Two significant Dominican ordinations in Ireland and Australia

Last Saturday, 8 July, Archbishop Joseph Augustine Di Noia OP, Assistant Secretary at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican, ordained Fr Philip Mulryne OP to the priesthood in St Saviour's Church in the heart of Dublin.

Archbishop Di Noia and Fr Philip [Irish Dominicans' website]

The new priest has an unusual, though not unique, background in that he is a former professional footballer, having played for Manchester United and a number of other British soccer clubs between 1997 and 2009, and for Northern Ireland 27 times during that period.

Father Philip entered St Malachy's Seminary in his native Belfast in 2009 to study philosophy in preparation for becoming a priest in the Diocese of Down and Connor, which includes that city. But while studying theology in Rome he felt a call to the Dominican Order and joined their novitiate in Cork in 2012.

Brother Robert Krishna OP [Source]

On Saturday 15 July Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP will ordain his fellow Dominican, Brother Robert Krishna, to the priesthood. Brother Robert's story is a little more unusual than that of his newly-ordained confrere. He is from India and his journey led him from Hinduism to atheism to agnosticism to Anglicanism in Australia and, finally to Catholicism. 

The Catholic Weekly report [my emphases added] says:

Around this time, Br Robert encountered some Catholics at Sydney University.

One thing which impressed him was the fact that there were many young Catholics who were happy in living what the Church teaches.

“I was converted through their example and conversations, rather than through their arguments” he said.

Of the latter, one which sticks out was the exasperated comment of the chaplaincy convenor at the time, Robert Haddad: “You’re never going to get all the answers to all your objections, and at some stage, you need to make a leap of faith.”

It was a throwaway line, but it contains a truth which bothered Br Robert until it ended up convincing him. He was received into the Church in 2003 and confirmed a year later by then-Bishop Anthony Fisher OP, who had just been ordained a Bishop. Robert Haddad was his confirmation sponsor.

God always speaks to us through those happy in living what the Church teaches. And so often God speaks to us through a throwaway line. I remember one such line by Brother Finn, a Christian Brother, in religion class one day when I was in secondary school. Only the best fellows join the Columbans, he said. He had no idea that I was considering becoming a Columban priest. He was referring to former students of his who had taken that step. His throwaway line encouraged me.

St Saviour's Church, Dominick St, Dublin [Wikimedia]

The seed of my own vocation to the priesthood was perhaps sown in this church, where Fr Mulryne was ordained last Saturday. My father loved the solemnity of the High Mass and often took me to one on days such as Easter Monday and Whit (Pentecost) Monday, sometimes to the Dominican church in Dominick Street and sometimes to the Capuchin church in Church Street (St Mary of the Angels). Dubliners usually refer to their churches by the name of the street that they are on rather than on the patronal name. As a child I did not particularly appreciate the High Mass.

Whenever my mother took us 'into town' - the city centre - we usually went by Church Street and would drop in to say a prayer. Occasionally she would take the longer walk and go by Dominick Street where we would also drop in and say a prayer. I remember when I was six or seven being attracted by the white habit of the Dominican friars I saw. Looking back I know that the seed of my vocation was being sown there, though I wasn't aware of it. However when at 13 and 14 I began to seriously think of the priesthood I never considered the Dominicans. But I am grateful to God for the part that they, and my parents, played in my own faith and vocation journey.

A year ago Archbishop Robert Rivas OP of the Diocese of Castries in the Caribbean ordained eight Dominican priests in St Saviour's Church.

Fr Gerard Dunne OP, the vocation director of the Dominicans for many years, gives some ideas on why the Order is attracting men leading successful professional lives in an article by Doreen Carvajal published in The New York Times in 2013, For Friars, Finding Renewal by Sticking to Tradition.

'Sticking to Tradition' did not preclude the Irish Dominicans from being ahead of almost every other order and congregation in Ireland in evangelising 'this digital continent', as Pope Benedict called the internet. May God continue to bless them and, through them, the Church, especially in Ireland and in Australia.

