Reflections on My Ordination by Mark Mossa, S.J.

I ran away. That was my first reaction, anyway, to God’s invitation at the eve of Holy Week 1996 to finally give some closure to the various stirrings I had been feeling for some years before. I was on a retreat, not for myself but accompanying the youth of the part of the diocese in which I worked as a youth minister. It was Saturday morning, and a priest was talking about his experience of religious life and priesthood. And that’s when the question appeared in my mind, a question not quite my own: Why aren’t you doing that? As if I could escape it, I did, I left the retreat. I didn’t tell my friends what had just happened. I just made up an excuse, and got out of there.

What happened next wasn’t exactly logical. Something I’d read had given me an idea: I have to find a copy of Saint Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises. That was the book that would somehow solve it all. Nobody had one. “We can have one for you in a week,” said the local Catholic bookseller. I ordered a copy, but my sense of urgency wouldn’t wait. I recalled my first visit to New Orleans a year before for Loyola Institute for Ministry’s facilitator training. While there I had stolen away to Loyola’s campus ministry office where, undetected, I’d picked up a pamphlet on the Jesuits. I still had it. This occasioned a rare occurrence—something I had put away in a file cabinet once again saw the light of day. As I read through it, I was reminded of numerous conversations with my friend Kevin in which we—no doubt with the movie The Mission and/or NCAA basketball victories in mind—had both agreed that if we ever were to become priests, we’d be Jesuits. With my newfound urgency, I dared not wait until my copy of The Exercises arrived. I called the number.

It was the wrong number. So the anonymous Jesuit, kind enough to respond to my answering machine message, told me. “You need to speak to Marvin Kitten,” he said, and gave me the right one. Within two days, a box arrived including a few more pamphlets, and a few books. Thus, even before my copy of The Spiritual Exercises ever arrived, I began to think that maybe Kevin and I had gotten it right, at least for my part (he’s married with two children). By the time it did arrive, I already had a Jesuit spiritual director, Father Tom Gillin, who explained that by itself the book was likely to be of little help. By June the two of us had driven from South Carolina to Alabama to attend my first ordination, Tony Corcoran and Bentley Anderson’s, at Spring Hill College, followed by a brief tour of New Orleans and Grand Coteau. I was impressed by the ordination, and especially by how happy these Jesuits seemed with their lives, and with each other. My inspirations up to this point had been mostly diocesan priests, but this attracted me in a way the life of the diocesan priests with whom I worked didn’t. That Thanksgiving, Father Ken Buddendorff directed my discernment retreat at Grand Coteau, which provided me with the confidence to ask to become a Jesuit.

It’s appropriate that my decision to pursue the life of a Jesuit and a priest began at Thanksgiving. Because, as I reflect on the nearly twelve years between that Thanksgiving and now, this is my prevailing sentiment—thankfulness. I give thanks for the elderly and dying woman who invited me to rub her feet, offering me one of my first lessons in priesthood. I give thanks for spontaneous prayers asked for by a struggling mother in the entrance of the church after mass or looking into the eyes of a homeless man in a White Castle parking lot in the Bronx. I give thanks for students who let the fact that I was a Jesuit make a difference in the classroom, and in their lives, sharing with me their fears about everything from academic success, to their drinking habits, war in Iraq, or a parent suffering from addiction. I give thanks for my many colleagues in ministry these years in parish ministry, hospital ministry, campus ministry, youth and young adult ministry, all of whom have taught me something about what it means to be a priest, and who let me share my experience and gifts, sometimes in challenging ways. Without all these lessons I would not have the strength to find the words, the gestures or the silence for days like the one last summer which began praying with a family reeling from the sudden stroke of husband and father, found me later in a room praying with and for a man who had just died and his family, waiting with another family for the priest who had been called to anoint their dying father, and finally standing with the parents of a man who had attempted suicide as the doctor told them he wasn’t likely to make it, and it was probably better he didn’t. At the end of the night I did my best, at the Father’s request, to be sure that his son would be anointed at the other hospital to which he was medevaced. Few days have made me as conscious as this one did of my gratitude for the many things people had taught me along the way (otherwise how could I have done it?), and the ability to pick up a phone at the end of that night and talk it all through with Abby, one of my lay ministry colleagues, before making the drive home.

