Golden Jubilee of Abbot Paul and Fr Michael
A special Mass celebrated their 50 years as priests.
Abbot Paul and Fr Michael wanted a quiet celebration of their Golden Jubilee of Ordination to the priesthood, but word got around and there was a good crowd in the church, particularly from Fr Paul's parishes of Bromyard and Leominster and Fr Michael's former parish of St Francis Xavier's. It was an occasion for the community to celebrate and thank God for the graces and blessings of their ministry over the last 50 years, at Belmont on our parishes and in Peru.
Abbot Brendan's Homily
My dear Fathers, Paul and Michael, fifty years ago you stood in this place, and at the hands of Bishop Mullins the Spirit of the Lord descended upon you in the Sacrament of Holy Orders. You were named “priests of the Lord” and “ministers of our God” as the first reading from Isaiah put it (Isaiah 61:1-3, 8b-9). But this anointing wasn’t for your own glory—it was for a mission: to proclaim the Good News, to heal, to reconcile, and to set others free.
Fr Michael recently remarked to Abbot Paul: “It is astonishing what the Lord can do with unpromising material.” The opening prayer could almost be read as a put-down – that the Lord has chosen you "for no merit of your own." But he did call you both, loves you both, saw how you would respond to that love, and be channels of his grace. In your own unique ways, you brought Christ to others. You have carried your learning lightly, and with a gentle twinkle of the eye you have brought "the oil of gladness" to those around you. Knowing your own weaknesses you have been able to help others, aware that “we have this treasure in clay jars, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” (2 Cor 4:7)
Fifty years ago, you were set apart for the ministerial priesthood. You have stood at the altar offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. You have feed the faithful with the Living Bread. You have proclaimed the Good News in and out of season. In the confessional you have freed people from their sins, and through quiet counsel put people them back on their feet. You have sat with the lonely, gone out on a cold night to the bedside of the ill and the dying. How many babies have you baptised, especially Abbot Paul out in the villages of Peru? How many couples have you brought together before God? And amongst earthly tears, how many of God’s faithful have you accompanied on their final journey to the Kingdom of Heaven. Over the past five decades, you have experienced the joy and the cost of your calling.
The priesthood is, above all, a life of abiding in Christ’s love, as we heard in the Gospel (John 15:9-17). It is not simply about what you do, but in whose power and strength you live, in Whom you live and move and have your being. “Apart from me you can do nothing” Jesus said to his disciples.
You have given a life of service, but our Lord tells us we are not servants but friends. Isn’t that one of the profoundest things in the Gospel to hear that Jesus came that we may be friends of God. There are high theologies of the priesthood, but both of you have lived it in a joyous, human way as friends of God: His friends amongst His people. As, now Cardinal, Timothy Radcliffe said at the Synod: “The heart of the priest’s vocation is the art of friendship. This is the eternal, equal friendship of our Triune God.”
Thank God for friendship. Today we celebrate one of England’s loveliest spiritual guides, St Aelred. He lived in a damp Yorkshire valley, made warm by the depth of love that he shared with his Cistercian brothers at Rievaulx. With affection they called him “our own Bernard”, our own St Bernard. He is most remembered for a short treatise that he wrote on friendship. De spirituali amicitiâ.
Aelred said: "if you shut out friendship you shut out the sunlight of human life." He was almost tempted to echo St John. If we can say “God is love” dare we say that "God is friendship" he was asked? But respecting God's Word he simply said "he who abides in friendship abides in God." Friendship, for Aelred, was a reflection of divine love—a bond through which we glimpse the face of Christ.
We heard Jesus say in the Gospel “Greater love has no man than this, than to lay down his life for his friends.” Over fifty years, you have laid down your lives—not once, but daily—for the people of God. Your sacrifices have been quiet and steady, but they have borne much fruit.
As Abbot, as Novice Master, you have ministered to your brethren. Monks who have kept you grounded, have at times knocked you from your high horses, at other moments lifted you up and put you back on your feet. The community are grateful for your service, your warm friendship and your love.
St Aelred once wrote:
“No medicine is more valuable, none more efficacious, none better suited to the cure of all our ills than a true friend who is united to us in the bonds of holy love…”
Your priesthood has been the gift of this “medicine” to so many: community, parishioners, colleagues, family and friends, at home and abroad. The medicine of spiritual friendship.
And God isn’t done with you yet! You are “still full of sap still green.” (Psalm 91)
So let us raise the Cup of Salvation at this altar and draw strength from the Bread of Life, in thanksgiving for your ministry – all that has been, and is, and still yet to be.
