A Week without priests? Perfect!

It always seems interesting to me, how in our Diocese of Owensboro, the Priests convocation always ends up falling during National Vocations Awareness week. During that time, almost all of our churches in the Diocese go without Mass for 4 days. They have no priests to celebrate Mass, as they are always on their annual Convocation with the Bishop. I don’t know if it was an accident for the Diocese to always coincide the Convocation with National Vocation Awareness Week, but I think that it works out perfectly!

Here the parishes are, left without Masses, left without priests for almost a week. And it is during National Vocation “AWARENESS” week. Are you getting what I’m hinting at? The people of God in Western Kentucky are getting a first-hand look at what our world will be like without priests. I love it! Not the fact that the people are left without priests, nor the fact that we don’t have enough nearby priests to provide subs for the pastors during the Convocation. But I love how National Vocations Week coincides with it. Because it really does send a wake-up-call! It really does raise awareness in my eyes as to why we need vocations, why we need vocations to the Priesthood. Why vocations matter. Just another reason why during National Vocations Week, we should be doing things to raise vocation awareness and encouraging men in thinking about the priesthood. When was the last time that you encouraged that young man serving Mass to think of the Priesthood? When was the last time that you told that young man that was interested in his Faith in CCD, that you think he’d make a great priest? When was the last time that you helped build Vocation Awareness?  I’ll close with a quote from St. John Vianney:

“Without the priest, the passion and death of our Lord would be of no avail. It is the priest who continues the work of redemption here on earth…What use would be a house filled with gold, were there no one to open its door? The priest holds the key to the treasures of heaven: it is he who opens the door: he is the steward of the good Lord; the administrator of His goods…Leave a parish for twenty years without a priest and they will end by worshiping the beasts there..The priest is not a priest for himself, he is a priest for you.”