Since 1963, the Church Universal has used this Sunday to “pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into His harvest.” But prayer for priestly and religious vocations takes place in a context–both social and ecclesial–as does the response to such calls. What is the contemporary context in which we are asking the Lord to open the hearts and minds of our youth to hear His summons? What can or ought we do to enable His voice to be better heard?
Let me begin by being a bit autobiographical. I wanted to be a priest from the first day of kindergarten, and I entered the seminary straight out of high school. We were 37 seminarians who began our eight-year trek to the altar at Seton Hall University in 1968–that most horrible of years in the Church and society-at-large. On our first night, during the welcome event, we were asked to share our story very briefly. It struck me that all 37 of us had three things in common: We had all gone to twelve years of Catholic school; we had all been altar boys; we had all gone to the vocation club sponsored by the Passionist Fathers in Union City.
In the ensuing years, we have eroded all three of those sources of vocations as Catholic school enrollment has plummeted; as the advent of altar girls has caused many boys to sit it out; as all too many formators have looked askance at youthful vocations.
I began by speaking of “context.” What do I mean? As a high school teacher and administrator for many years, I considered our schools as veritable “seminaries,” as in “seed beds” for priestly vocations. I challenged every member of the school community to be a vocation promoter and director: “Do you think Joe might have the calling? Tell him you think he might. Ask him to consider it. Tell him you’ll be praying for him to be open to God’s will.”
What I was calling for was the establishment of a “vocation culture” in the school. One school was 28 years old when I inherited it: fourteen years before Vatican II and fourteen years after. In that entire time, it had sent only one boy to the seminary—and he didn’t last. In my four years there, we sent seven boys to the seminary—and all seven became priests. This didn’t happen because I am the Curé of Ars—because I am not. It happened because we had a “vocation culture” in our community.
So, what could or should we be doing to foster a climate in which a priestly call can be heard and answered? Let me suggest ten “best practices.”
- We have to promote Catholic education. Having Catholic children in a government school is subjecting them to a toxic environment, which endangers their immortal souls: immoral sex education, atheistic scientism, an amoral philosophy of life. Although fewer than 20% of Catholic boys attend a Catholic school—unfortunately—they produce more than half of the ordinations every year. This is the goose that laid the golden egg, and it is not sufficiently appreciated. And, let me note as well, if a school is not producing vocations, there’s something wrong with the school! Furthermore, this also means making sure that your own children and grandchildren attend a Catholic school and, if you don’t fit into one of those categories, that you support our schools financially and morally.
- We have to take seriously the omnipresent influence of materialism and instant gratification. Many years ago, I was very impressed by the way a fourth-grade boy had served Mass for me that whole week, at the end of which, I asked, “Gus, did you ever think about being a priest?” “Yup,” came the quick response. “That’s great. Stay close to Our Lord and to Monsignor. He taught me in high school and helped me along the way to the priesthood.” “Oh, I don’t want to be a priest anymore, though.” “Oh, what do you want to be now? A fireman? A policeman?” “No, I don’t know what I want to be, but I do know I don’t want to be a priest after I found out that you guys don’t make much money!” Imagine: By fourth grade, that boy had been sucked into the vortex of the God of Mammon.
- We must form our boys and young men in the virtue of chastity. Surveys tell us that the average American begins having sex around the age of 12 or 13. If such a fellow enters the seminary right after high school, that could mean seven or eight years of promiscuous behavior; if after college, that would be even worse. As a priest told us in high school, “Gentlemen, sex is like candy; once you have a little, you always want more.” Nor can we forget the plague of pornography. A young priest shared with me that he is addicted to pornography. “How did this happen?” I asked. “When I was four or five, my Dad would say, ‘Tommy, come here. Take a look at this. Isn’t she something?’” And that introduction to pornography came from a father who was a practicing Catholic!
As an aside, neither materialism nor unchastity is good preparation for marriage, either.
