WORDS TO THE WHYS

The truth will make you odd. Flannery O’Connor

100th Priest Ordained for Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham

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The Catholic Herald has the following article:


What is it actually like to be ordained a priest? 
by Fr Michael Ward

Fr Michael Ward shares his experience on being ordained as the Ordinariate's 100th priest (Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham)

[...]

We’re to be ordained within the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, whose patron is . . . Blessed John Henry Newman. Our Ordinary, Mgr Keith Newton, being a married man, isn’t technically a bishop, so he has arranged for Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham to ordain us on his behalf.

[...]

A young oratorian hastens from a doorway, carrying what the archbishop has agreed to use. Like wildfire the news runs round: it’s Newman’s crozier! My heart lifts. Newman’s crozier. How often is a precious relic actually pressed into present-day use? But here is the very shepherd’s crook Newman himself carried. I eye it with awe as I pass into the church.

Everything goes smoothly, thanks to the master of ceremonies, Fr Daniel Lloyd. We prostrate ourselves, are raised, are prayed over. All is done reverently and in order.

After the service, word goes about that there are now precisely 100 priests in the ordinariate. Which means, I suppose, I’m the hundredth. For a few moments, there were just 99 sheep and then the straggler was brought at last into the fold – “the one true fold of the redeemer”. I’m home. I’m a priest. No Newman, to be sure, but let us hope, by God’s grace, and by your prayers, a new man.

Fr Michael Ward is the author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of CS Lewis (OUP)

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Congratulations to Fr. Ward and his fellow ordinands, now priests!

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