On Good Shepherd Sunday, 21 April, Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan of Waterford & Lismore, and chairman of the Council for Vocations for the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, celebrated a televised Mass from the RTÉ studios in Donnybrook, Dublin, to mark the end of the Year for Vocation for the Diocesan Priesthood.
In his homily during the Mass, Bishop Cullinan preached, “A US priest visited Ireland a few weeks ago – Monsignor James Shea. At a talk in the US in January this year, before a crowd of 24,000 young people, he invited people to gaze with him into the long annals of human history. In every time and place including now where human beings have gone they brought with them great aspirations, great achievements, works of art and beauty and usefulness – they build, they fashion, they enquire into the world and do marvellous things. And everywhere we human beings we plunder and pillage and oppress and destroy. We bring with us an incurable illness called sin. And everywhere we go we die.
“We try very hard to forget and avoid all this. We try to tell ourselves that we are masters of our own destiny. That we don’t need God. That we can produce our own happiness. We see this now is the various political manoeuvrings which oppose God’s natural law, and in group-think media, where once again in human history we are trying to build a world without God – a brave new world where everything is permitted and nothing forgiven. Such is our human pride.
“What is the result of all this? All around we see suffering and confusion and despair. In Irish society right now there is a near explosion in mental illness, anxiety, loneliness – especially among the young. This situation demands an explanation. Maybe their despair is the right response to a world where God is deliberately banished.”
Organised by the Bishops’ Council for Vocation, the theme for the Year for Vocation to the Diocesan Priesthood was ‘Take the Risk for Christ’ and it involved raising awareness on the beauty of priesthood at family, local and national levels. For more information on vocations in Ireland please contact [email protected]
Read the full text of Bishop Cullinan’s homily.
ENDS
