Twenty Years and Twenty Mysteries

72mass.jpgOn November 16th, I will celebrate the 20th anniversary of my ordination to the holy priesthood. I was ordained on the feast of Saint Gertrude the Great, the Cistercian–Benedictine mystic of the sacred liturgy and of the Heart of Jesus. In 1986 I prepared for my ordination by reading Blessed Abbot Marmion’s Christ, the Ideal of the Priest, a classic that continues to inspire me.

These twenty years of priesthood appear to me related to the twenty Mysteries of the Holy Rosary: joyful, luminous, sorrowful, and glorious. There have been joys, lights, and sorrows in my priesthood, but all in anticipation of the glory promised by Christ and given already in the sacramental foretaste of the Most Holy Eucharist!

I will be celebrating Holy Mass in thanksgiving for the graces of these twenty years on Sunday, November 26th, the Solemnity of Christ, King of the Universe, at 11:00 a.m. in the church of the Monastery of the Glorious Cross where I serve as chaplain.

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