April 7, 2002

The Church has designated the first Sunday after joyful Easter Day as Divine Mercy Sunday. Special devotions attached to this feast in part came from the private revelations of Sister Faustina, who lived in Poland in the twentieth century.

In His mercy, our Lord came to us as High Priest, sacrificing Himself for us to undo the curse of sin and death. His mercy gave us the Holy Priesthood. Since John Paul II became Pope, the number of seminarians worldwide has increased 73.1% (from 64,000 in 1978 to more than 110,500 in 2000. Of course that is not the case throughout the United States. In some dioceses there is a surge, and in others a famine. Similarly, while many religious orders are in rapid decline, others are growing. The Legionaries of Christ, for example, is a relatively new order and yet it is now training 2500 seminarians and has already produced 500 priests.

Common experience proves that there is healthy growth where there is devotion to the Eucharist and reverence in worship, soundness in doctrine, manly obedience to the Pope, and a healthy spiritual sonship to the Blessed Mother. Intellectual and physical rigor cultivate a distinguished quality of candidates. Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard Law professor and a serious Catholic, recently described how decline sets in when these standards are lost. She says, "Serious renewal" is needed, making seminaries "places where young men would happily go and where parents would happily send their sons." This is nothing more than what modern Popes and prophetic voices have said. Where they have been ignored, decay has set in as it has in the various denominations. The crises of our times and the needs of the Church do not call for finger pointing and blaming the mistaken. Humility requires that those who followed wrong theories and misdirected advice should recognize the evidence and act upon it.

God has been merciful to our parish in countless ways. One sure sign of a parish's response to his mercies is the number of worthy young men it raises up for the priesthood. For all the good our parish has done in the Lord's vineyard in the nearly fifty years of its existence, it has not produced one priest for the archdiocese. Pray to the Lord of the Harvest that he will send laborers into His harvest.

Fr. George W. Rutler