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Year for Priests: I Am A priest Because I Fell In Love With Jesus
Written By Rev. Msgr. Michael McCarron
The Catholic Virginian, October 5, 2009 edition

Rev. Msgr. Michael McCarron is pastor of the St. Stephen Martyr Parish.

“I am a priest, God loves me tremendously, and I work miracles every day.”

With that, Dr. Paul Ashton, PhD, began a recent clergy training session. All that followed was typically insightful for this gentle and good teacher, but my mind began to whirl with the truth of his statement and the article I had agreed to write for The Catholic Virginian during this Year for Priests.

There is no problem about writing about the beauty of this life, but with so many articles, such repeated statements of priestly wonder may start to seem a bit surreal. I had been thinking of a different approach, and thanks to Dr. Ashton, I had my starting point.

“I am a priest…”

That means I am a human being called from amongst other human beings to serve them.

That call is the summons to a journey, and like many real journeys, the destination may be a lot clearer than the challenges along the way.

Throughout this year people have been writing me almost daily to thank me for being their priest, and detailing how I have impacted their lives. It is powerful and meaningful to receive these letters!

Still, I long for the day I can be the man these wonderful people see that I am.

Yes, I am called to holiness by this vocation, to an intimate relationship with God and His people, but I am not always as holy as the call is. I, like my people, am in need of grace.

The ups and downs of ministry, exercised in love, are the hammer and chisel of God, sculpting me into an eternal being, one that HE intends.

I am a sinner in need of the very forgiveness that I proclaim, and in that very proclamation to others, I am called to faith in it for myself. I am ever conscious of my reluctance and my shortcomings.

With St. Paul, I realize that “in my weakness” I am strong.

I NEED to be a priest because it is through the love of the people of God that I can proclaim that love and forgiveness with a passion born of need and lived experience! To do so is my own salvation as well.

“God loves me tremendously…”

So true! Priesthood allows me to see and know it. I know of no other vocation that so regularly confronts a person with this reality.

I am a priest because I met Jesus, fell in love with Him and wanted to spend the rest of my life with Him. Nothing gives me more pleasure than talking to others about Him and introducing Him to those I encounter.

My life is always balanced when He is at the center.

In the times I have been in sadness or wrong, it has not been stress or loneliness that has lessened me; it has been wandering away from this intimacy. Priesthood has always called me back!

This in itself is the proof that I am tremendously cared for, loved and cherished. I preach Him because I know Him. I know him not because I am holy, but because priesthood has led me to see that HE is, and that is all that matters.

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God loves me not for my goodness, since I am so flawed. He loves me because of HIS goodness.

With that at the center of who I am, it has been a joy to do what I do. To pastor, to preach, to supervise seminarians, to anoint the sick, baptize the converted, reconcile the sinner, all are simply ways of learning this truth over again in new ways.

“I work miracles every day…”

There is simply no end to this. There have been times as a priest when I have felt overwhelmed. . . by the tasks before me, the financial needs of the parish, the depth of the needs of the folks I serve, my own unworthiness for so esteemed a calling.

But there has NEVER been a time when I was not constantly aware that God was doing for me what I could not do for myself. Every single day the action of God is apparent, in words whose source is simply not me, in insight and intuition that is far beyond my knowledge, in presence that defies exhaustion, in joy dancing in the midst of sorrow and grief.

I cannot celebrate Mass or preach or write without my Sweet Lord’s real presence. I tell folks sometimes, “I see the Lord’s fingerprints all over you!”

I cannot help but see them on me too. I work miracles because that is precisely what He has commanded me to do.

I work them because I have seen them in my own life and know that they are the very currency of our God’s gracious love.

I am not conceited but convinced about this fact. I am in so many ways lowly, but have felt the exhilaration of being lifted up; I have looked for words and found them; I have needed vigor and received it.

I have seen sickness and banished it, loneliness and healed it, sinfulness and forgiven it, bread and wine and transformed it. All done through the enacted love we call Grace.

What a wonderful way to spend out the account of one’s life.

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“I am a priest,” broken and healed, “God loves me tremendously.” I have found this truer than any other truth, and “I work miracles every day.” Indeed.

Perhaps the greatest of miracles is helping the people of God to do them too. To forgive and heal, love and cherish, defy death and embrace life, these miracles are the plain work of our God.

Once after a homily at one of my parishes, in the silence that follows, a toddler’s loud voice rang out, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, all he EVER talks about is Jesus!”

May it be my epitaph one day, a long time coming!

I hope, when all is said and done, not that it will be claimed that I made no mistakes, never fell, or was aloof from the things of life. I hope that it will be said of me, in a paraphrase of what was said of Blessed Charles de Foucald, “Here is a man who loved being loved by God has been...”

I am a priest because priesthood is how God is working to make that true in me and in those I serve. Truth be told, I do love it, more than words can express!

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