St Dominic Adoring the Crucifixion

Fra Angelico OP [Web Gallery of Art]

'My kingdom is not from this world.' Sunday Reflections. Christ the King, Year B

From The Gospel of John (2003) Directed by Philip Saville. Jesus played by Henry Ian Cusick; narrator, Christopher Plummer. [John 18:33-37, today's Gospel]

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel John 18:33B-37 (New Revised Standard Version, CatholicEdition, Canada) 

Pilate said to Jesus: “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Christ Before Pilate, Tintoretto, 1566-67

Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice [Web Gallery of Art]

Last Saturday Pope Francis referred to the attacks in Paris the night before as  'piece' of the 'Piecemeal Third World War'. In recent weeks hundreds have died because of attacks by terrorists, in Egypt, when a plane carrying mostly Russian holidaymakers returning home exploded and crashed in the Sinai Peninsula, in Beirut where more than 40 were killed by suicide bombers, 129 murdered in Paris and since then more than 40 in attacks in Nigeria, in one instance a suicide bomber reported to be a girl aged 11.

Last April 148 persons, most of the students, were murdered in an attack on Garissa University College in Kenya. Two years ago 67 people, from 13 different countries and from every continent, were killed in an attack by terrorists on a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya.

None of these incidents, all with an international dimension, reflect the values of the Kingdom of Christ the King.

But it is essential that we recognize that Kingdom where it is a reality. And it is a reality, though 'not from this world' but present in this world.

While editing an article by a Columban seminarian from the Philippines, Erl Dylan J. Tabaco, who is on his two-year First Mission Assignment in Peru as part of his preparation for the priesthood, I came across evidence of the reality of the Kingdom of Christ being a reality in our world, specifically in this instance in Lima.

A profoundly deaf young boy in Lima learning to speak in Manuel Duato School

Manuel Duato School was started by Columban Missionary priests more than 30 years ago to respond to the needs of the many young people among the poor of Lima with learning and other disabilities.

‘Team Duato: Two Schools, One Family’

Students in St Christopher's School, Melbourne

The school is now twinned with St Christopher's Primary School in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, Australia.

[Thanks to Renae Gentile and Elizabeth Moran of St Christopher's Primary School for this video]

The Kingdom of Terrorism, the Kingdom of Satan, is international. The Kingdom of Christ is Universal. The children and teachers in Manuel Duato in Lima, Peru, and those in St Christopher's, Airport West, Victoria, not far from the Columban central house in Australia, are building the Kingdom of Christ and at the same time growing in the values of that Kingdom.

Jesus tells us, Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs (Mark 10: 14). May we learn from the children of Manuel Duato and the children of St Christopher's where the Kingdom of God is present among us, that Manuel Duato es Amor, 'Manuel Duato is love'. Our broken world needs the hope and healing that Christ the King gives through such as 'Team Duato: Two Schools, One Family.’

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This is a very special weekend for all Columban missionaries. Here in the Philippines the Reverend Kurt Zion Valdemoza Pala will be ordained to the priesthood. Among those present will be Fr Michael Cuddigan, a Columban now based in Hong Kong but who spent many years in the Philippines, who officiated at the wedding of Father Kurt's parents. And Father Michael himself is a link with the beginning of the Columban mission in the Philippines as his uncle, also Fr Michael Cuddigan, was the very first Columban to arrive in Manila in 1929 when the Columbans took over Our Lady of Remedies Parish, Malate, Manila, where we still work. Father Kurt has spent time there as a deacon and will spend some time there as a priest before leaving for his mission in Myanmar in 2016. He has already spent two years in Fiji as a seminarian on First Mission Assignment.

Monday 23 November is the Feast of St Columban and also the 1,400th Anniversary of his death in Bobbio, northern Italy. The stamp above was issued by An Post in Ireland to mark the occasion. Australian Columban Fr Ray Scanlon reflects on a pilgrimage in the footsteps of our patron in St Columban, My Brother. Please keep all Columban missionaries in your prayers. Thank you.