As much as I have learned from all these experiences, I could not have done without the example and companionship of my brother Jesuits. I grow more aware each day of their incalculable importance to my becoming the Jesuit and priest that God wants me to be. Recently, in a gathering of those to be ordained at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, we were asked to share about a priest in our lives who we admire and would like to be like. This proved a hard question for me, not because I couldn’t think of anyone, but because it was impossible for me to come up with just one! Indeed, of the many that came to mind, I knew that I could not do the question justice unless I spoke of at least three or four. As I considered those three or four, it also occurred to me that I could not hope to be like any one of them because each was so different. I admired each of them for different reasons. With one, you could not help but know God’s love for you, but when he presided at liturgy you wondered if he knew what he was doing. Another was so gifted at and devoted to serving others as a priest, that one would never imagine he often doubted whether he should remain one. One, while mild-mannered and soft-spoken, didn’t hesitate to challenge others to do what was right. Another’s capacity to engage and inspire people to great things hid his reluctance to share too deeply about his own fears and struggles. Contrary to popular belief, we Jesuits do come in all shapes and sizes. My hope is that the shape of my priesthood might somehow approximate that of these other exemplary priests with whom I’ve had the privilege to live and work, if nothing else in the basic qualities that despite their differences, each has in common—humility, and compassion.

Knowing how different my experience of being a Jesuit has been than what I at first thought it might be, I’m not sure that I can fully appreciate now what I am in for as I become a priest. But, at least at this point, being a priest for me has to do with “real presence.” The analogy to our belief about Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist we receive when we gather to worship is deliberate, as certainly one of the things I most look forward to as a priest is the privilege of helping others to encounter Christ in the Sacraments. In my preparations in the past months for these ministries, I know I have only begun to get a glimpse of the graces which God might offer to others through me in this way. I also speak of “real presence,” however, in terms of how I already understand myself as a priest. In my years of formation, though I have sometimes regretted that I could not offer others the consolation of the sacraments, I have come to realize that beyond words and actions, often the greatest gift I have to offer to people is to be there for them sometimes to pray, sometimes to talk, sometimes to hold their hands or simply just to sit in silence. I have also learned that though there are many gifted in other ways whom I would like to be like, that God makes best use of me when I’m not trying to be “super-Jesuit” or “super-priest,” but rather when I offer others the gifts God has given me, and myself, warts and all. Though I strive to be holy, I find that much more often people thank me for being real.

There are still ways in which I find myself at times running away from being all that God want me to be. I’m not always as patient, generous or Christ-like as I strive to be. Fear, or lack of confidence, while less likely now to cause me to run away, can still hinder my progress in God. Yet, still so often, like on that day at the hospital, I look back in awe at how God’s grace was able to accomplish something through me that I alone could not have done. It’s with trust that God will continue to do so that I confidently offer myself for service as a priest. My ordination card captures the Gospel scene which reflects a similar trust. Peter, despite all his faults, is able, at Jesus’ invitation, to walk on water! He doesn’t let a sea get in the way of his running toward Jesus. And even when his confidence wanes and he begins to sink, he knows that Jesus will hear his cry for help and pull him from the water so that he might live to do even more extraordinary things another day.

God has shown a similar faithfulness to me in the best and worst times these past years, especially in the gifts of family, friends, colleagues and brother Jesuits with whom I’ve shared those times. On the morning of June 14, 2008, when the call goes out for those to be ordained, I will be mindful of that faithfulness and thankful for all these gifts when I declare myself “present.”

Watch a video of the highlights of Fr. Mossa's ordination.