Father Cregan - Semper Fi

At 71, Fr. Cregan Attends Sixth World Youth Day
by Gretchen R. Crowe
Arlington Catholic Herald
August 30, 2011

Kneeling in an adoration tent at the outdoor site of the final vigil and Mass with the pope at World Youth Day in Madrid, Father John C. Cregan, pastor of Blessed Sacrament Parish in Alexandria, was told he would have to leave.

A storm was coming, the Spanish police told Father Cregan and three other priests, and it was too dangerous to be in the tent that held nothing but a makeshift altar, a candle and the exposed Blessed Sacrament.

“(He said) you must leave,” Father Cregan said. “We said, ‘No, we must stay.’ The police officer left after he realized we had the Blessed Sacrament and weren’t leaving.”

Following his departure, one of the Spanish priests said: “Do not worry, brothers. We are in the hands of God.”

This proved to be the case as the time kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament amid wind and rain was a “peaceful experience,” Father Cregan said. And the storm passed by “fairly quickly.”

Maybe it was his strong faith or the presence of the exposed Eucharist or the fact that he is a former Marine that helped Father Cregan keep his cool under pressure. Or maybe it was, more simply, that this World Youth Day wasn’t his first. While for many pilgrims last month’s event marked their first time at the spiritual get-together that attracted millions of young people from across the globe, for the 71-year-old Father Cregan, it marked his sixth — and probably not his last.

As a spiritual director for Youth 2000, an international organization that develops Eucharist-centered retreats for young people, Father Cregan attended World Youth Days in Paris, Rome, Toronto, Cologne and Sydney before going to Madrid — and he’s used to expecting the unexpected.

So what keeps him going back?

“Probably the interval in-between,” Father Cregan joked in a recent interview. Also, the presence of the young people and the evidence of their faith.

“As the time goes by you look forward to it,” he said. “It’s a great thing. It’s a great moment for our Church.”

Involved with Youth 2000 since the early 1990s, Father Cregan said he believes frequent exposure to the Blessed Sacrament is a powerful way for youths and young adults to grow more deeply in their faith.

“I think the young people have a hunger for the reality of spirituality, for things that give real meaning to their life,” he said. “They feel a peace, I think, when they are in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.”

In Madrid, Youth 2000 offered events at the Iglesia de San José, including Holy Hours throughout the day organized by different groups from around the world.

“We had them from Hong Kong, Germany, Burma, Ireland,” Father Cregan said. “We had one from Russia. I never thought I’d be in a church bursting with Russian youths singing and praying. It was awesome. It brought tears to my eyes.”

At the church, the Blessed Sacrament was exposed continuously throughout the day, except for when Mass was celebrated, and the youths brought a piety into the space.

The church was filled, even the aisles, Father Cregan said. “If you looked around, you could see the reverence in their faces.”

“It gives me great hope for the future to see all those young people with faith and a desire to do what’s right,” he said. “They really cared and they made an effort to pray. All of us couldn’t help but be graced by them.”

So, with six World Youth Days in the bag, will Father Cregan be packing for Rio de Janeiro in 2013?

A pause.

“Yeah, I think I will,” he said. “It keeps me young.”

© Arlington Catholic Herald 2011

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See also Fr. Cregan: ‘A Marine for Christ’
Podcast of Fr. Cregan at Theology on Tap, Saying Yes to Christ: Your Call to Serve

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The Gospel Radicalism of Consecrated Life

Remarks of Pope Benedict XVI
WYD Meeting with Women Religious
Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial
August 19, 2011

Dear Young Women Religious,

As part of the World Youth Day which we are celebrating in Madrid, I am delighted to have this opportunity to meet you who have consecrated your youth to the Lord, and I thank you for the kind greeting you have given me. I also thank the Archbishop of Madrid, who arranged for this meeting in the evocative setting of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Its famous library preserves important editions of the sacred Scriptures and the monastic rules of various religious families, yet your own lives of fidelity to the calling you have received is itself a precious means of preserving the word of the Lord, which resounds in your various spiritual traditions.

Dear Sisters, every charism is an evangelical word which the Holy Spirit recalls to the Church’s memory (cf. Jn 14:26). It is not by accident that consecrated life “is born from hearing the word of God and embracing the Gospel as its rule of life. A life devoted to following Christ in His chastity, poverty and obedience becomes a living ‘exegesis’ of God’s word… Every charism and every rule springs from it and seeks to be an expression of it, thus opening up new pathways of Christian living marked by the radicalism of the Gospel” (Verbum Domini, 83).

