Home 
Diocese Armagh Clergy Conference 2005 Dom Mark-Ephrem's epilogue to Bro Thierry's Testimony
Main Menu
CatholicIreland.net News
Ireland's Marie Collins addresses top bishops and religious at anti-abuse symposium in Rome
Marie Collins (pictured) yesterday addressed bishops and religious from around the world who ....
72-year old parish priest retires and is replaced by ... 71-year old.
A 72-year old Co Wexford parish priest who has just retired has been replaced by a man who is ....
British more tolerant of cheating than 10 years ago: study
British people are more likely to say that dishonesty and other forms of wrongdoing is more ....
| Dom Mark-Ephrem's epilogue to Bro Thierry's Testimony |
 |
 |
 |
|
You have listened to Br. Thierry's story. In the context of our Priests' Gathering I would like to add just one other element. I'd like to refer to the priest he met in the story. For, when that priest came across to Ireland for Br. Thierry's ordination, he explained to me how, when Br. Thierry came knocking on his door, wanting to enter into the communion of the Church, he found himself at a particularly low ebb. He felt completely hopeless. He had been caught in a web of alcohol addiction for a number of years and lived in a quasi-permanent alcoholic mist. Thierry's desire to engage himself in the life of the Church was one of the things that motivated Fr. Lucien to pull through and re-engage himself. A call to spiritual renewal was awakened within him out of the call of one young person who knocked on his door. The spiritual hunger and thirst of so many people around us is/should be a call to us. We simply cannot meet the needs and longings of others if we are spiritually bankrupt ourselves and have lost all spiritual desire. I'm not saying that we need to have all "our act together", that we need to be perfect priests who have arrived at great spiritual heights. We can - and many of us will - be struggling. But what I am sure of is this: we need to be listening and hearing the Lord's call to us which will most often come through others … St. Benedict would say "most often through the young". |
© All material on this website is copyright of the Office of Pastoral Renewal and Family Ministry, Archdiocese of Armagh
Search
CatholicIreland.net Features
