Fr. Bob Celebrates Fifty Years of Priesthood (1955-2005)

It was June 6, 1955.

There was I, 25-years-old, lying face down in the middle aisle of Blessed Sacrament church in Ottawa, my home parish. It was here that I had been baptized, had my first Confession, had made my first Communion, and had been confirmed. Now, in a few minutes, I was to be ordained to the holy priesthood of Jesus Christ in the order of Melchisedech (Ps 110:4).

I wasn’t alone. With me, was a young American, Richard Meitzelfeld, from New Jersey, a candidate, like me, for the Archdiocese of Ottawa.

I hadn’t slept all the night before. I was completely overwhelmed by the reality in which I was involved. At 19, I had been convicted of a call to the priesthood for myself. I was now 25, six years later. The route to ordination had been fairly ordinary and took very long. But no big fuss. I had prayed throughout the intervaling years that I might be thoroughly prepared for this day and what lay beyond. Through it all, I remained passively calm and determined to forge ahead.

As I tossed and turned, unable to sleep the night of June 5, I realized I was no longer calm. I was as determined as ever, but as I thought that in a few short hours I would be a priest, I was floored. I simply didn’t have the emotional resources to take it all in.

Then it happened. The ordination was at nine in the morning. By 9:30, I was a priest forever.

It took me a while to get used to being called “Father” by people twice my age. But I did get used to it and soon enough.

The first Mass I celebrated was awesome as well. As I came to the words of consecration, Jesus’ own words, I just hoped and prayed I could stay on my feet. Family and friends gathered around to make the whole experience that much deeper.

Before too long, I was down from cloud nine and very involved in the day-to-day life of the priestly ministry in a busy Catholic parish. I lived at Assumption rectory in Eastview (now Vanier) with two other priests. The pastor was in his late fifties and the senior assistant in his early thirties. I was assigned responsibility for everybody under 21. I jumped into it quite eagerly, visiting school rooms, taking care of the altar boys, organizing Guides, Brownies, Scouts, and Cubs, attempting to set up a CYO, organizing sports teams. I was a rather happy young priest.

The usual term for an assistant was about 10 years. So, as I started out, I was looking at an extended apprenticeship before becoming an actual pastor myself. But that was OK with me. I was in no rush. Little did I know what lay ahead.

After three years of considerable fulfillment and only a few minor crosses, I was jolted out of my very comfy reverie when the archbishop sent for me and asked me to consider teaching at the new high school seminary. That, I think, was when I had my very first minor heart attack. Although he assured me he wouldn’t make me do it, he was so kind and good to everybody, there was no way I could turn him down. Do it for a year, he suggested.

My life changed in a hurry. I began 20 years in high school: chapel, daily Mass with the students, classroom, principal’s office, gym, locker room, meeting rooms, Sacraments, spiritual direction, guidance, driving the school bus, trips out of town to attend educational meetings in Toronto, trips out of town to tournaments with the basketball teams – an extremely busy agenda.

I was very uneasy beginning in the classroom, confidence quite shaky and unsure of myself due to a previous bad experience with early teenagers in school. So in the interests of self- preservation I would take no nonsense and, instead of starting out with my priorities oriented in the students’ best interest, I simply declared war on them.

When, after a few weeks, I had them thoroughly brow beaten, I eased up and began to resume my natural friendly approach to people and life. The students and I entered into an undeclared truce and an era of peace which extended through the years. The terms of the peace were all in my favour – when I talked, they listened and I was the only one allowed to be funny.

The job assigned to me and those who started at St. Pius with me was very demanding. The task was to create a high school program with essential spiritual components and to create it out of nothing. We had one building basically in the middle of nowhere on the south side of town. With stout assistance from priests of the Diocese of Antigonish, a few of the younger local clergy put their shoulders to the wheel and brought a small school to the light of day.

My own participation was total. I worked very hard. For a person who, as an adolescent, had become essentially very lazy, the transformation was quite remarkable. Virtually all my potentially free time was invested in the cause. For my compatriots it was the same.

As the years sped by, the task simply seemed to get busier. We continued to augment our teaching staff as little St. Pius grew into a very large school. I and the other priests with me began to realize that the basic purpose of the institution had never really been fulfilled. No matter how hard we tried, the pull of the world seemed to win out over the Kingdom of God in the lives of most of our boys. Or so it seemed. Most of them, when they finished our program in grade 13, graduated out of high school and out of Church at the same time.

It wasn’t really a rebellious spirit we were coping with. It was simply a judgement of irrelevance. We had been unable to connect them with the Church of the ages. It was out of date, they judged. They had to buckle down and make their own way in the day-to-day world and a personal faith didn’t really have much to do with it.

