Giving Back : ‘I Could Respond Fully When I Felt Fully Ready’

In June, 1967, I came to Los Angeles and began a new life. I came to practice corporate securities law in a downtown firm, live on the Westside and enjoy the good life. In August, 1989, I left that life to study for the Catholic priesthood. This past June, 26 years after I arrived in Los Angeles, I was ordained a Catholic priest.

Why a priest? Why now?

The answer to the first question is easier than the answer to the second. I think I knew from my earliest years that I was meant to be a priest. From my childhood, I was deeply influenced by the church’s sacramental life and I wanted to be one who would bring that life--God’s love in action--to others. Why then did I wait until I was 50 years old to start my preparation? I suppose there were many reasons, some of which I am probably not fully aware of.

Perhaps I am merely a reflection of an increasing phenomenon: More than one-third of my ordination class are second-career people, although by no means were they as old as I when they began studying. But that’s not the whole answer.

The core of the matter has to do with who was doing the deciding. In the Catholic view of things, one does not choose to be a priest. One is chosen for it by God. I understand the meaning of those words intellectually. Nonetheless I had--and have--a hard time grappling with them emotionally. No balanced person can believe that they are really worthy of God’s choice. Perhaps that’s why my decision took long to mature. But when all is said and done, the best answer is that I could respond fully only when I felt fully ready.

There were hints during my legal career that I would finally say yes to that nagging, never-going-away attraction to a priestly vocation. I was technically proficient in my chosen specialty, but what I enjoyed most about my practice was my relationship with my clients. I enjoyed helping them reach their goals. I became personally close to a number of them: I attended their children’s weddings and saw one client through a significant illness, then comforted his widow.

A good number of people must have read the clues. When I announced my decision to study for the priesthood, virtually all of my family, and many of my friends, showed no surprise. They said they felt that “the other shoe had finally dropped.” It wasn’t dissatisfaction with my career that prompted my decision. And I can honestly say that I don’t yearn for the creature comforts that were part and parcel of my former lifestyle. In fact, I feel freer now, more focused. If I have any regrets, they are only the increased geographical distance between me and old friends and the decreased time available to spend with them.

What ultimately drew me to the priesthood was a desire to be of service to people and to be present with them--to bring God’s love to them--at the most critical moments of their lives: moments of love, when they discover that they are in love and wish to be married; moments of pride and elation, when they see their children baptized; moments of trial, when they learn they are seriously ill; moments of desolation, when a marriage is irretrievably broken, and moments of grief and bafflement, when one who is dearly loved is taken by death.

It was only after I began my ministry that I could experience how deeply moving and fulfilling those moments would be. In the six months since I have been ordained, I have baptized scores of infants, seen the delight on their parents’ faces, felt some of the joy that they felt in knowing their children were entering their own cherished faith. I have officiated at weddings and experienced the joy of happy couples beginning a new life together.

I have also witnessed death quite often, and very close up. I have helped console a young widow and her college-age son on the loss of their husband and father from a lengthy, painful and draining illness. I spent much of Labor Day with a bewildered young couple as they faced, for the third time, the death of a child. I was present as they made the difficult decision about how long heroic measures should be employed to save a perfectly formed, beautiful baby girl whose lungs would not function. I watched their little daughter die in the presence of her father and grandparents, saw her lifeless body being tenderly held by her dad, then taken to her mother, confined in a nearby hospital, for what was to be both a first embrace and a final farewell.

These privileged, intimate moments have been among the most fulfilling of my life. Had I decided that I was too old to be a priest or that it was too late to start over, I know that I would have been much the less for it. And so I often wonder how many others, already successful in a career or occupation, might also feel that persistent tug to give more of themselves to a bigger enterprise.