This Gospel radicalism means being “rooted and built up in Christ, and firm in the faith” (cf. Col 2:7). In the consecrated life, this means going to the very root of the love of Jesus Christ with an undivided heart, putting nothing ahead of this love (cf. Saint Benedict, Rule, IV, 21) and being completely devoted to Him, the Bridegroom, as were the Saints, like Rose of Lima and Rafael Arnáiz, the young patrons of this World Youth Day.

Your lives must testify to the personal encounter with Christ which has nourished your consecration, and to all the transforming power of that encounter. This is all the more important today when “we see a certain ‘eclipse of God’ taking place, a kind of amnesia which, albeit not an outright rejection of Christianity, is nonetheless a denial of the treasure of our faith, a denial that could lead to the loss of our deepest identity” (Message for the 2011 World Youth Day, 1). In a world of relativism and mediocrity, we need that radicalism to which your consecration, as a way of belonging to the God who is loved above all things, bears witness.

This Gospel radicalism proper to the consecrated life finds expression in filial communion with the Church, the home of the children of God, built by Christ: communion with her Pastors who set forth in the Lord’s name the deposit of faith received from the apostles, the ecclesial Magisterium and the Christian tradition; communion with your own religious families as you gratefully preserve their authentic spiritual patrimony while valuing other charisms; and communion with other members of the Church, such as the laity, who are called to make their own specific calling a testimony to the one Gospel of the Lord.

Finally, Gospel radicalism finds expression in the mission God has chosen to entrust to us: from the contemplative life, which welcomes into its cloisters the word of God in eloquent silence and adores His beauty in the solitude which He alone fills, to the different paths of the apostolic life, in whose furrows the seed of the Gospel bears fruit in the education of children and young people, the care of the sick and elderly, the pastoral care of families, commitment to respect for life, witness to the truth and the proclamation of peace and charity, mission work and the new evangelization, and so many other sectors of the Church’s apostolate.

Dear Sisters, this is the witness of holiness to which God is calling you, as you follow Jesus Christ closely and unconditionally in consecration, communion and mission. The Church needs your youthful fidelity, rooted and built up in Christ. Thank you for your generous, total and perpetual “yes” to the call of the Loved One. I pray that the Virgin Mary may sustain and accompany your consecrated youth, with the lively desire that it will challenge, nourish and illumine all young people.

With these sentiments, I ask God to repay abundantly the generous contribution which consecrated life has made to this World Youth Day. In His name, and with great gratitude, I give you my affectionate blessing.

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The World Needs Priests, Pastors - Today, Tomorrow and Always, Until the End of Time

Letter of Pope Benedict XVI to Seminarians
October 18, 2010

Dear Seminarians,

When, in December 1944, I was drafted for military service, the company commander asked each of us what we planned to do in the future. I answered that I wanted to become a Catholic priest. The lieutenant replied: “Then you ought to look for something else. In the new Germany, priests are no longer needed.” I knew that this “new Germany” was already coming to an end, and that, after the enormous devastation which that madness had brought upon the country, priests would be needed more than ever.

Today, the situation is completely changed. In different ways, though, many people nowadays also think that the Catholic priesthood is not a “job” for the future, but one that belongs more to the past.

You, dear friends, have decided to enter the seminary and to prepare for priestly ministry in the Catholic Church in spite of such opinions and objections. You have done a good thing. Because people will always have need of God, even in an age marked by technical mastery of the world and globalization: they will always need the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, the God who gathers us together in the universal Church in order to learn with him and through him life’s true meaning and in order to uphold and apply the standards of true humanity. Where people no longer perceive God, life grows empty; nothing is ever enough. People then seek escape in euphoria and violence; these are the very things that increasingly threaten young people.

God is alive. He has created every one of us and he knows us all. He is so great that he has time for the little things in our lives: “Every hair of your head is numbered.” God is alive, and he needs people to serve him and bring him to others. It does makes sense to become a priest: the world needs priests, pastors -- today, tomorrow and always, until the end of time.

The seminary is a community journeying towards priestly ministry. I have said something very important here: one does not become a priest on one’s own. The “community of disciples” is essential, the fellowship of those who desire to serve the greater Church. In this letter, I would like to point out – thinking back to my own time in the seminary – several elements which I consider important for these years of your journeying.

