Good Shepherd Sunday / New Vocations Committee

by Fr. John Granato  |  04/21/2024  |  Words from Fr. John

My Dear Friends,

Today, the fourth Sunday of Easter, is commonly called Good Shepherd Sunday. It is a day for us to pray extra for shepherds to feed our Lord ’s sheep. Vocations to the priesthood, although they have dropped precipitously in many dioceses throughout the world and in our own United States, are a gift to the Church. We remember as well that we need priests in order to have celebrations of Mass and to stop the unfortunate closing of many parishes and church buildings because of a lack of priests.

And even though the number of Catholics has increased in the last few years throughout the world, the number of Catholics who actually attend Mass has continued to drop. When Catholic families cease to attend Mass, then the possible candidates to the priesthood also ceases because they are not exposed to a Catholic culture and the Catholic sacraments in order to be open to the call of the priesthood. And I have heard it said that some people who regularly attend Mass every week refuse to pray for vocations to the priesthood because women are not allowed to be priests. This is a case of ideology trumping fidelity, and when that happens nothing good ever comes from it.

This Tuesday we are implementing a vocations committee in the parish. It is a request from our new archbishop, Archbishop Christopher Coyne. This committee will meet at 6:00pm in the social center in Harwinton for anyone who is interested in helping our parish do our part to help increase vocations to the priesthood. But men interested in becoming priests have a better chance of being open to the call when we have strong families.

So the vocations committee will also focus on the vocation of sacramental marriage. A sacramental marriage is a marriage between a man and woman that is witnessed by a priest or a deacon in the Catholic Church. A civil marriage, a ceremony between two people (where at least one is Catholic) in front of a minister of a different church or a civil magistrate or justice of the peace, is not recognized by the Catholic Church as a marriage. This definition is not a popular teaching in the Church today, but nevertheless it is the teaching. Aside from the vocation of a strong sacramental marriage and strong Catholic families and vocations to the priesthood, there are also other vocations in our Catholic Church; monks and nuns, religious brothers and religious sisters, and deacons. Monks and nuns join a monastery (like Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem or the Benedictine monastery in Massachusetts that our own Fr. Iain, now Fr. Columba, joined) and are called to stability in that monastery, praying and working within the grounds seven days a week. Religious sisters and religious brothers (like the Franciscans Sisters of the Eucharist and the Xaverian Brothers) are women and men who join a community and take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience but are also given the opportunity to travel wherever their community has a house and minister in that region.

Please consider joining this committee as we help Archbishop Coyne to foster a dynamic and vibrant archdiocese and turn this dying into a rising. We can never discount the role of the Holy Spirit, for he is the one who calls us forth to vocations. He is calling our young men to the priesthood, but we need to foster an atmosphere of listening so that the young men being called can hear the Holy Spirit. God bless