The end of a busy week....

A week in which I have seen my husband Ordained into the Sacred Priesthood, offer Mass for the 1st,2nd and 3rd time, concelebrate at Mass and lay hands at the birth of another Priest, has left me slightly overawed. I feel a bit like a child in a sweetshop, completely overwhelmed.  I remember being like this when I was confirmed, when we got married and at the births of our children. These amazing gifts, such amazing offerings that you hardly dare to hope they are real. The hesitation to accept  it is all real is partly born from the sheer length of time, worry and anxieties that have got us to those places. Can they really be meant for us? Therefore I keep looking at the multitude of photos just to check that it has really happened (if you are daft enough to be my facebook friend, I apologize for the constantly changing pictures).

 It is quite a sobering thought that I have been left with after the whirlwind of this week. The dawning realisation that I have given him to the Church. Yes, he is still my husband and my children's father but he is also now the Church's, the whole Church's. He is their gift from God, from my children, from me and his parents. We must stand back and as was stated in a sermon earlier this week, let the Church unwrap him. So they can find the Priestly gifts he has and that he in getting to know them to may learn how best to use them. 

This will take time and it can not be rushed. But you can not rush the works of God, after all it has taken us a couple of thousand of years to get here. It will take all his life time, he will always be formed and changed by what goes on around him. It is truly humbling to think about the enormity of it all, he is a small drop in the ocean of Christianity. Yet he stands at the altar "in persona Christi", he stands before us in Christ's place and literally brings Christ to us in the body and blood of Christ. He can administer all the sacraments and has the cure of peoples souls in his hand. That takes quite some thinking to get my head around and may be I never will. But I am enormously proud (if that is permitted) and completely awestruck and humbled.

 I have been fortunate enough to be a part of the beginnings of several new Priests ministries in the last two weeks. Each and every one of them will be great gifts and I only hope their Churches and communities have fun unwrapping them. We have a duty as a community to help and support them in their Ministry. We should hold them in our prayers, as they will only get through the years of holding us in their care with God's grace, love and wisdom. We should pray for the intercession of Our Blessed Lady, to pray for them to her son and that she may take a Motherly interest in their ministry. But most of all we should give thanks to God, that these Priests are willing to give themselves to God and his Church.