1. Anyone who wishes to become a priest must be first and foremost a “man of God,” to use the expression of Saint Paul (1 Tim 6:11). For us, God is not some abstract hypothesis; he is not some stranger who left the scene after the “big bang.” God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. In the face of Jesus Christ we see the face of God. In his words, we hear God himself speaking to us. It follows that the most important thing in our path towards priesthood and during the whole of our priestly lives is our personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ.

The priest is not the leader of a sort of association whose membership he tries to maintain and expand. He is God’s messenger to his people. He wants to lead them to God and in this way to foster authentic communion between all men and women.

That is why it is so important, dear friends, that you learn to live in constant intimacy with God. When the Lord tells us to “pray constantly,” he is obviously not asking us to recite endless prayers, but urging us never to lose our inner closeness to God. Praying means growing in this intimacy. So it is important that our day should begin and end with prayer; that we listen to God as the Scriptures are read; that we share with him our desires and our hopes, our joys and our troubles, our failures and our thanks for all his blessings, and thus keep him ever before us as the point of reference for our lives. In this way, we grow aware of our failings and learn to improve, but we also come to appreciate all the beauty and goodness which we daily take for granted and so we grow in gratitude. With gratitude comes joy for the fact that God is close to us and that we can serve him.

2. For us, God is not simply Word. In the sacraments, he gives himself to us in person, through physical realities. At the heart of our relationship with God and our way of life is the Eucharist. Celebrating it devoutly, and thus encountering Christ personally, should be the centre of all our days.

In Saint Cyprian’s interpretation of the Gospel prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” he says among other things that “our” bread – the bread which we receive as Christians in the Church – is the Eucharistic Lord himself. In this petition of the Our Father, then, we pray that he may daily give us “our” bread; and that it may always nourish our lives; that the Risen Christ, who gives himself to us in the Eucharist, may truly shape the whole of our lives by the radiance of his divine love.

The proper celebration of the Eucharist involves knowing, understanding and loving the Church’s liturgy in its concrete form. In the liturgy, we pray with the faithful of every age – the past, the present and the future are joined in one great chorus of prayer. As I can state from personal experience, it is inspiring to learn how it all developed, what a great experience of faith is reflected in the structure of the Mass, and how it has been shaped by the prayer of many generations.

3. The sacrament of Penance is also important. It teaches me to see myself as God sees me, and it forces me to be honest with myself. It leads me to humility.

The Curé of Ars once said: “You think it makes no sense to be absolved today, because you know that tomorrow you will commit the same sins over again. Yet,” he continues, “God instantly forgets tomorrow’s sins in order to give you his grace today.” Even when we have to struggle continually with the same failings, it is important to resist the coarsening of our souls and the indifference which would simply accept that this is the way we are. It is important to keep pressing forward, without scrupulosity, in the grateful awareness that God forgives us ever anew – yet also without the indifference that might lead us to abandon altogether the struggle for holiness and self-improvement.

Moreover, by letting myself be forgiven, I learn to forgive others. In recognizing my own weakness, I grow more tolerant and understanding of the failings of my neighbour.

4. I urge you to retain an appreciation for popular piety, which is different in every culture yet always remains very similar, for the human heart is ultimately one and the same. Certainly, popular piety tends towards the irrational, and can at times be somewhat superficial. Yet it would be quite wrong to dismiss it. Through that piety, the faith has entered human hearts and become part of the common patrimony of sentiments and customs, shaping the life and emotions of the community. Popular piety is thus one of the Church’s great treasures. The faith has taken on flesh and blood. Certainly popular piety always needs to be purified and refocused, yet it is worthy of our love and it truly makes us into the “People of God.”

5. Above all, your time in the seminary is also a time of study. The Christian faith has an essentially rational and intellectual dimension. Were it to lack that dimension, it would not be itself.

Paul speaks of a “standard of teaching” to which we were entrusted in Baptism (Rom 6:17). All of you know the words of Saint Peter which the medieval theologians saw as the justification for a rational and scientific theology: “Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an ‘accounting’ (logos) for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15). Learning how to make such a defence is one of the primary responsibilities of your years in the seminary.

I can only plead with you: Be committed to your studies! Take advantage of your years of study! You will not regret it.

