How to Pray for Vocations

Introduction

No shepherds to feed and lead

Twice the New Testament speaks of the heart of Jesus being moved with pity for the crowds because they were “like sheep without a shepherd.” On one occasion a huge crowd thronged about him, and it was getting late and everyone was hungry. Scripture says, “The heart of Jesus was moved with pity for the people because they were like sheep without a shepherd” to feed them. So he multiplied the loaves and the fishes for them (Mark 6: 34).

The gospel today says, “At the sight of the crowds, the heart of Jesus was moved with pity for the people because they were troubled and abandoned like sheep without a shepherd” to lead them. So he multiplied shepherds for them by choosing twelve apostles (Mt 9: 36;10: 1-4)). The Living Bible with its folksy translation reads, “The heart of Jesus felt pity for the crowds that came because their problems were so great, and they didn’t know what to do or where to go for help. They were like sheep without a shepherd to lead them.”

The crisis

If Jesus looked with pity upon the crowds who were like sheep without a shepherd to lead them, with what pity would Jesus look upon us Catholics today who daily are becoming more and more sheep without shepherds. God’s priestly people has a crisis on its hands—a critical shortage of priests.

When winter hits Wisconsin with a vengeance, I have the luxury of escaping deep into the heart of Texas as a snowbird. The winter before last I celebrated an Ash Wednesday Mass in a little country parish of St. Anthony. I was taking the place of the pastor whom I had never met. I was told that he is sickly and actually says Sunday Mass sitting on a high chair in front of the altar. And here I was, a spring chicken of 79 years, limping in to help the poor old man. We, the Church, have a crisis on our hands, and a band-aid will not solve the problem.

Last winter before heading south, I called the Vicar General of the Houston-Galveston Archdiocese. I asked whether I could be of some help in a parish near Alvin, Texas, where my sister lives (also the hometown of the famous pitcher, Nolan Ryan). I can still hear the surprise and delight in his voice. Right off the bat he said, “Oh, you’re an answer to our prayers. One of our priests just suddenly died and isn’t even buried yet, and we do, indeed, need help for the moment.” He was speaking about a beloved pastor named Fr. Bill and about a parish in a little blue-collar town named Freeport on the Gulf of Mexico. Here again I was limping in at a ripe old age of 80 to help. We, the Church, have a crisis on our hands, and a band-aid will not solve the problem.

We remember the days of our abundance when the church used to abound with priests. A diocese or a religious order would ordain as many as ten to fifteen priests yearly. In those days every sizeable parish had at least one or two assistant priests. Now three parishes are forced to form coalitions with funny names like “the Church of the Three Holy Women,” and some young priest beloved by all has to pony-back from one parish to another for Sunday masses, like a circuit judge of early frontier days. The nicer the poor guy is, the sooner he’s going to burn out. We, the Church, have a crisis on our hands, and a band-aid will not solve the problem.

That crisis of ours is almost thirty years old. Crises shouldn’t be left to die of old age; they should be met as challenges. Most of the time we look upon them negatively. We cry out, “Oh, my gosh, we’ve got a crisis on our hands!” But there’s an old oriental wisdom which looks upon crises positively as moments of decision and opportunity to be faced with a sense of innovation and adventure. Importing an 80 year old to solve the problem of a dying priesthood might be necessary for the immediate moment, but it is not an innovative or adventurous way to solve the problem in the long run.

Asking the master of the harvest

In the gospel today Jesus says, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.” Again the Living Bible gives us a folksy translation: “Then Jesus said, `The harvest is so great and the workers are so few. So pray to the one in charge of the harvesting and ask him to recruit more workers for his harvest fields.’”

Fourteen years ago Archbishop Rembert Weakland was ready to pray to the one in charge of the harvesting (Pope John Paul II) and ask him to recruit more workers for his harvest fields. Addressing the crisis in a long pastoral letter to the Church of Milwaukee, after many careful qualifications, Rembert wrote, “I would be willing to help the community surface a qualified candidate for the ordained priesthood, even though that person would be a married man. And without raising false expectations or unfounded hopes for him or the community, I would be willing to present such a candidate to the Pastor of the Universal Church (the Pope) for his light and guidance” (Catholic Herald, January 10, 1991).

Dishing out blame

Such a request in some way blames the law of celibacy for the shortage of priests. Though it’s not the only cause or even the most important cause of the crisis, that law is, indeed, a cause. For there are fine healthy young men out there who might want to be not only the husband of a woman and the father of children but also an ordained priest of God.

Some blame the shortage on the clergy sex-abuse which has rocked the church in recent years. There’s some truth to that, too. Who wants to become a priest, when priesthood these days carries a bad reputation? Though it must be said (and I say it) that an honest statistic claims that only 4% of priests have been sexual abusers (4% too many). 96% of us are not. The media, especially the local newspaper, has often failed to communicate that sense of fairness.

