THE PRIESTS

One of the greatest blessings that can come to any home or to any parish is to have a son called by God to be a Priest. St. Joseph’s Parish has been abundantly blessed since twenty young men have answered the (,‘all, and have left home, family, and friends to be “other Christs”, and to carry the Good News to other parts of Canada, and the United States.

A vocation is a sacred calling —- a quiet gift from God. It comes from Him and from nowhere else. And a vocation accepted means that one loves God enough to give Him one’s life, to dedicate that life in His Name to the lives of others.

An ordination to the Priesthood is an inspiring sight. When the young Levite answers the call of the Bishop, steps forward and blows out the candle, it would be good if he then lit another candle to symbolize the new light he now brings forth to illuminate the lives of men. Once our Lord robed in white and standing on the green pulpit of a Galilean hill, addressed His Apostles (and over their shoulders their successors to the end of time) saying: “You are the Light of the world! Let your light shine before men!”. And so a young priest at his First Mass stands like a tower in his tall white vestments almost like a lighthouse holding the bright chalice over his head, flashing like a lighthouse beam. Then the altar bell rings, like a lighthouse bell, over the waves of the bowed wor- shippers in the benches. A new priest! — A new light unto the world.

Writers on the Priesthood have referred to a priest as a lawyer who pleads the almost hopeless cause of Christ; or that he is a surgeon whose operating field is sin-cancered souls and broken hearts; or that ho is an engineer whose job is to keep repaired the road between God and man: but above all he is the lighthouse, the keeper of the light! “You are the light of the world; let your light shine before men!”

Such have been the priests of Kelly’s Cross; men who have kept the Light shining before men!

But the Church is desperately in need of priests; of young men with the flaming zeal of the altar light; priests with the white purity of the altar-cloth; priests with the silvery eloquence of the steeple-bell that calls men so earnestly to God; priests with the silent influence of the Holy Water Font that offers a blessing to all that come near; priests with the patience of the church pillars that bear the great burdens quietly; priests with the impartiality of the church pews that receive all, rich and poor, without distinction; priests whose life will be like the life of the candle that burns itself out in God’s service and whose death will be like the flower that droops and falls on the very steps of the altar. Dear God. hear your Church! Send us many and good priests.

Rev. George Francis Bradley — Society of Jesus, was born May 22nd, 1881, son of Francis Bradley and Eliza Ann Donnelly. He entered the Society of Jesus on August 4th., 1905, and was ordained a priest in Montreal, May 16th., 1918. For most of his 23 years of priestly life, he travelled across Canada and into the United States bringing the Word of

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