Tomb of St Columban, Bobbio

Christi simus, non nostri – Go mba le Críost sinn agus nach linn féin – Let us be of Christ, not of ourselves (St Columban)

Responsorial Psalm [Philippines, USA]

'Zeal for your house will consume me.' Sunday Reflections, Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome

Archbasilica of St John Lateran [Wikipedia]

The full name of the church is: Archbasilica of the Most Holy Saviour and Saints John the Baptist and the Evangelist at the Lateran. It is the Cathedral of the Diocese of Rome.

The Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basicila takes precedence over the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa) 

Gospel John 2:13-22  (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Canada) 

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”  His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

Christ driving the money-changers from the Temple, Rembrandt, c.1626

Pushkin Museum, Moscow [Web Gallery of Art]

We are not isolated and we are not Christians on an individual basis, each one on his or her own, no, our Christian identity is to belong! We are Christians because we belong to the Church.

Pope Francis spoke these words at his General Audience on Wednesday 25 June this year. He went on to say:

The Christian belongs to a people called the Church and this Church is what makes him or her Christian, on the day of Baptism, and then in the course of catechesis, and so on. But no one, no one becomes Christian on his or her own. If we believe, if we know how to pray, if we acknowledge the Lord and can listen to his Word, if we feel him close to us and recognize him in our brothers and sisters, it is because others, before us, lived the faith and then transmitted it to us. We have received the faith from our fathers, from our ancestors, and they have instructed us in it . . . So, this is the Church: one great family, where we are welcomed and learn to live as believers and disciples of the Lord Jesus.

A few weeks earlier in his homily at Mass in St Martha's on 15 May the Bishop of Rome spoke in similar words:

But you cannot understand a Christian alone, just like you cannot understand Jesus Christ alone. Jesus Christ did not fall from the sky like a superhero who comes to save us. No. Jesus Christ has a history. And we can say, and it is true, that God has a history because He wanted to walk with us. And you cannot understand Jesus Christ without His history. So a Christian without history, without a Christian nation, a Christian without the Church is incomprehensible. It is a thing of the laboratory, an artificial thing, a thing that cannot give life.

This Sunday we celebrate the dedication of the Cathedral of Rome. In a real sense it is the Mother Church for Catholics.

In his homily in St Martha's Pope Francis said:

Looking back the Christian is a person who remembers: Let us seek the grace of memory, always. Looking forward, the Christian is a man, a woman of hope.

The feast of the dedication of any church is a feast of the Lord and takes precedence over a Sunday in Ordinary Time. And because St John the Baptist is one of the patrons of the Lateran Basilica the Mass has baptismal overtones, especially the First Reading.

I felt myself drawn by this feast to be a person who remembers, to accept the grace of memory from God and look back at some of the churches in my native Dublin in which I became a Christian and grew in the faith. Before the Holy Week liturgies were changed from the morning to the afternoon or evening by Pope Pius XII in 1955 my mother used to take my brother and me to visit seven churches on the afternoon of Holy Thursday to spend some time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in each. This practice seems to have died out in Dublin but it is very much alive here in the larger cities in the Philippines where it is known by the Spanish term visita iglesia. And I have just discovered that this practice originated in Rome, with the Archbasilica of St John Lateran top of the list.

Here I 'visit' a number of churches in Dublin that played a significant part in my becoming a member of the Church and in my growth in the faith. I invite each reader to make a similar pilgrimage of thanksgiving to God for the gift of our faith, for the gift of our Church and for those who have passed on the faith to us and nurtured us in it. The Church is a community of persons, God the Father's sons and daughters by virtue of our baptism, just as a family is a community of persons. And just as a family normally lives in a home - we describe persons living in extreme poverty as 'homeless' - so does the Christian family normally gather in its parish church.

Pope Francis describes the parish in Evangelii Gaudium No 28, in these words: The parish is the presence of the Church in a given territory, an environment for hearing God’s word, for growth in the Christian life, for dialogue, proclamation, charitable outreach, worship and celebration. 

