“Cling to him, forsake him not, thus will your future be great.”
These words from Sirach 2:3 were inscribed into a Bible that I received from my home parish of St. Julie Billiart in North Dartmouth in 1991, as part of a ceremony blessing high school graduates in all of their future endeavors.
Fast forward to the year 2002, one that would be very memorable and unforgettable for two very different reasons.
First, the Church would be rocked by the nationwide crisis of sexual abuse of minors by clerics. This was certainly a troubling time, not only for priests, but also for the entire Church. In fact, at the height of the crisis, I was still studying at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton.
That brings me to the second memorable event of 2002 — my ordination to the priesthood on June 8. In the midst of crisis, scandal, doubt, and uncertainty, I took a leap of faith to be ordained a priest of Jesus Christ. Why? Because of those words that have been with me ever since I graduated from high school: I clung to the Lord, I never forsook him, and always looked to a great future with a deep faith and hope in our good and gracious God.
My involvement in youth ministry as a high school and college student enabled me to respond generously to God’s call in my life to serve him and his Church as a priest. It began with my willingness to serve as an altar boy (there were no altar girls in my day), with the privilege of serving at the funeral Mass of Father John Hogan, the first pastor of St. Julie’s. Many will also remember Father Hogan as the longtime director of the televised Mass.
It continued with the various social, service and spiritual activities of the St. Julie’s Youth Group. I became even more involved with the Youth Group after my wonderful experience in the summer of 1990 with the diocesan-sponsored Christian Leadership Institute or CLI, where I learned various skills to be a lay leader at my parish. I attended the very first YES! retreat in 1991 and also had the privilege of making the pilgrimage to Denver, Colo. in 1993 for World Youth Day to welcome and participate in the various activities with Pope John Paul II. I was involved in campus ministry at UMass-Dartmouth, where I eventually received my degree in mathematics in 1995. Through all of these pursuits, diocesan priests were constantly engaged in youth ministry, shaping me to become the man, and the priest, I came to be.
As I was preparing for the priesthood, I had always envisioned that I would continue to be involved in various youth ministry activities. Young people need to be taught and shown God’s love for them. But more than that, young people have to be shown that they are not only the Church of the future, but they are certainly the Church of today. Young people should be encouraged to be involved in their school and parish communities, and that encouragement starts with the priest.
The perfect example of a priest who was committed to ministering to young people was our beloved late Pope John Paul II. The people’s pope, and certainly the pope of the youth, had always been involved in youth ministry, from the time he was a priest in Poland to the pope who started the World Youth Day celebrations. In fact, in the jubilee year of 2000, during his annual address to the clergy of Rome, the Holy Father observed: “We cannot forget that the priest, by vocation, is an evangelizer and spiritual father to the young people entrusted to him by the Lord. They need to find in their priest an available and sincere friend, but also a witness who lives his calling with joy and with spiritual and moral consistency. Then they will be helped, in turn, to discover, and to accept the vocation that gives their whole life meaning and value.”
Even though youth ministry has changed since 2002, this basic truth has not. The priest is indeed an evangelizer and a spiritual father to the young people entrusted to him.
Through my seven years of priestly ministry, I have been privileged to be involved in youth ministry activities at St. Anthony’s Parish in Taunton, to be the chaplain of both Taunton Catholic Middle School and Coyle-Cassidy High School, to help coordinate a monthly Youth Mass in the Taunton Deanery, to be a team leader and spiritual director for CLI, to share the sacraments with young people — especially offering the gift of God’s mercy and forgiveness in the sacrament of reconciliation — to participate in the YES! retreat, Emmaus retreat, Steubenville East Conference, Extreme East, confirmation retreats, and countless other moments of youth ministry.
Each time I minister to youth, I am conscious of my humble role as a spiritual father and evangelizer to the youth. I pray that through my example and service of the priesthood, I may encourage many young men to be open to hearing God’s call to serve his Church as a priest. May those same words that sustained me as a high school student, and continue to do so today, encourage a new generation of priests: “Cling to him, forsake him not, thus will your future be great!”
Father Cabral is studying canon law at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., with residence at the Church of the Little Flower in Bethesda, Md.