Certainly, the subjects which you are studying can often seem far removed from the practice of the Christian life and the pastoral ministry. Yet it is completely mistaken to start questioning their practical value by asking: Will this be helpful to me in the future? Will it be practically or pastorally useful? The point is not simply to learn evidently useful things, but to understand and appreciate the internal structure of the faith as a whole, so that it can become a response to people’s questions, which on the surface change from one generation to another yet ultimately remain the same.

For this reason, it is important to move beyond the changing questions of the moment in order to grasp the real questions, and so to understand how the answers are real answers. It is important to have a thorough knowledge of sacred Scripture as a whole, in its unity as the Old and the New Testaments: the shaping of texts, their literary characteristics, the process by which they came to form the canon of sacred books, their dynamic inner unity, a unity which may not be immediately apparent but which in fact gives the individual texts their full meaning. It is important to be familiar with the Fathers and the great Councils in which the Church appropriated, through faith-filled reflection, the essential statements of Scripture. I could easily go on.

What we call dogmatic theology is the understanding of the individual contents of the faith in their unity, indeed, in their ultimate simplicity: each single element is, in the end, only an unfolding of our faith in the one God who has revealed himself to us and continues to do so. I do not need to point out the importance of knowing the essential issues of moral theology and Catholic social teaching. The importance nowadays of ecumenical theology, and of a knowledge of the different Christian communities, is obvious; as is the need for a basic introduction to the great religions, to say nothing of philosophy: the understanding of that human process of questioning and searching to which faith seeks to respond.

But you should also learn to understand and – dare I say it – to love canon law, appreciating how necessary it is and valuing its practical applications: a society without law would be a society without rights. Law is the condition of love.

I will not go on with this list, but I simply say once more: love the study of theology and carry it out in the clear realization that theology is anchored in the living community of the Church, which, with her authority, is not the antithesis of theological science but its presupposition. Cut off from the believing Church, theology would cease to be itself and instead it would become a medley of different disciplines lacking inner unity.

6. Your years in the seminary should also be a time of growth towards human maturity. It is important for the priest, who is called to accompany others through the journey of life up to the threshold of death, to have the right balance of heart and mind, reason and feeling, body and soul, and to be humanly integrated.

To the theological virtues, the Christian tradition has always joined the cardinal virtues derived from human experience and philosophy, and, more generally, from the sound ethical tradition of humanity. Paul makes this point this very clearly to the Philippians: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (4:8).

This also involves the integration of sexuality into the whole personality. Sexuality is a gift of the Creator yet it is also a task which relates to a person’s growth towards human maturity. When it is not integrated within the person, sexuality becomes banal and destructive.

Today we can see many examples of this in our society. Recently we have seen with great dismay that some priests disfigured their ministry by sexually abusing children and young people. Instead of guiding people to greater human maturity and setting them an example, their abusive behaviour caused great damage for which we feel profound shame and regret.

As a result of all this, many people, perhaps even some of you, might ask whether it is good to become a priest; whether the choice of celibacy makes any sense as a truly human way of life. Yet even the most reprehensible abuse cannot discredit the priestly mission, which remains great and pure. Thank God, all of us know exemplary priests, men shaped by their faith, who bear witness that one can attain to an authentic, pure and mature humanity in this state and specifically in the life of celibacy.

Admittedly, what has happened should make us all the more watchful and attentive, precisely in order to examine ourselves earnestly, before God, as we make our way towards priesthood, so as to understand whether this is his will for me. It is the responsibility of your confessor and your superiors to accompany you and help you along this path of discernment. It is an essential part of your journey to practise the fundamental human virtues, with your gaze fixed on the God who has revealed himself in Christ, and to let yourselves be purified by him ever anew.

7. The origins of a priestly vocation are nowadays more varied and disparate than in the past. Today the decision to become a priest often takes shape after one has already entered upon a secular profession. Often it grows within the Communities, particularly within the Movements, which favour a communal encounter with Christ and his Church, spiritual experiences and joy in the service of the faith. It also matures in very personal encounters with the nobility and the wretchedness of human existence.

As a result, candidates for the priesthood often live on very different spiritual continents. It can be difficult to recognize the common elements of one’s future mandate and its spiritual path. For this very reason, the seminary is important as a community which advances above and beyond differences of spirituality. The Movements are a magnificent thing. You know how much I esteem them and love them as a gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church. Yet they must be evaluated by their openness to what is truly Catholic, to the life of the whole Church of Christ, which for all her variety still remains one.

