“The Priestly Role as Father”
In these last months, I have been thinking back to my earliest memory of me ever considering the priesthood. I was probably no older than five or six and my father was asking my brothers and I what we wanted to be when we grew up. When it was my turn to respond, among wanting to be an astronaut, an artist, and a pilot, I said I wanted to be a priest and to also get married. My Father then explained to me that I couldn’t become a priest and get married, but that if I did become a priest, I would have many spiritual children in the Church. And now here I am some twenty years later preparing for my priestly ordination on May 25th.
This memory and these last months in the seminary have led me to reflect on the fatherhood of St. Joseph and his parallels with that of the priest. He was called to be a father who lived in continence, and his child would not be of his own flesh and blood, but his fatherhood was nonetheless very real. Yet, it doesn’t stop there, because as Saint Bernadine of Siena says, “he was chosen by the eternal Father as the trustworthy guardian and protector of His greatest treasures, namely, His divine Son and Mary, [his] wife.” So too, the priest is entrusted with God’s greatest treasures, Christ in the Eucharist, and the Church as a spouse, of whom Mary is the greatest image.
Thinking about this, rather than leaving me afraid of this responsibility, consoles me, because what also comes to mind is that even though St. Joseph was not born without sin (as were Mary and Christ), the Lord chose him as the head of the Holy Family. Was God being irresponsible? Could he not have fashioned someone faultless to do the job? Here we touch upon the mystery of God’s love. God entrusts us with precious gifts even when we are undeserving of them to discover that He loves us in spite of our sins; and, by discovering his mercy, generosity and just how precious are the treasures He gives us, we are compelled to turn away from whatever keeps us from Him.
This leads me to see the priesthood as God’s way of sanctifying me. That as God led St. Joseph to holiness through his unique role as a father, the Lord desires to do the same with me by taking the Church as my spouse, with all her children as my own through the priestly role as father. I cannot help but hear the words of the angel who spoke St. Joseph as if they were addressed to me, “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.”
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.
