I love my celibacy

"I love being celibate," I told a class of 17-year-olds in our diocesan Sixth Form College, Notre Dame, today. It was in response to a suggestion that if we ditched celibacy then lots of young men would want to become priests. As soon as I had said it, I checked myself and quickly thought through whether what I had said corresponded to reality - I have a tendency to adorn some things that I say with hyperbole. It's because of my Celtic ethnicity. But no, in this instance, speech expressed what is actually the case. Also, the act of naming something had made it the more real. Earlier, Mrs Breda Theakston, the diocesan Coordinator of Family Life Ministry, explained to the class that Blessed John Paul II once said that every person has "a vocation to love." My vocation is to love others precisely through my celibacy. After eighteen years as a priest, my whole mode of relating to people has been shaped by my publicly professed singleness. I would feel bereft if I were not able to enter into relationships, pastoral and personal, with the ease which my celibacy makes possible. I enjoy hanging around with students and having nowhere better to be. I am keenly sensible of the privilege of being the recipient of multiple confidences, a privilege which is connected in part, I think, to my singleness. I don't mind bearing the burden of occasional loneliness, feeling the sacrifice in small part, but simultaneously - and this is the great thing - feeling (or knowing in my soul in a fresh way each time I experience this pain) the presence of God, sustaining me and using my singleness for his unfathomable purposes. The students listened with respect. It's hard to know how to reach out to them, and I don't think I'm good at it, but it's worth the effort. I spoke to six classes in two days and I was exhausted at the end of it. I don't know how teachers keep going. Congratulations to Peter Smith, the Head of the PTE Programme at the College, for inviting in a range of speakers to speak about different aspects of the mission of the Church in this week after the exams. Here are some of the students and staff who engaged in this process (I like the green hair).
.