The seminary is a time when you learn with one another and from one another. In community life, which can at times be difficult, you should learn generosity and tolerance, not only bearing with, but also enriching one another, so that each of you will be able to contribute his own gifts to the whole, even as all serve the same Church, the same Lord. This school of tolerance, indeed, of mutual acceptance and mutual understanding in the unity of Christ’s Body, is an important part of your years in the seminary.

Dear seminarians, with these few lines I have wanted to let you know how often I think of you, especially in these difficult times, and how close I am to you in prayer. Please pray for me, that I may exercise my ministry well, as long as the Lord may wish. I entrust your journey of preparation for priesthood to the maternal protection of Mary Most Holy, whose home was a school of goodness and of grace. May Almighty God bless you all, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

From the Vatican, 18 October 2010, the Feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist.

Yours devotedly in the Lord,
BENEDICTUS PP. XVI
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Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

One hundred years ago, on August 26, 1910, Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was born into the world to Albanian parents in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman Empire, now part of the Republic of Macedonia. Thirteen years ago, on September 5, 1997, she was born into heaven.

Having been called to religious life, the young lamb Agnes took the name "Mary Teresa," after St. Thérèse of Lisieux, upon joining the Sisters of Loreto. After learning English in Ireland, Sister Teresa was sent to India, which was then part of the British Empire, where she made her first profession of vows in May 1931. She then taught at St. Mary's School for Girls in Calcutta, becoming principal as well in 1944. Upon taking her final profession of vows in May 1937, Sister Teresa became a spouse of Jesus for all eternity and, from then on, she was called "Mother Teresa."

Mother Teresa of the Sisters of Loreto was a beloved teacher, but she was called to something else. She received a "calling within a calling."

On September 10, 1946, on a train ride to a retreat in Darjeeling, Mother Teresa received her "inspiration." The Lord, in His deep thirst for love, had called her to go out into the world to serve the poorest of the poor. She was initially denied permission to leave the convent since this was not part of the mission of the Sisters of Loreto. She was offered to be released from her vows, but Mother Teresa, being a spouse of Jesus for all eternity, of course declined.

However, on August 17, 1948, Mother Teresa did receive permission to enter the world of the poor. She then put on for the first time the familiar white and blue sari, and began to minister to the poor of Calcutta. In October 1950, she received permission to establish a new religious community, the Missionaries of Charity. Soon other women religious put on the white and blue sari, and Mother Teresa began to send her sisters to other parts of India and then to other countries.

In time, Mother Teresa and her sisters became known to the whole world for the love that they showed to the lowest of the low.

Upon her death in 1997, she was buried at the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, and her tomb immediately became a place of pilgrimage and prayer. On October 17, 2003, Mother Teresa was beatified by Pope John Paul II.

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, longing to love Jesus as He had never been loved before, you gave yourself entirely to Him, refusing Him nothing.

In union with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, you accepted His call to satiate His infinite thirst for love and souls and become a carrier of His love to the poorest of the poor.

With loving trust and total surrender you fulfilled His will, witnessing to the joy of belonging totally to Him. You became so intimately united to Jesus your crucified Spouse that He deigned to share with you the agony of His Heart as He hung upon the Cross.

Blessed Teresa, you promised to continuously bring the light of love to those on earth; pray for us that we also may long to satiate the burning thirst of Jesus by loving Him ardently, sharing in His sufferings joyfully, and serving Him wholeheartedly in our brothers and sisters, especially those most unloved and unwanted.

Amen.

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Hildegard von Bingen

Address of Pope Benedict XVI
General Audience of September 1, 2010
Castel Gandolfo

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In 1988, on the occasion of the Marian Year, the Venerable John Paul II wrote an Apostolic Letter titled "Mulieris dignitatem," dealing with the valuable role that women have had and have in the life of the Church.

"The Church," one reads there, "gives thanks for all the manifestations of the feminine 'genius' which have appeared in the course of history, in the midst of all peoples and nations; she gives thanks for all the charisms which the Holy Spirit distributes to women in the history of the People of God, for all the victories which she owes to their faith, hope and charity: she gives thanks for all the fruits of feminine holiness" (No. 31).