St Joseph's Church, Berkeley Road, Dublin [Wikipedia]

I was born in  small nursing home nearly opposite the church above on 20 April 193, Tuesday of Holy Week, the last time that Easter fell on the latest date possible, 25 April. A few days later, probably on Holy Saturday, I was baptised in that church, which wasn't our parish church as we lived on the other side of the city.

About five years ago I celebrated Mass for the first time in St Joseph's. The parish is now run by the Discalced Carmelites. The congregation on the Sunday I celebrated Mass was very different from what it would have been at the time of my birth. There were many Filipinos in the congregation, most of them nurses in the nearby Mater Hospital. And the servers were two girls aged about 12. One was white, from one of the oldest parts of the city, and the other was black, of Nigerian parentage. I was amused by the fact that the white girl would not acknowledge that she was from the inner city of Dublin while her companion was very proud to be a Dubliner! I met their mothers after Mass and they laughed when I told them this.

When I entered the Columban seminary in 1961 I could not have imagined such a congregation in any parish in Dublin, much less an altar-server whose parents were immigrants from Nigeria.

Our Lady Help of Christians Church, Drimnagh, Dublin

On a Christmas weekday a few months before I turned three I was thrown out of the church above, along with my pregnant mother, for shouting 'Ba' at the Infant in the crib.It was a traumatic experience for my mother. But whenever she would recall the event she would always add that the priest who ordered us out could not have done more for her sister, my Auntie Madge, who died four years later, in another parish.

In 1991, while at home in Dublin, I was asked by the Columbans to preach at all the Masses in that church on a Sunday in Lent when students from their final year in secondary school were observing a 24-hour fast to raise funds for Trócaire, the development agency of the Catholic Church in Ireland. I've never had a more attention-grabbing opening to a homily than I did that day: I was thrown out of this church. But by the time I had preached for the fourth time I felt a vicarious healing on behalf of my mother, who died in 1970. That was a real grace.

St Saviour's Church, Dominic St, Dublin [Wikipedia]

In the old days churches belonging to religious orders in Dublin usually had High Mass on such days as Easter Monday and Whit (Pentecost) Monday and my father would bring me to one or other of them on those occasions. I distinctly recall that when I was maybe seven or eight being particularly attracted by the habit of the Dominican friars. I didn't recognise then the beginnings of being called by God to be a priest but I see it now as such, even though I subsequently never considered becoming a Dominican.

St Dominic at Prayer, El Greco, 1600-02

Private Collection [Web Gallery of Art]

I must confess that I wasn't an entirely enthusiastic pilgrim when my father took me to High Mass or when my mother brought my brother and me to seven churches on Holy Thursday. I can see a reflection of my father in these words of Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium, No 167: Proclaiming Christ means showing that to believe in and to follow him is not only something right and true, but also something beautiful, capable of filling life with new splendour and profound joy, even in the midst of difficulties.Every expression of true beauty can thus be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus. My father seldom spoke about his faith but I could see even then, and more clearly later, how his faith permeated his whole life and how he felt uplifted by the beauty of the High Mass.

St Agatha's Church, North William St, Dublin [parish website]

It was in St Agatha's Church that I was confirmed by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid of Dublin in March 1954, along with my classmates from O'Connell Schools, which was located in the parish. St Agatha's didn't play any other part in my young life but its most illustrious parishioner, the Venerable Matt Talbot, has always been part of my life. Sometimes when walking 'into town' with my mother - her way of describing going into the city centre - we would go through Granby Lane, behind the Dominican church, where Matt died suddenly on his way to Mass there on Trinity Sunday 1925, and say a prayer at the simple shrine that marked the spot. Matt, a simple working man, overcame, with God's grace, his addiction to alcohol and lived a life of extraordinary asceticism that was known during his lifetime only to his spiritual director. Without being aware of it, my mother was strengthening my faith.

Holy Family Church, Aughrim St, Dublin [Facebook]

It was above all in Aughrim Street Church - Dubliners rarely refer to a church by its patronal name but by the street its on - that my faith grew. That faith was strengthened by the 'communal cough' after the second elevation, that of the chalice with the Precious Blood, that to me was a far deeper expression of faith than the perfunctory 'Christ has died . . .' introduced in 1969. It was the release of the sense of awe that people had, knowing that the bread and wine had become the Body and Blood of Christ. The church thronged with people young and old, most getting ready to go to work or to school, at the early morning Mass on the weekdays of Lent was also part of my growth in our faith.

