I am happy to be writing this article on May 11, the 47th anniversary of my ordination. It doesn’t seem possible that nearly five decades have passed since Bishop Connolly placed his hands on the head of this faith-filled, 25-year-old brown-haired, 150-pound man who began this journey. And what a journey it has been. 

John F. Kennedy had just been elected — I attended his inauguration. The Second Vatican Council was becoming a reality and hope filled the air as well as my mind and heart. They were wonderful times for the Church and for priests.

I began as “curate” at Our Lady of the Assumption Parish in Osterville where I had the opportunity to bring about the changes of the Council. It wasn’t easy. The pastor wanted no part of change. 

My first weekend, I went to the front of the church before and after each Mass to greet the people. The pastor was furious and said, “We don’t do that.” I was in turmoil but convinced that what I was doing was essential to ministry. 

The next weekend, I repeated my action. The silence was deafening at the rectory. 

The third week, I went out and discovered I was not alone. The pastor was by my side and did the same for the rest of his active ministry. 

Change didn’t come easily but it came. What a joy at last to celebrate Mass in English, to encourage participation in the Liturgy and to empower the laity to ministry of all sorts. The Church was alive and exciting, with churches filled and the faithful being served by priests and by each other. 

I had the good fortune to be sent to Fordham University for graduate studies, which brought my theological training up to date. My renewed education brought me to diocesan leadership in Religious Education and, although short-lived because of administrative changes, carried me to this day with a hopeful attitude of the priesthood as a life of service to others and with a multi-dimensional definition of the Church. 

Beyond Religious Education, our bishops afforded me opportunities for leadership as the director of the diocese’s 75th jubilee, of the Office of Family Ministry and the Office of Pastoral Planning — a job that garnered me the title of “Msgr. Kevorkian.” 

Throughout all of this, I had a pastoral assignment as well. Obviously, the work that was given to me in the founding of a new parish in Mashpee and overseeing the building of a considerable plant was a special part of my life as a pastor, which has always been my true love. 

All of this was done in a climate of faith, not secularism as today. I pray that those who are following me will have the courage to bring about change by using the wonderful teachings of the Second Vatican Council to accept people where they are at and not where they might want them to be; to leap forth from clerical rigidity to acceptance and joy; to step forward from elitist partitions into the mainstream of the “little people of God,” who look to us for kindness, understanding, and, yes, love. 

When I was a youngster working in my father’s store, he taught me that the customer was not an interruption but the reason why I had a job. I have tried to use that same purposeful philosophy in my 47 years of active ministry, welcoming the people of God with a positive attitude and a smile. I have loved every minute of it — well, almost every minute. 

Now that I am retired from the responsibilities of administration, I have the freedom to continue to minister through celebrating Masses at two different parishes and helping out wherever there is a need. I also have the freedom, and, thank God, the health to continue enjoying community involvement and my avocations in addition to priestly ministry. 

My life is full and very happy as it has been throughout this journey. I can only hope that Christ will continue to use this unworthy instrument to make a difference in peoples’ lives. I look forward to a different Church than that which I entered into in 1962, one that I face now as a white-haired, much heavier septuagenarian, but, please God, with that same hope that is still founded in faith in his never-ending love. 

Msgr. Tosti retired as pastor of Christ the King Parish in Mashpee in 2006 and now lives in Cotuit.