- Youthful commitment is very important. For at least two generations now, we have allowed young people to wander about life aimlessly; some of their elders have even encouraged it. In the Church, we have made a cottage industry of “discernment” which, to my way of thinking, is perpetuating delayed adolescence. Fifty years ago, it was not unusual for a man of eighteen or nineteen to be married, holding down a stable job, and on his way to being a father.
I had a conversation recently with a gentleman who is contemplating a priestly vocation, but his emotional gear is stuck in neutral. “How old are you, Tony?” I asked. “Thirty-nine,” came the response. “I was a priest for fourteen years at that age,” I replied. “Now you’re making me feel bad,” he said. “I hope so,” said I. We need to facilitate decision-making and also to lift up for emulation the beauty of a youthful “yes” to the Lord. St. John Henry Cardinal Newman waxed eloquent in that regard: “Blessed are they who give the flower of their days, and their strength of soul and body to Him; blessed are they who in their youth turn to Him who gave His life for them” (Sermon 16, “The Shepherd of Our Souls”).
An interesting “factoid”: The new Pope entered the seminary after eighth grade!
- It is essential that we return priests to the education apostolate, especially in our high schools. In the 1980s, all too many bishops ran scared about a clergy shortage and yanked priests from full-time work in high schools to place them in parishes; it was a short-sighted if understandable move–but a disastrous move. All the studies show that, for the vast majority of priests, the call to priesthood first surfaced in grammar school but really blossomed in high school. The daily presence of a priest in the classroom, in the cafeteria, at games and dances is an indispensable presence, just as is that of the priest in his own parish school.
- Parents’ attitudes are often quite problematic. In fact, most of the young men I have shepherded through formation encountered significant opposition from their parents–even parents who took their faith seriously.
Some years ago, my late mother was standing in line at the supermarket; the woman behind her recognized her and asked, “Didn’t your son go to St. Joe’s High School?” When my mother acknowledged that, the lady went on to ask how many priests had taught there in my time. Upon hearing that a then-new and tiny parish high school of 180 students had had five full-time priests, she expressed disgust that the same school of nearly 700 students today had not a single full-time priest. My mother smiled and said, “Maybe one of your four boys will become a priest and eventually be assigned to St. Joe’s.” “God forbid,” came the swift response; “I want my sons to have a real life.” To which, my mother responded, “So, it’s fine for my only child to become a priest, and it’s important to have priests teaching your children, but you don’t want any of yours to make the sacrifice?” I think you see what I mean. Vocation recruitment is the responsibility of everyone in the Church, with all cooperating according to their specific abilities and states in life. When that is an ecclesial fact of life, our problem will not be a vocations shortage, but a vocations glut.
- We have to be clear about roles and identity issues. St. John Paul II frequently decried what he called “the laicization of the clergy and clericalization of the laity.” When every priestly task is portioned out to lay people, save allowing him the sole task of the consecration at Mass and absolution in Confession, the image created is that of nothing more than a sacramental magician—and that appeals to no young man. Or, as one eighth-grader once said to me: “Why study for eight years, make a small salary, have to go wherever the bishop sends you, when my grandmother already gives out Communion?” Why, indeed!
- The bad-mouthing of priests has to stop; it is poisonous. Now, that doesn’t mean to pretend that all priests are angels—because they’re not. It does mean, however, adopting a proper stance in their regard: Affirming good priests and challenging the lukewarm or even the few who are, objectively speaking, bad. When a priest celebrates the Sacred Liturgy properly, with devotion and according to the mind of the Church; when he preaches an effective homily, particularly dealing with an unpopular topic; when he teaches consistently and effectively what the Church teaches; when his life-style is a mirror-image of what he preaches and teaches, always looking and acting like a priest; see it as your personal privilege and obligation to let him that know you notice these things, that you appreciate them, that you thank our Heavenly Father for allowing him to be so clear a sign of His divine Son’s holy priesthood.
