The call to be a priest is a great mystery. God calls whomever he wants, whenever he wants and however He wants. His call doesn’t depend on us at all. It doesn’t matter how good or bad we are. It is a free gift, without any personal merit.
It is not difficult to come to the conclusion that, because of our calling despite our weaknesses, God has shown priests more of his mercy. This is one way he has perhaps given us more. This, too, remains part of the mystery of the priesthood.
There are many different ideas about how God calls. Many people think that God calls us all the way he called St. Paul or some of the Old Testament prophets: by a voice, by some fire appearing in your room or another miraculous intervention. God does occasionally call a man in an extraordinary way, but most of the time it is through far more ordinary means. Regardless, eventually the idea of becoming a priest comes into a man’s mind. St. Thomas Aquinas said that such an idea can come from either God or the devil and that even if it comes from the devil, we should follow it because of the objective greatness of the vocation.
When we start to realize that God is calling us, the first reaction of many of us is, “Please, God, don’t call me. Ask me whatever you want but don’t ask me to be a priest.” Eventually we mature enough to say, “How can I pay you back for the enormous gift that you have given me?” (Ps 116:12).
My life as a priest has gone by so quickly. I cannot believe that I have already been a priest for five years. While we priests are always busy, I’ve discovered how important it is always to leave time for prayer, without which we can do nothing.
Prayer is also one of the only outlets we have for one of the activities that a priest does “alone” and can never really talk about with anyone other than the Lord: the sacrament of reconciliation. This is yet another part of the amazing and sacred mystery of the priesthood, in which the priest is the instrument by which God gives his mercy to sinners. The joy that a priest experiences cannot be fully shared with anyone but God himself, God who through him opens the doors of heaven for the sinner and closes the doors of hell.
I am so proud to be part of the ministers of the Church that Jesus Christ founded 2009 years ago when he told Peter, “You are rock and upon this rock I will built my church.” Human beings can think and worry about many things, but there is only one that is eternally important: our salvation and the salvation of all souls. As Christians by our baptism, we are part of this missionary program of Christ. God wanted it that way. As priests, we recognize that God wanted to use some men to be his shepherds after his own heart, and we have the privilege to be those men.
The world in which we are living is becoming less Christian. God has become last on many people’s list of priorities. We have kicked him out of our public offices, public schools, and even our conversations. People say that it is politically incorrect even to say the name of Jesus because it “offends” others. This is one of the reasons why it is very encouraging not only to be a Catholic Christian today, but also a priest, since we need to swim against a big current of confusion, against a culture of death as Pope John Paul II would call it, against a culture without real families values and against a world without God. This is a time, therefore, not just of great challenges but of great graces from God to rise up to meet those challenges.
It is impossible to separate the priesthood from the Eucharist. This is the fundamental reason why, I believe, I was called to be a priest: to celebrate the Eucharist. I still remember as yesterday my first Mass of Thanksgiving, which I celebrated in my home town. I was very nervous. My superior in the Institute of the Incarnate Word was next to me telling me what to do. After Mass, people came to kiss the hands of the new priest. That reminded me of the sacredness of the sacrament of holy orders that I had just received, that the priest’s hands and life have been separated or consecrated for God alone.
Just to think that after I say the words of consecration during Mass the bread and wine I hold in my hands become the Body, Blood, soul and divinity of our Lord goes beyond my or anyone’s capacity to understand. We can understand it only through faith. I am totally overwhelmed by the fact that, as a priest, doing what Christ commanded me to do, I can do things that no one else in the universe but priests can do. What a great gift.
Every day I give thanks to God for the great gift of the priesthood that he has given to me and to the whole Church, and I ask the Mother of God and our Blessed Virgin Mary to grant me the grace to persevere joyfully and faithfully to the end.
Father Cardenas, ordained in 2004 as a priest of the Institute of the Incarnate Word, is pastor of St. Killian Parish in New Bedford.