesus’ call to pray for workers to bring in the harvest (Luke 10:2). Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networks in the world, so it’s a great medium to get many people involved in this prayer-campaign.”

You can learn more on the Future Priests.com website. Here’s the homepage prayer:

Loving God,

Amen.

One of the ways we can all do this today that’s very different than back then is with online communications tools like Twitter, blogs, podcasts and other forms of social networking like Facebook. Now that we have an iPhone app which allows us to view or listen to Vatican video (wifi connection only) the Pope is calling on young people in particular to use these mechanisms>

It falls, in particular, to young people, who have an almost spontaneous affinity for the new means of communication, to take on the responsibility for the evangelization of this “digital continent”. Be sure to announce the Gospel to your contemporaries with enthusiasm. You know their fears and their hopes, their aspirations and their disappointments: the greatest gift you can give to them is to share with them the “Good News” of a God who became man, who suffered, died and rose again to save all people. Human hearts are yearning for a world where love endures, where gifts are shared, where unity is built, where freedom finds meaning in truth, and where identity is found in respectful communion. Our faith can respond to these expectations: may you become its heralds!

Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me. (Jn. 12:24-26)

All three newly ordained Deacons with Bishop Finn at the end of Mass:


Here I am at the reception with the overjoyed Deacon-soon-to-be-Priest:

Angelo’s brother Matthew is studying at a seminary in Rome and will likely be following his big brother into the priesthood sometime in the next couple of years! Please keep Angelo, Matt and all of our seminarians, priests and deacons in your prayers everyday!!

If you are interested I also have a Flickr account with more pictures from the ordination.

The desire that I have is to reach the poor, and the rich, and every class of society, and race, creed, tribe, tongue and people…

We will be a contemplative/active, evangelistic and teaching order. Contemplative and active, because service is the fruit of prayer, and we wanted nothing apart from prayer and apart from God…

we are in the process of designing the habits. And they will be to the floor (laughs), that’s for sure! We’re going to work with families, we’re going to teach the faith in the convent, we’re going to show films in the convent, we’re going to talk about God. I just want to reach people. I want to help families live for God.

The order will be under the patronage of St. Francis de Sales and they have already received dozens of vocation inquiries.

Regarding the WHO abortion study that I mentioned in Wednesday’s post another conclusion that many come to upon seeing the numbers of abortions carried out world wide is that something must be done to prevent so many “unwanted pregnancies” in the first place. Now that is a rational conclusion. What is irrational, however, is the promotion of contraception as a solution when the underlying problem is immoral sexual behavior to begin with. Now they want to offer birth control to 11 year olds?! We are really failing our children if this is the best we can do. How about teaching them to love and respect their bodies and live out their sexuality in the manner in which God intended? We must reclaim the truth and meaning of human sexuality (which does not include condoms or birth control) if we are to ever dream of having an impact on abortion numbers.

Christopher West boldly asserts that, in the final analysis, the abortion debate is not really about when life begins, but the meaning of sex. Naturally, people don’t advocate abortion because they believe they have a right to kill their own offspring, but because they want to have the right to have sex without limit or consequence. In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, JPII says,

It is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not help the young to accept and experience sexuality and love and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection (n. 97)

So what is this “true meaning” of sexuality? Here’s what I told a group of Confirmation students a few weeks ago…

Read more

On Dec. 5, 1975, Dolan had what he calls his “Road to Damascus” experience. Working on a paper on Gulliver’s Travels, he decided to take a study break. He went over to the center’s book shelf and took down C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. A friend had told him about scene depicting a lizard on a man’s shoulder arguing with his guardian angel on the other. He found it immediately.

“The Holy Spirit used the pages of C.S. Lewis to zap me,” Msgr. Dolan said. Instantly he saw two paths open up before him.

The path of a “numerary,” Opus Dei’s term for members committed to lifelong celibacy, promised “enormous happiness and fruitfulness.”

The other path – that of marriage and a family – also opened up and he saw he could choose it with no problem. He realized instantly, however, the celibate path “was what God wanted” for him…

He’s never experienced any doubt that he made the right decision and remains “grateful” for a “powerful sense I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

“If you give the Holy Spirit ‘carte blanche,’ you just fasten your seat belt and hold on for the ride,” he said. “It’s always pretty good.”

He also said Opus Dei’s support through excellent spiritual direction and the stress on the Sacrament of Penance helps keep any attacks of doubt or conflict at bay. “Nothing gets beyond the level of a brief skirmish,” he said.

Born in 1952, Dolan grew up in Bethesda, Md., as the oldest of six children in a family that took the Catholic faith seriously. His father attended mass daily and his mother converted as a teenager. Dolan said at age 16 he “met Opus Dei just at the right time” through his best friend…

Opus Dei gave him input on how to make his life complete, he said. It helped him develop a disciplined prayer life, take a professional attitude towards his studies, and “aim high in everything I do.”

Pope John Paul II ordained Dolan in 1983 at St. Peter’s in Rome…

Opus Dei celebrates its 50th anniversary of coming to Canada this June, and next year, Msgr. Dolan will celebrate his 10th anniversary here.

I love this part of the article. It’s very typical of an Opus Dei priest:

Msgr. Dolan always wears his clerical collar. In fact, when he was interviewed by CBC Television’s Evan Solomon last year during the height of “The Da Vinci Code” movie controversy, he showed his empty closet, bare except for a few black shirts and slacks off the sparely furnished bedroom bed at his residence in Montreal.

He said the clerical garb signals to others, “I exist for you. How can I serve you?”

“It pays to advertise,” he said, smiling. He often has people coming up to him, asking for prayer. He now makes a practice of going to the train station or the airport at least an hour early so people can approach them. “If priests are invisible, that shuts down,” he said.

The new priests come from Ireland, the Netherlands, the United States, Australia, Germany, Spain, Colombia, Italy, the Philippines, Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, France, Congo, Brazil, Argentina, Kenya and Guatemala.

During the Mass, Bishop Echevarría offered the new priests some advice from Opus Dei’s founder, St. Josemaría Escrivá: “We priests must only speak of God. We will not speak of politics, or social ideologies or questions extraneous to the priestly task. In this way, we will make the Holy Church and the Roman Pontiff loved.”

Brian Maguire, an American who flew to Rome to attend the event, said: “Many Americans are understandably discouraged by the so-called vocations crisis here at home. They should go to Rome. There’s no doubt that God is renewing the Church from its heart in Rome.

“Saturday’s ordinations showed not only that many young men are responding to this call, but that they are doing so generously and enthusiastically when it’s presented to them as a lifelong surrender of self for others.”

Mary, our mother, the Queen of all mothers, we love you! Pray for us!

Heavenly Father, You have been pleased to give all human beings the joy of having a mother, one who works with You to give them life and bring them to human adulthood.

Amen.