I never became and altar-boy in our parish church, though I had enlisted as a trainee shortly after my First Holy Communion in 1950 at St Mary of the Angels, Church Street, the church of the Capuchin Friars (in video above), where my father used to take me some times for High Mass and where my mother took me the Sunday when St Maria Goretti was canonised in 1950. Alessandro Serenelli, who murdered the saint, spent the latter years of his life after being released from prison in a Capuchin friary in Italy, hence the connection with the Capuchin church in Dublin. What I remember is how long it took to say the fifteen decades of the Rosary that day in the church when I was a very unwilling participant!  

It was in Aughrim Street church that I celebrated my First Mass on 21 December 1967, the old feast of St Thomas the Apostle, the day after my ordination in St Mary's Pro-Cathedral, Dublin.

St Mary's Pro-cathedral, Dublin [Wikipedia]

Our class was to have been ordained in the seminary chapel in St Columban's College, Dalgan Park, Navan, about 35 kms north-west of Dublin, but had to be transferred at the last minute - we were informed about three days before 20 December - due to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain. Four opted to be ordained in Derry Cathedral, one in his native Glasgow on the 21st, with the remaining 14 to be ordained in the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin.

During our ordination ceremony

With Bishop Patrick Cleary who ordained us.

Bishop Cleary was one of the first Columbans and the first - and only, I think - Bishop of Nancheng, China, from which he was expelled in 1962.

When I was around 8 and 9 I was a member of the Palestrina Choir in the Pro-Cathedral and occasionally dropped in to pray there on my way home from school. But I have celebrated Mass there only twice - at my ordination and in November 2011 when I concelebrated in the annual Mass on the occasion of the death anniversary of Frank Duff, founder of the Legion of Mary, who died on 7 November 1980.

I realise that in these Sunday Reflections I have 'visited' seven churches in my native city and diocese. There are more, all of them places of God's very special presence, above all in the celebration of Mass and in the Blessed Sacrament, the latter inviting us into a deep intimacy with Jesus our Risen Lord.

Today's feast calls us to have a profound sense of thanksgiving to God for the gift of faith,  for his abiding presence among us, in our daily lives and in the special buildings in which we gather each Sunday and often on other days to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. And as we celebrate the Dedication of the Cathedral of Rome It is truly right and just that we pray for Pope Francis, who emphasises that he is Bishop of Rome, and for the People of God in that diocese

The papal cathedra in St John Lateran [Wikipedia]

The Latin word cathedra means a chair with armrests, used as a throne. As the throne of the bishop, form which he teaches, it is the root of the word 'cathedral'.

Art historian Elizabeth Lev speaks about the Cathedral of Rome

'A Pineapple, a Junk and a Spitfire' - my vocation story

A Pineapple, A Junk And A Spitfire

by Fr Seán Coyle

The first book I ever read, when I was 7, was Treasure Island. A map guided Jim Hawkins and his friends to the hidden treasure. God drew a map with clues that guided me to discover the treasure of my vocation during my teenage years.

The first clue was Sister Gemma of the Irish Sisters of Charity in my second year in kindergarten in Stanhope Street, Dublin. She spoke about the need to support missionaries and asked us to speak to our parents. My classmates brought in the equivalent of a peso but mine gave me the equivalent of five, a lot of money for them as my father worked as a carpenter on a construction site. Sister Gemma gave me a little calendar with a picture of St Thérèse of Lisieux, Patroness of Missionaries. I didn’t know at the time that the saint would influence me greatly years after my ordination, even though I still don’t like the name she gave herself, “the Little Flower.”

The following year Father Woods came to our school. He was a parishioner but worked somewhere in Africa, which was unimaginably far away for us, a place where the people hadn’t heard the Good News. At least that is what the Sisters told us. I don’t remember a thing Father Woods said but I can still see him sitting in front of us, a fascinated audience, showing us artifacts from the country where he worked.

