When I went to the Connecticut Catholic Men’s Conference recently, I heard a new approach on how to increase vocations to the priesthood. An approach that we all have to embrace, not just for more priests, but to save our Church and to save our country during these troubled and desperate times.
Father Anthony Federico, director of vocations for the Archdiocese of Hartford, stood before 600 men and told them: “I am here today because I am not satisfied with empty churches, and I am not satisfied when Holy Mother Church is degraded because I do not believe the Son of God died on the cross for what we see today.”
So what is he doing about it? Every night, he goes before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament on his knees and “begs him for total renewal in our Church.”
Then, he appealed to the audience and said: “I ask you to beg with me, I ask you to beg the Lord for new priests in our Church.”
To be sure, he’s doing other things besides begging Jesus, but it has to start with begging … and not just ordinary begging. We have to beg Jesus face-to-face before the Blessed Sacrament.
Our Church and our world are beset by countless intractable problems that won’t be solved by another task force, another committee, another report, another focus group, another survey, or another study, with or without artificial intelligence. Don’t get me wrong. Those things are fine, and they keep people employed, but unless we’re begging Jesus for help, they won’t mean anything.
It’s reached a time in the history of the Church and our country for us to fall on our knees in humility before the Blessed Sacrament and beg Christ to save us. We have to beg for more priests, for our family members and friends who have fallen away from the faith, for our own faith to be strengthened, for our divided country, for our divided Church, for an end to war, for an end to the anger and anxiety, and for hope and courage.
When Father Federico told his story about going before the Blessed Sacrament every night, he didn’t say, “I asked him.” He didn’t say, “I appealed to him.” He didn’t say, “I petitioned him.” He didn’t say, “I urged him.” More than once, he said, “I begged him.”
When it comes to Christ, none of us should think begging is beneath us.
Do you remember the Gospel story about that very annoying and very persistent Syrophoenician woman who approached Jesus because her daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit? She had more chutzpah than the entire island of Manhattan.
St. Mark said she fell at Jesus’ feet and “begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.” At first, Jesus rebuffed her and said, “It’s not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” Hearing that, anyone else would have crept away downcast, but she came right back at him with her famous retort:“ Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”
“For saying this, you may go,” he told her. “The demon has gone out of your daughter.”
Jesus gets it. Do you remember the parable in Luke’s Gospel about the need to pray with persistence?
Jesus said: “There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being. And a widow in that town used to come to him and say, ‘Render a just decision for me against my adversary.’ For a long time, the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought, ‘While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being, because this widow keeps bothering me, I shall deliver a just decision for her, lest she finally come and strike me.’”
The Lord said, “Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says. Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.”
We have to be like that widow. We have to be like that Syrophoenician woman. We have to “call out to him day and night,” as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.
