Listening to God

I often supply in parishes on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings and preach on vocation to the priesthood. Yesterday I was at two of the very few churches in the diocese that I have not previously visited: St Joseph's, a small, plain, red-brick chapel-of-ease in Cross Hills, near Skipton which was built in 1920; and Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Silsden, a former Methodist church which the diocese acquired in 1957. Members of the both congregations greeted me very warmly. I feel energised by this preaching mission. I generally preach about the priesthood from two perspectives, namely that it is a gift to everybody in the Church, and indeed in the world; and that the priest, through the celebration of the Eucharist, unites the people (or, perhaps better, Christ unites them through the priest's ministry), freeing them to fulfil their own vocations in the secular sphere. Each homily is based more particularly on the readings of the day. It's not a recruitment drive - the homily is not the place for that. It's rather a mission to encourage the people of the diocese, to let them know that we have some seminarians - eleven at the moment - and that God will not let us down and to encourage them to pray for more vocations to the priesthood in the future. Of course, I always harbour the hope that a young or middle-aged man in the congregation may be moved to offer his life to Christ in this way at that moment, but I have been engages in this mission now for about eight years and nobody has ever said to me: "It was your words that did it, Father." However, we just don't know how the Holy Spirit will use our preaching for his purposes. I do recall that when I was a boy it seemed that priests were frequently underlining the importance of vocations to the priesthood and that, certainly as a teenager, I used to feel excitement and alarm in equal measure when listening to them. Jesus, who turned water into wine, calls men in every generation to this extraordinary ministry and I have been given the job - or more truly Christ has given me the job, through and under the bishop - of encouraging men to listen to what God is saying to them in their depths. To say that I love it would be an understatement!

Here's a picture of the interior of Our Lady of Mount Carmel whose sanctuary has recently been renovated.