When I was a child pineapples were very expensive in Ireland and I dreamed of living in a country where they grew. Only after two years in the Philippines did I discover that they didn’t grow on trees! But my childhood dream was all part of the Lord’s gracious invitation.

My first contact with the Columbans in kindergarten was their magazine, The Far East. It had a picture of a traditional Chinese boat, a junk, on the cover. That was to take me to my “Treasure Island.”Z

I was confirmed in Grade Four while at O'Connell Schools, Dublin. My teacher, John Galligan, was very proud of his family and always talking about his wife. He once brought her to meet us, the only teacher who ever did that. He also had a great love for the Mass and taught us how to use the bilingual Latin-English missal in those pre-Vatican Two days when everything in church was in Latin. John Galligan, as I realized only years later, had a deep influence on me, as did another John, my father, who went to Mass every day of his life up to the day he died. My Dad didn’t talk about his faith. He just lived it and was the same person with everyone he met, deeply respectful to all.

In high school I tried to go to Mass every day. Often enough, especially on cold, winter mornings, I just turned over and got some extra sleep instead. By this time too I had already begun to see that girls my own age were very attractive. And I wanted to be a pilot, as did all my barkada. We were all strongly under the influence of Biggles, a fictional fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force. We devoured the novels Captain W.E.Johns wrote about him. He flew a Spitfire, a fighter plane that with the Hurricane won the Battle of Britain in 1940. To this day, though I am a pacifist, more or less, I find few things more beautiful than the graceful Spitfire in flight, the closest thing to a bird that man has ever made.

Of that barkada (a Filipino term for a group of young friends) of would-be pilots, two became doctors, one a diplomat and I a priest. During that first year in high school I began to feel the stirrings of an interest in being a priest. And it was always an interest in being a missionary priest. Other countries have always fascinated me and God built on that natural interest which he had put there in the first place.

With my Dad, John, my Mam, Mary and my brother Paddy, ordination day 20 December 1967 in St Mary's Pro-Cathedral, Dublin. Above: first blessing to a relative.

The following summer, 1957, I got my first job, at a small gasoline station. There weren’t too many customers and I had lots of time to read. I used to bring copies of The Far East and other material about missionaries to work and it became very clear to me that I really wanted to be a missionary priest. I still had four years to do in high school but my desire never wavered, despite the fact that I continued to notice that girls my own age were not only nice to look at but even nicer to be with. The idea of not being with them was the most difficult part of joining the Columbans in 1961. I had decided on the Columbans two years before that. I had shopped around all the missionary groups. Reading the students’ column in The Far East I wanted to be with these young men who were so human, not too much unlike myself. A Christian Brother who taught us, who didn’t know what I was thinking, said to us in class one day, “Only the best join the Columbans.” That encouraged me.

Another factor that drew me to the Columbans was that they had been founded in my native Ireland but were international in membership, with men from Ireland, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the USA all working together in each country where there were Columbans. That international aspect has expanded and now we have members from Chile, China, Fiji, Korea, Peru, Philippines, Tonga and Vietnam.

The Columbans are secular priests, not religious. I never felt any desire to take a vow of poverty, though I had no expectation that I would become a millionaire either. Nor have I!

Behind all of this was a desire to bring the Good News to people who hadn’t heard it or whose church still needed support from overseas. I had a simple view of things but it was real and I’m convinced that the Lord was speaking to me through it.

The seminary years only strengthened my desire to be a missionary priest. Time and time again my experience as a priest has confirmed that, especially on occasions such as students’ retreats when young people, who so often judge themselves harshly, get an inkling of God’s unconditional and tender love for them. In recent years I find myself repeating more and more to people one of my favorite lines in the Bible, and it occurs many times, 'God takes delight in his people.'

Maybe God has called me to be a Columban just to learn that for myself and to tell others about it.

I wrote this article for Misyon, which I edit for the Columbans in the Philippines. You can find it in its original setting here and the video version in its original setting here.