I Never Made a Sacrifice

For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office.People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa.

Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay?

Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter?

Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege.

Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us.

I never made a sacrifice.

- African missionary David Livingstone, Cambridge University, 4 December, 1857.

New Testament: Sacrifice or Execution

New York’s Oldest Working Priest: 92-year-old Fr Gerald Ryan

A tribute to enduring faith and steadfast love, in (of all places) the New York Times:

It was the bell that first called to him. It was a Sunday afternoon in the mid-1920s, and his family was living in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx. When his priest rang the bell during Mass, Gerald Ryan, then about 4, thought the beautiful sound was coming from the monstrance that held the host.

At age 7, he was hit by a car, and lost his hearing in one ear. The bell remained in his memory, as if Jesus were calling him in stereo.

Now, he is a monsignor, and he has been a priest for 67 years. He still runs a parish, St. Luke’s in Mott Haven, and he is 92, making him the oldest working priest in New York City.

“Maybe in the country,” Father Ryan said recently in his broad, courtly accent that is part Bronx, part Fred Astaire. “Maybe anywhere! I’ve been here forever.”

The priesthood is graying: the average age of Roman Catholic priests in the United States rose to 63 in 2009 from 35 in 1970, according to a recent study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. And with fewer young men entering seminaries, more priests are working past 75, the formal retirement age under canon law. In the New York Archdiocese, for example, where only one man was ordained into the priesthood this year, about 25 men over age 75 are still working as priests, and several are older than 85.

In Father Ryan’s tiny office, shaded by a burgundy roll-down shade held up with a paper clip, he reflected recently on his nearly 70 years in service. He has been at St. Luke’s since 1966; a certificate from Pope Benedict XVI, awarded on the occasion of 40 years in the parish, was propped up on a brown-painted radiator. An award from Father Ryan’s previous parish, where he started in 1945, was tucked behind a photograph of him with Pope John Paul II.

Father Ryan lives simply, with no air-conditioning, or even a fan, in his rectory quarters. For breakfast, he has toast, except on Thursdays, when he eats an egg. He buys quarts of soup, which he freezes and defrosts for lunch. A housekeeper fixes dinner.

His journey as a priest, he said, has been away from the formalities, trappings and titles of the church, in search of a deeper meaning of the Gospel.

“I think I have come a long, long way from when I was ordained,” he said. As a seminarian, he said, he liked the idea of saying Mass, hearing confession and being addressed as “father,” but that was “like a fairy tale.”

“It isn’t about serving the church in the way you have envisioned, from the altar, and from the position of authority and power,” he said. “But it is learning what human nature is, and what the struggles of people are. And where Jesus really is.”

Father Ryan was born in 1920 in Upper Manhattan to Irish immigrant parents; two years later, the family moved to Pelham Bay, after his father became a motorman for the IRT subway line. As a boy, Gerald Ryan was an altar server; he began seminary studies in high school.

“I never made a decision that I wanted to be a priest,” he said. “I just grew up with the idea.”

In the 1960s, he joined the March on Washington, and stood with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Ala. In the 1970s, he grew his thick reddish hair down to his shoulders and helped to build low-income housing for Spanish-speaking immigrants in the South Bronx.

His first assignment as a priest — at St. Anthony of Padua on East 166th Street in the Bronx — shocked him. The neighborhood was predominantly black, and he had grown up, he said, “with the idea, being white, that Roman Catholics were white people that went to church and kept the Commandments.” But, he said, he soon fell in love with the parish, with its sense of solidarity, brotherhood and faith. And when the civil rights movement started, he joined it.

Read the rest.

Below, Fr. Ryan’s breviary, held together with tape.

Source

 

The Titanic’s Priest Who Went Down Hearing Confessions

Amidst all the tales of chivalry from the Titanic disaster there is one that’s not often told.It is that of Fr. Thomas Byles, the Catholic priest who gave up two spots on a lifeboat in favor of offering spiritual aid to the other victims as they all went down with the “unsinkable” vessel.

A 42-year-old English convert, Fr. Byles was on his way to New York to offer the wedding Mass for his brother William. Reports suggest that he was reciting his breviary on the upper deck when the Titanic struck the iceberg in the twilight hours of Sunday, April 14th, 1912.

According to witnesses, as the ship went down the priest helped women and children get into the lifeboats, then heard confessions, gave absolution, and led passengers in reciting the Rosary.

Agnes McCoy, one of the survivors, says that as the great ship sank, Fr. Byles “stood on the deck with Catholics, Protestants and Jews kneeling around him.”

“Father Byles was saying the rosary and praying for the repose of the souls of those about to perish,” she told the New York Telegram on April 22, 1912, according to the website devoted to his memory, FatherByles.com.

In the words of the priest’s friend Fr. Patrick McKenna, “He twice refused the offer of a place in a boat, saying his duty was to stay on the ship while one soul wanted his ministrations.”