In those centuries of history that we usually call medieval, several women are outstanding for their holiness of life and the richness of their teaching. Today I would like to begin to present one of them to you: St. Hildegard of Bingen, who lived in Germany in the 12th century. She was born in the Rhineland in Bermersheim in 1098, in the region of Alzey, and died in 1179 at the age of 81, despite having permanently frail health.

Hildegard belonged to a noble and numerous family and, from her birth, she was vowed by her parents to the service of God. At 8 years of age, in order to receive an adequate human and Christian formation, she was entrusted to the care of the teacher Judith of Spanheim, who had withdrawn into a cloister near the Benedictine monastery of St. Disibod. A small women's cloistered monastery was being formed, which followed the Rule of St. Benedict. Hildegard received the veil from Bishop Othon of Bamberg and, in 1136, on the death of Mother Judith, who had become the superior of the community, her fellow-sisters called Hildegard to succeed her. She carried out this task bringing to fruition her gifts as an educated woman, spiritually elevated and able to address competently the organizational aspects of cloistered life. A year or so later, also because of the growing number of young women who knocked on the door of the monastery, Hildegard founded another community in Bingen, named after St. Rupert, where she spent the rest of her life. The style with which she exercised the ministry of authority is exemplary for every religious community: It inspired a holy emulation in the practice of goodness, so much so that, as we see from testimonies of the time, the mother and the daughters competed in their reciprocal esteem and service.

Already in the years in which she was superior of the monastery of St. Disibod, Hildegard had begun to dictate the mystical visions she had received for some time to her spiritual adviser, monk Volmar, and to her secretary, a fellow sister to whom she was very devoted, Richardis of Strade. As always happens in the life of true mystics, Hildegard, too, wanted to be subject to the authority of wise persons to discern the origin of her visions, fearing that they were the fruit of illusions and that they did not come from God. She turned, therefore, to the person that at her time enjoyed the highest esteem of the Church: St. Bernard of Clairvaux, of whom I have already spoken in some catecheses. He calmed and encouraged Hildegard. However, in 1147 she received another very important approval. Pope Eugene III, who was presiding at a synod in Treviri, read a text dictated by Hildegard, presented to him by Archbishop Henry of Mainz. The Pope authorized the mystic to write down her visions and to speak publicly.

From that moment, Hildegard's spiritual prestige grew increasingly, so much so that her contemporaries attributed to her the title of "Teutonic prophetess." This is, dear friends, the seal of an authentic experience of the Holy Spirit, source of every charism: The receiver of supernatural gifts never boasts, does not exhibit them and, above all, shows total obedience to ecclesial authority. Every gift distributed by the Holy Spirit, in fact, is destined for the edification of the Church, and the Church, through her pastors, recognizes their authenticity.

I will speak once again next Wednesday about this great woman "prophetess," who speaks with great timeliness also to us today, with her courageous capacity to discern the signs of the times, with her love for creation, her medicine, her poetry, her music, which today is being pieced together, her love of Christ and of his Church, suffering also at that time, wounded also at that time by the sins of priests and laymen, and that much more loved as Body of Christ. So St. Hildegard speaks to us; we will speak of her again next Wednesday.

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Thank You Lord for Our New Priests!

Deacons (soon-to-be Fathers) Edward J. Bresnahan, Jason Weber, and Michael J.R. Kelly stand before Bishop Paul S. Loverde

Three new priests ordained
by Gretchen R. Crowe
Arlington Catholic Herald
June 12, 2010

The Arlington Diocese welcomed three new priests to its ranks Saturday as morning slipped into afternoon at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington.

Fathers Ed Bresnahan, Mick Kelly and Jason Weber entered the two-and-a-half hour Ordination Mass as deacons and left newly ordained priests.

The cathedral was filled as friends and family witnessed Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde celebrate the rite. Family members snapped photos and wiped away tears as their sons, grandsons, brothers and nephews firmly announced themselves "present," then received a laying on of hands by fellow clergy and the prayer of consecration from Bishop Loverde.

Following their investiture with stoles and chasubles and the anointing of the mens' hands with holy Chrism, the new priests found a moment to breathe as they cleaned up behind the altar.

All smiles, they hugged and congratulated each other. How did Fathers Bresnahan, Kelly and Weber feel? "Different." "In shock." "Ecstatic."

Those sentiments continued throughout the rest of the Mass and into the reception where they were congratulated by everyone present on their new roles of priestly shepherds for the Church.
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