By Father Pat Bishop

Father Adamski offered me the opportunity to write this week’s “Role Call” column to share some of my thoughts and feelings during a fantastic ordination weekend. There are so many thoughts and feelings that I am still sifting through them—and hope to be sifting through them for the rest of my life.

I am also looking forward to celebrating the Rite of Ordination again on June 8 when Deacon Steve Yander will become a priest of this Archdiocese, for it is a timeless moment whose beauty can never fully be appreciated.

I rode to the Cathedral on the Saturday morning of ordination with Father Dick Morrow, a generous priest who has given me much time in my preparation for the priesthood, and Deacon Steve Lintzenich, a classmate who has been a good friend through the years in the seminary.

They were getting quite a chuckle out of my nervousness; but I was really frightened. Saturday was to be a day of big promises, and I was very aware of how much help I was going to need from God to keep those promises. I had counted the years, months, weeks, and days in the seminary waiting for this moment, and now I wondered what my hurry had been.

But as the procession moved through the entrance of the Cathedral, and the Cathedral choir began singing with a warmth and grace that is specially theirs, I experienced a joy that, for me, could have come with no other moment. There were so many good friends gathered here that morning; people who spent a generous portion of themselves in helping me to come to the Sacrament of Ministry.

There were family and old friends there. People who had watched with concern (and, no doubt, sometimes alarm) as I grew up and began exploring life.

There were young men and women there who had grown up with me and had experienced so many different kinds of times with me.

There were good friends from the parishes in which I had served as a seminarian and a deacon; people who had shared their expectations of ministry; people who had shared prayer and reflections with me; people who were proud of me in my accomplishments and supportive in my mistakes, people who had patiently sat through my homilies as I had tried to learn to be a good preacher of the gospel; people who had encouraged me to respond to God’s call.

There were people there who did not know me, but whose love and respect for the priesthood brought them out to encourage a young man who was to be ordained as their servant.

There were sisters there; women who have worked hard in their ministry to the Church of North Georgia and came to witness the promises of another minister.

There were priests there; priests who had known me and struggled with me as I strove to join them in priestly ministry – priests like Father Morrow, Father Dillmann, Father Hardy, Father Adamski and Father Gracz who had believed in me and worked to help me to believe in myself. There were other priests who didn’t know me as well but came to welcome me into one ministry we share.

And the Archbishop was there to receive my promises and to give to me a share of his full ministry as the spiritual father of the Church of Atlanta. He stays close to his men who are preparing for the priesthood in Atlanta and he watches closely that they become good ministers. On the day of ordination, he receives them warmly.

And so Saturday, as well as the Mass of Thanksgiving on Sunday, was a celebration of people in relationship to one another. Without each other, the moment would have been meaningless. For the ordination to the priesthood, as the days of priesthood, is a time of giving and receiving. And the young man who would approach ministry must learn to receive as quickly as he gives.

And it is a time when the voices of people speak so clearly their desire that priests become the men of prayer and work that they must be to lead such special people of God.

And it is a time when there can be little doubt that there will be those who will help you fulfill promises and evoke others. A time of fantastic joy and happiness, it is also a time to carry with you through all the times of your life – and a time to be broken open and shared.