Nearly two weeks after the disaster, The Church Progress in St. Louis, Missouri wrote this moving tribute to the heroic priest:

In almost every line that has been written, and in every sentence that has been spoken, there stands boldly out above every other expression a picture of sublime heroism that will be copied into the pages of history. And well it may, for it is deserving of that honor.

But when it is, mention should be made of one whom pens and tongues have almost forgotten in their accounts of this awful sea tragedy. Among those who safely reached the land again no one seems to have been aware of his presence on the ship, but we may hope that many who meet him in a blissful eternity will praise God that Father Thomas Byles was there to administer absolution.

 

Ordained Priest at 80, He Really Worked Until the End…

What a beautiful legacy:

For nearly half a century, Gérard Lafrenière was devoted to his wife, and, by all accounts, fulfilled his vows to love, honour and cherish her. Yet, he had another love, too.

In 2009, two years after his wife of 49 years, Gisèle Viau, died, Lafrenière fulfilled the vocation that had been with him since childhood. He became a Catholic priest, with his wife’s blessing.

“This is something that has been in my life for the past 65 years,” he told the Citizen on the day of his ordination. “You never know what the Lord has in store for you. I had to put it aside for a while and take a different avenue.”

On Saturday, three years after becoming a priest, Father Lafrenière’s died at the age of 83.

Those who knew him describe him as a modest but exceptional man who had a great gift for consoling others.

“He was very loved,” said his son Georges Lafrenière.

“He was the type of person who was always willing to listen to you, really listen,” said Leonard Larabie, a longtime member of the congregation of St. Joseph d’Orléans, who knew Lafrenière for nearly four decades. “He knew how to listen and how to comfort people.”

“He was a man with a very deep faith,” said Royal Galipeau, the Conservative MP for Ottawa-Orléans, who remembers Lafrenière signing his nomination papers when he entered politics in the 1980s.

“He didn’t care about promoting himself. He just fit himself in where he thought he was best needed.”

Even though Lafrenière officially retired in November when a liver ailment left him frail and shaky, he continued, unofficially, to used what energy he had left to take calls from the church and members of the congregation.

“He really worked until the end,” said his son Georges. “He was doing a lot of phoning from his bed.”

That, say friends, was typical. “He never retired,” said Larabie. “He was too busy. He just never slowed down.”

Even so, it took Lafrenière a long time to get to where he wanted to be. He grew up on a farm near Plaisance, Que., one of several children. He knew as a boy of nine or 10 that he had a vocation, he want to be a priest. When he was 14 he began studies at the Ottawa junior seminary, but left after less than three years because of poor health. He assumed he’d never be a priest.

Lafrenière eventually married, had children and embarked on a career in the insurance business. His faith, however, never dimmed. He kept the church at the centre of his life, serving as a deacon at the Parish of St. Joseph d’Orléans for almost 30 years.

His wife, Gisèle Viau, shared his faith, according to friends. And shortly before she died in August 2007, she urged him to fulfil his vocation.

“That story is true,” said Larabie. “I heard it from him personally. She understood. This man was in love with his wife all her life, but at the bottom of his heart he felt he was destined to be a priest.”

“They had a marriage that was full of love,” said Galipeau. “She certainly knew about his faith and his sense of vocation.”

After his wife’s death, Lafrenière’s friends reiterated her encouragement. He’d fulfilled his vows to his wife, they said, and now he should make other vows.

On March 25, 2009, Lafrenière was ordained by Archbishop Terence Prendergast at St. Joseph’s in Orléans. At the time, he was told that he was the first person his age in Ottawa to be ordained. Four days later, he held his first mass.

He was, it seems, a popular priest. The fact that he was married for so many years gave him insight that was unique among priests, says Debbie Guindon, who worked with Lafrenière to prepare couples for marriage.

The knowledge that comes with being a husband and father drew long lineups outside his confessional. “Everybody wanted to go to confession to him because he was very open and spiritual and he would really guide you in your confession,” Guindon said. “He was a good-hearted person. Very loving.”

About a week ago, the old priest finally slowed down. “I put my hand in his hand,” said his son, “and I said in his ear, ‘Daddy, it’s OK, you can go and see mom. I’m sure she’s waiting for you.’”

Visitation will be held Tuesday at Heritage Funeral Home, 2871 St. Joseph Blvd., from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Another visitation will be held at the Parish of St. Joseph d’Orléans on Wednesday at 9 a.m., followed by a Eucharistic celebration at 10 a.m. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Canadian Liver Foundation or to the St. Vincent de Paul Society.

‘He really worked until the end…’ Oh, I pray that that may be said of me too.

 

The Sacrifice

Here is the trailer to the latest SourceFlix production. It look great.

The Sacrifice will teach you the profoundness of why God required the sacrifice of animals for the forgiveness of sin and the promise of ultimate redemption it pointed to!