“Sanctification Through Vocation”
On May 25th, I was finally ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Boston, and it hasn’t taken long to discover what a treasure this vocation is. One of the greatest gifts of the priesthood is the ability to administer the Sacrament of Reconciliation and being able to celebrate the Eucharist.
It is within the confessional that I, as a confessor, experience the love of the Lord, because in spite of my weakness and shortcomings, the Lord has sought to convince me of His gratuitous love by entrusting to me the hearts of His flock when they are most delicate.
It impresses me to see how in this sacrament, people leave behind their superficiality and let their true self surface. It is always moving to witness the profundity and the uniqueness that each person is often reluctant to expose. It brings to mind the days of creation and how after each day the Lord saw that it was good, but after creating Adam and Eve, He saw that it was very good. Somehow, I delight in those that come to confession in a similar way; seeing beyond the sins that they present to me and peering into that dignity that the Lord originally formed them with, I can say with the Lord that He has made us very good.
This brings me back to my previous thought on how the Lord has given me the priesthood as my means of sanctification. I see that it is through the exercise of my ministry that He seeks to shape my heart after His own. Because while He is giving me the gift of compassion for sinners and using me as an instrument of His mercy, it is through that same ministering that I realize more and more deeply that it is with that same mercy that the Lord looks upon me.
One other experience I would like to share is what it has been like to celebrate the Mass and there was one instance in which its power really showed. It was when we went to celebrate Mass with the priests of Regina Cleri. At the moment of the consecration, when we said all together, “Take this all of you and eat of it for this is my body which will be given up for you.” I was unexpectedly overwhelmed with emotion, but after some reflection it all made sense. I recalled the years of resistance while at the seminary and how I often distrusted God’s plan for me, but it was through the ordination and in the celebration of the Eucharist that God sealed within me the handing over of my own body to His call and it has been a source of great joy.
I see that God is calling me to live a Eucharistic life, where I give of myself so that others may share in God’s divine life. Rather than being depleted from spending myself in ministry, I am instead being filled up.
Fr Gabriel, the fourth of six children, was raised in a Catholic family in Framingham, Massachusetts. By the end of high school, he felt a clear calling to the priesthood, though he initially struggled to accept this vocation. Pursuing his dream of studying art, he found himself continually confronted by the question of his vocation. Eventually, Gabriel decided to stop running and went to the Domus Galilee in Israel for a period of discernment. This pivotal decision allowed him to embrace his calling. Father Gabriel was ordained as a priest in May 2024 and is currently serving at the Immaculate Conception Parish in Marlborough, Massachusetts.
