New blessings for the new school year

This month is the beginning of the new school year for our seminarians and our students in Catholic schools: a new time of grace in the life of the young people of our arch-diocese. Thousands of students will have the blessing of receiving a Catholic education that has the objective of forming hearts, building minds and changing lives. They will be called to grow in their faith and in the academic life that will make them the future leaders of our society.

This month is also the beginning of the academic year at Assumption Seminary. By the grace of God, we will have more than 90 seminarians from 14 dioceses and religious communities — 28 of them are seminarians of the Archdiocese of San Antonio. It is a great blessing for the archdiocese and for the Catholic Church in the United States.
 
Assumption Seminary has become a wonderful reality in the archdiocese, a place of intense preparation for our future priests. This past school year, five seminarians from Assumption were ordained priests for the archdiocese, and this coming year, we may have a similar number of ordinations to the priesthood and transitional diaconate.

Thanks to the direction of Father Larry Christian, rector of Assumption Seminary, and his formation faculty, we see constant and progressive growth in the institution and the seminarians who come here to prepare for the priesthood. This is the second year that Archbishop Flores Residence Hall will be home to our seminarians, as we continue to invest in our facilities and our men who are responding to God’s call.

As God’s grace blesses the work of our seminary, we must continue to pray for more vocations. I urge you to pray even more for the present and future seminarians: Lord, grant us priests, Lord, grant us many priests, Lord, grant us many and holy priests! This is my prayer, as I celebrate my 30th anniversary of ordination to the priesthood on Aug. 15, the solemnity of the Assumption of Mary. I give thanks to God for the grace of my vocation and for the countless blessings of my priesthood.

I still remember the day of the ordination and my first Mass the following day, Aug. 16! The joy and awesome feeling of pronouncing the words of the consecration for the first time! The first blessing and the powerful but humble moment of celebrating the sacrament of reconciliation in the person of Jesus Christ, the only one who can forgive sins!

A few days ago, I watched the movie, “The Ninth Day.” It was inspired by the true story of a priest, Father Jean Bernard, who was imprisoned for 18 months in Dachau, a concentration camp where more that 2,500 priests were sent during the Second World War. The movie is about the nine days’ leave that he was granted to visit his family after his mother’s death.

It is a powerful movie. Father Bernard and the priests of the Dachau “priestblock” suffered all sorts of humiliation, physical and moral pain even to death. More than 600 of them died. It is one more example of the unspeakable tragedy of the concentration camps during the Second World War.

The movie shows Father Bernard’s commitment to Christ as he struggles between the temptation of going along with the Nazi atrocities, the safety of his family and his own weakness. In the end, he remains faithful to Christ and is sent back to the concentration camp. At its conclusion, Father Bernard is seen walking back to the concentration camp, happy to suffer for Christ and for the church. Happy to be a priest of Jesus Christ!

The priesthood is a “gift and a mystery,” an extraordinary blessing that we carry in our fragile human condition. It is a blessing for the church and for the world. Let’s be grateful for the great gift of the priesthood and intensify our prayers for all priests, especially for the diocesan and religious priests in the Archdiocese of San Antonio.
 
In the 30th anniversary of my priestly ordination, I give thanks to God for all his blessings, for the love and support of my parents and my entire family. For the holy priests that have been my mentors and heroes. For my brother priests who have been an inspiration for me. For so many lay men and women who have supported and protected my priesthood with their prayers and friendship.

We priests are called to bring the hope of Jesus’ Gospel to those who are without hope in the world. To the poor who do not know God. To the blind who cannot see a way out of their misery. To those captive to their sins. To those who are oppressed by the sins of others.

We are ministers of the hope of the cross — which is the hope of the world. We are all called to be holy and to offer our lives in sacrifice to the service of God, bringing others to the hope of eternal life with our Father in heaven.

We have so many examples of good priests in the history of the archdiocese. I wish I could mention all of them, but let me please mention one of them, retired Auxiliary Bishop Bernard F. Popp. This year he celebrates his 65th anniversary as a priest and 25th as a bishop. He has lived a long and dedicated life to the service of God and all of us: a priest of Jesus Christ!

Let’s keep our hearts and souls open to the blessings of the new school year. May Mary, our Blessed Mother, continue to intercede for all of us, especially for us priests of Jesus Christ, so that we can be witnesses of hope to the world.