Looking back on it, is so simple to analyse. There was something missing, and we knew it. We just didn’t know what it was.

I found out what it was myself when, in 1974, the Lord began to turn my life around. It was in the context of what the scriptures called being baptized with the Holy Spirit. With me, it was not so much a dramatic invasion of my life by the Lord, but rather an unmistakable touch from the Holy Spirit, coming when I invited Jesus to baptize me with his Spirit and with fire. I realized quickly a whole bunch of things that, to all intents and purposes, I was not aware of at all. God, I realized wanted to run the Church. It wasn’t my job, nor the job of the clergy, both high and low. It came as a striking revelation. If we would just seek the Lord’s will, he would show us what to do. All of our carefully thought out projects and ideas, which didn’t work very well anyway, needed to be set aside in favour of his projects and his ideas. These would work.

As I made the inevitable move out of teaching into full-time speaking and renewal ministry, I was able to articulate the primary task of the Church as drawing people into an encounter with the living and risen Christ. As I think of it now, my experience with the Holy Spirit happened at virtually the same time as John Paul II became bishop of Rome.

His words became my rallying cry: “Open your hearts to the Redeemer. Invite him to come in. Do not be afraid!” “The Church’s pastoral priority in our day is the evangelization of the baptized. We must begin a new evangelization.” “The beginning of the Christian journey is an encounter with the living and risen Christ.”

He began to prophesy a new springtime for the Church. He saw it, I believe, as being built upon the shoulder of the younger generation, the ones he was beginning to meet in the World Youth Days that he himself had inspired. The “JP2 Generation”, as they became known, would, as they grew into adulthood, lift the Church on its shoulders and beget a time of evangelization that the world had, perhaps, never seen before.

I preached the renewal theme everywhere I went for the next seven years and urged anybody who would listen to surrender to the fire of the Holy Spirit and to carry it everywhere.

After 30 years of ordination, I was appointed finally by the archbishop as a pastor. The very lightly attended St. Mary’s church on Bayswater Avenue would now hear the renewal and fire message from a well travelled preacher who carried with him a reputation as a fanatic. Quite a few people left the parish before I got there and quite a few more once they’d heard me speak. Not exactly a confidence booster.

What if everybody left? I panicked. It didn’t take me long to realize that if anything good was to happen at St. Mary’s, it would have to be God who would do it. I didn’t have a clue. Crying out to the Lord became the order of my day.

It didn’t take the Lord long to respond. I guess he felt sorry for me and didn’t want to leave those poor people to my bumbling for too long. The word I heard in prayer was “permission”, unfamiliar and unexpected. The Lord developed it to the point where I understood him to declare that he wanted to do the job at St. Mary’s himself and didn’t want any interference from me – just my cooperation. I wasted no time in giving him the permission he was asking for. I urged the people to do the same.

It took about a year and a half. The numbers at Sunday Mass increased gradually and the attendees slowly began to participate and sing with gusto. By mid ’86, despite chairs down all three aisles, it was standing-room only.

I began to call people into ministry until the place became a very active parish as well as a centre of prayer and evangelization. It was a sovereign work of God.

An adoration chapel – to this day Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament exposed seven days a week 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. – became the engine room that the Lord used to drive the ever-growing ship.

I would have been quite content to finish out my days as pastor of St. Mary’s parish. But God had other ideas. Out of a small Friday night share group (four seminarians and I), he called a new community of priests, the Companions of the Cross.

With a high premium on shared life, a charism of evangelization, and a firm commitment to being Eucharistic, Charismatic, Marian, and Magisterial, having initiated it, the Lord has given us increase.

We have at present charge of two other parishes in Ottawa as well as parishes in Toronto, Houston and Halifax, two university chaplaincies, and a large renewal centre.

We have received from the Vatican, in 2003, our official status as a society of apostolic life. We look forward to the day in the not-too-distant future, as God multiplies our numbers, when we’ll be able to expand our outreach to other parts of the country and beyond.

I personally continue to be very busy in different kinds of ministry – speaking in many places, teaching both within the community and outside it, doing spiritual direction, meeting with the CC executive council, and writing.

It has been 50 years plus since ordination day and it seems such a very short time. If I had it to do over again, I’d do what I did – become a priest. It has always been exciting and challenging, not always easy, but always good. I’ll give every breath that remains to me for the Lord and his Kingdom, grateful to him and my heavenly Mother and all the saints and angels who have helped me, along with all the faithful brothers and sisters who have supported the Lord’s cause.