Blame celibacy or blame the scandal of sex abuse. Father Andrew Greeley finds something else to blame. He has a yen for good statistics. He quotes a survey in the Los Angeles Times on why Catholics become disaffected with their church and leave. The survey showed that three quarters of the priests surveyed blamed the disaffection on a typical litany of horrors: the worldliness, materialism and hedonism of the laity. Three quarters of the priests blamed everybody else but themselves and washed their hands of any responsibility. Only one quarter of the priests surveyed blamed themselves for the disaffection. They cited a litany of horrors of their own: their own insensitivity, their own lack of leadership, their poor homilies and their rote liturgies. That, I believe, is another reason (a very important one) why more young men aren’t inspired to become priests—aren’t inspired to become leaders of the liturgical assembly where the faithful are supposed to be lifted up with Peter, James and John to the heights of Mt. Tabor but often are not.

At the end of the day, we have to blame the church herself for the shortage of priests. Fr. Francis Gonsalves, a Jesuit in India, in an open letter to the new Pope published in the NCR, quotes a line from the homily Benedict XVI preached on that day of his inauguration: “My real program of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen together with the whole Church.” Then Fr. Gonslaves cries out, “Bravo, Benedicte! Bravo, Pope Benedict! Many Indians who religiously listen to God’s voice in nature and in other faiths and in their neighbors complain that the Roman Catholic Church only speaks but never listens.” What a terrible complaint: only speaks but never listens, only teaches but never learns! So Gonsalves cries out, “Bravo, dear Pope Benedict! Everyone welcomes your promise not only to teach but also to listen.” Not only to teach concerning the great issues that rankle the church, like birth control, divorce, intercommunion, homosexuality and especially the critical shortage of priests, but also to listen and learn as these issues are debated.

Richard Gailardetz, too, has similar hopes and prayers for the new pope. He wants a pope who will invite his church to “a holy conversation” about all the great issues that trouble the church. A holy conversation in which all have mouths and all are teaching each other, and all have ears and all are listening to each other. A holy conversation, he says, which “resists the temptation to control or direct the discussion toward predetermined conclusions.” In the debate about priest shortage the holy conversation is abruptly ended even before it gets started, by having recourse to some vague idea about “a long unbroken sacred tradition of ordaining only celibates or only men.“ We remind ourselves that we had a long unbroken sacred tradition of slavery in this country, and we are grateful that that’s been broken. We remind ourselves also that we had a long unbroken sacred tradition of no women in the US Congress, and we are grateful today that that too has been broken.

The blessings of crises

These are good days for us. Our shortage of priests is a blessing, and the more serious the crisis becomes the greater becomes the blessing. For the crisis challenges us to ask a bare-boned and pared-down question about the priesthood--a question that we would never have been forced to ask had we no crisis. The question is this: When the priestly community goes in search of its priestly head, what in the world should it be looking for? Should it look for an administrator to get things done? Should it look for a doctrinist to tell us what the church’s teachings are? Should it look for a legalist to tell us what the church’s laws are? When the priestly community goes in search of its priestly head, should it look for a celibate to remind us of the superiority of non-sex over sex? Should it look for a male to remind us this is a man’s world?

None of the above. When the priestly community goes in search of its priestly head, it should expend its energy on looking for someone who’s good at Word and good at Sacrament. Someone who at the liturgy of the Word will feed hungry sheep with meaning. Someone who at the liturgy of the Eucharist will so lift the bread on high that the assembly sees more than meets the eye. Someone who at the Ite Missa est has the assembly exclaiming like Peter on Mt. Tabor, “Oh how good it is for us to be here” (Lk 9:33)! Someone who at the Ite Missa est has the faithful determined to come back next Sunday.

For that you don’t need a good celibate or a good male, but for that you do need a good human being. And of good human beings there is no shortage out there. There is a rich supply of married men and of women out there waiting to be gathered into the bins of ordained clergy. And just as it is a waste not to reap the harvest but to let it rot out there in the fields, so it is also a waste not to tap that abundant supply.

Not only is there an abundant supply of priests out there, there’s also an abundant demand for priests. In this hi-tech age of ours it might seem that priesthood like poetry is dying. Not true. It's not priesthood that's dying; it’s the world that's dying. It’s dying to hear message. It’s dying to know there’s more to life than meets the eye. Exhausted by the past week, it’s dying to be lifted up to the heights of Mt. Tabor of a Sunday morning.

Conclusion

The Dismissal

Ite, Missa est. Go, the Mass is ended. The dismissal of Mass today bids all of us to go forth and hold holy conversation in which we not only speak to others but also listen and hear them. The dismissal of Mass today also bids us both to pray to the master of the harvest for more vocations and to pray in a strange new way saying, “Dear Lord of the harvest, inspire your church to hold a holy conversation in which she not only speaks but also listens and hears your voice in the wonderful crisis before us.”