Our Lady of Lourdes Church and School

Today marks the first day of what is calendared in our Church here in the United States as National Vocations Awareness Week. We are invited as a church to “promote vocations to the priesthood, diaconate and consecrated life through prayer and education, and to renew our prayers and support for those who are considering one of these particular vocations.”

I have to confess that this time of year always leaves me feeling somewhat nostalgic and a little home-sick. I entered seminary in Dublin, in a school called All Hallows College. It was named for the Feast of All Saints, having opened its doors on All Saints (Hallows) Day, November 1st, 1842. The day it opened, there were 11 seminarians. Very quickly the seminary grew with the increased demand for priests to minister to the Irish diaspora, which was burgeoning due to the Great Famine. Priests from All Hallows were sought by dioceses throughout the English-speaking world, particularly in America and Australia. The very first priests from All Hallows were missioned to India, and within five years of the seminary opening, All Hallows began to send priests to the United States. Over the course of its life as a seminary, All Hallows ordained over 4,000 missionary priests, with about 1,500 coming to serve all over the United States. All Hallows men came to serve in California before our State came into existence, and of them, about 155 came to serve in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles alone. When I was ordained in 1994 I joined a group of 42 All Hallows priests ministering in the Archdiocese. Since then, much has changed and the great Missionary College of All Hallows has closed. Some of the 42 have gone on to their eternal reward, most are retired, and there remain 6 of us still active in ministry. We are the last All Hallows men to serve in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Some might read this and think “how sad!” However, I look back on the amazing contribution my alma mater has made, and the difference the lives of so many given so selflessly has made for the betterment of the world. All Hallows priests have embodied their missionary work in hugely diverse ways, ministering to those in the developing “new worlds” of America and Australia, working with the underprivileged or outcasts of society, educating black children during the apartheid regime in South Africa, supporting migrants and committing to remote missions shunned by many others. I have never doubted that I stand in the tradition of men who might be well named “heroic” for all that they accomplished throughout their lives. In 1992, the 150th anniversary of All Hallows was celebrated over the course of a year. It was my best year as a student in seminary. Every graduate of All Hallows who was physically able made the journey “home” to their alma mater, and I got to meet most of them. To watch them, gathered and telling stories together of their years in ministry all over the globe, I could have sworn the years fell from them and the idealism of their youth shone through them once more. That was then, and hence my nostalgia. But this is now, and there’s still work to be done, so we get on with it.

The monk and mystic, Thomas Merton, once wrote that “Humans have a responsibility to find themselves where they are, in their own proper time and place, in the history to which they belong and to which they must inevitably contribute either their response or their evasions, either truth and act, or mere slogan and gesture.” The men of All Hallows were and are courageous souls who, for generations, committed themselves to responding with action of their very lives, making a difference for good in the world precisely because there was and is a need for such courage and for such goodness.

The time of All Hallows has come and gone. Now it is for us to identify, to encourage and to invite others to be heroic in this time and in this place. As we pray intentionally this week for vocations to the priesthood, diaconate and consecrated life, let’s pray for people of courage who will rise to the challenge of imagining in their own time how the world needs goodness and light anew, and how they - by the grace of God working in them and through them - might be the very architects of that blessed goodness.