I was recently watching the Daily TV Mass when the young Salesian priest from Toronto who was saying the Mass told his amazing vocation story. He had fallen away from the Catholic faith at a young age, and when he grew up began working for a non-profit to do good in the world. His job took him to Africa. While there, he met the “tricky” Salesian Sisters. 

They invited him to also do things like teach children the Rosary, go to Mass with them, etc. He was hooked. The corporal works of mercy led him to the spiritual works of mercy. And best of all, he “felt the call to spiritual fatherhood.” He realized what people ultimately need is Jesus, and he could bring Jesus to them in the most profound way as a priest through the Blessed Sacrament and other Sacraments. Father’s testimony was short and sweet, but so powerful. What struck me was how he expressed the very heart of the priesthood in his call: spiritual fatherhood. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body helped me to understand the incredible gift and reality of the fatherhood of the priest. If physical fathers initiate the gift of love and life, what do spiritual fathers initiate? The gift of divine love and divine life—and it doesn’t get any better than that. Pope Benedict XVI wrote: “The Church doesn’t just need spiritual fathers, but also spiritual mothers” …but that is another topic for another time.

Father also brought up a good point about priestly ordination enabling him to represent Christ in a very unique way: in persona Christi capitis (in the person of Christ the head)—something only bishops and priests can do. Every Christian, indeed every person, can represent Christ in some way but there are specific gifts, roles and graces assigned to various members of the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12-27).

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The most incredible thing about the spiritual powers of the priesthood is that the priest is actually standing in for Christ Himself when he administers the Sacraments. As an “icon of Christ” (CCC #1548), the priest does not say: “Jesus absolves you of your sins,” in Confession, but “I” absolve you, because at that moment, he is acting in the very person of Christ. The same with the words: “This is my Body…this is my Blood”: Jesus is present to us in the Sacred Species and the priest. 

“Only to the Apostles, and thenceforth to those on whom their successors have imposed hands, is granted the power of the priesthood, in virtue of which they represent the person of Jesus Christ before their people….” Pope Pius XII 

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“…Acting in the person of Christ, the priest unites himself most intimately with the offering, and places on the altar his entire life, which bears the marks of the holocaust….” Pope Paul VI

“The priest offers the Holy Sacrifice in persona Christi…. Awareness of this reality throws a certain light on the character and significance of the priest celebrant who, by confecting the Holy Sacrifice and acting in persona Christi is sacramentally (and ineffably) brought into that most profound sacredness, and made part of it….” Pope John Paul II

“The Church is…a sheepfold…. It is also the flock of which God Himself foretold that he would be the shepherd, and whose sheep, even though governed by human shepherds, are unfailingly nourished and led by Christ Himself, the Good Shepherd and Prince of Shepherds, who gave His life for the sheep.” CCC #754.

I have often attended Mass at a priest’s retirement home. It’s one of my favourite places to go for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. These wonderful elderly men are still on fire for the Lord, and diligently prepare their homilies for the weekday Mass flock that congregates in their chapel. 

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Ever since Good Shepherd Sunday, we’ve heard a lot in the daily Scripture readings about Jesus as a shepherd. Elsewhere in the Gospels we read: “When He saw the crowds, He had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few.”

There’s a groundswell of young men around the world discovering Jesus in the Catholic Church. May many of them also find a vocation to share in the priesthood of Jesus Christ. What could be more beautiful than a lost sheep becoming a shepherd? Regina Cleri, ora pro nobis!