On the other hand, when priests fail to be the type of men Christ and His Church desire and deserve, do not be afraid to speak to them, charitably but firmly, of their responsibilities and your legitimate needs, indeed, your rights. St. Catherine of Siena never hesitated to speak thus to the Sovereign Pontiff himself—all the while referring to him constantly as “my dear sweet Christ on earth.”
- Develop an attitude of gratitude for the priesthood in general and for individual priests in particular. Therefore, pray for priests. Take some time every day to lift up in prayer the priests who introduced you to the Christian life or nourished it: the priest who baptized you, the priest who heard your first confession, the priest who gave you your First Holy Communion, the bishop or priest who confirmed you, the priest who witnessed your marriage or received your vows, the priest who may have anointed you.
In 1992, Saint John Paul issued an apostolic exhortation on priestly formation. He entitled it, Pastores Dabo Vobis, harking back to the prophecy of Jeremiah as God assured His people: “I will give you shepherds after my own heart.” The “will” of that verb is not a simple future tense; it conveys a determination on God’s part to give us the shepherds that we need.
Therefore, even when society tries to dirty our faces, God says, Pastores dabo vobis. Even when some in Church leadership sit on their hands in the face of crises, God says, Pastores dabo vobis. Even when the vessels of election show themselves to be vessels of clay, God says, Pastores dabo vobis. And they are to be shepherds of a most special kind—shepherds after the heart of none other than the Good Shepherd Himself.
The Holy Father reflects on the divine pledge thus:
Today, this promise of God is still living and at work in the Church. At all times, she knows she is the fortunate receiver of these prophetic words. She sees them put into practice daily in so many parts of the world, or rather, in so many human hearts, young hearts in particular. On the threshold of the third millennium, and in the face of the serious and urgent needs which confront the Church and the world, she yearns to see this promise fulfilled in a new and richer way, more intensely and effectively; she hopes for an extraordinary outpouring of the Spirit of Pentecost. [n. 82]
My dear friends, may our poor prayers and efforts always seek to be worthy of God’s holy determination to provide His flock with the shepherds it needs, shepherds of appropriate quality and quantity, shepherds after the Lord’s own heart.
An old adage asserts: “You always get the priests you deserve.” A woman once asked me, “How did we get so many weirdos in the priesthood?”
Said I: “You gave them to us; they came from your homes and neighborhoods!”
A corollary to that is the all-too-frequent complaint about parishes being staffed by foreign clergy, with a particular lament about their accents. I saw a video a few weeks ago of an African priest preaching and then stopping to say: “I know many of you say you find me hard to understand, but this is the best you’re gonna get until you produce your own priests.” African bluntness for a reality check.
For more than a quarter of a century, Pope John Paul sent a letter to the priests of the world as his personal gift to us each Holy Thursday. I wish to conclude these reflections with a most poignant passage from his letter of 1979, the very first of his pontificate. For those whose hearts have grown cold and ungrateful, for those who take for granted or even have little esteem for either the priesthood or the Eucharist, listen to these words of John Paul II, the twentieth anniversary of whose death we marked last month:
Think of the places where people anxiously await a priest, and where for many years, feeling the lack of such a priest, they do not cease to hope for his presence. And sometimes it happens that they meet in an abandoned shrine, and place on the altar a stole which they still keep, and recite all the prayers of the Eucharistic Liturgy; and then, at the moment that corresponds to the trans-substantiation a deep silence comes down upon them, a silence sometimes broken by a sob. . . so ardently do they desire to hear the words that only the lips of a priest can efficaciously utter.
I hope you realize how fortunate you are to have priests literally at your beck and call. As an act of thanksgiving for such a gift, on this World Day of Prayer for Vocations, make a commitment to be part of a “vocation culture,” as we pray:
Lord, give us priests.
Lord, give us holy priests.
Lord, give us many holy priests.
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Editor’s note: This homily was delivered at Holy Innocents Church, Manhattan, on May 11, 2025, World Day of Prayer for Vocations.
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