Author Archives: Harvey Millican

Apologies are in order. I typically post at night before I drift off to sleep. Most of you probably read this in the morning. I am apologizing because I want to share a couple of prayers from the Mass for Ember Wednesday, which will undoubtedly be outdated in a sense when you read it. That being said, the prayers I am sharing are still marvelous in their language and sentiment and, I believe, can serve as a source of meditation for hours.

First up, the Postcommunion:

“By receiving Thy sacraments, O Lord, may we be cleansed of our secret sins and delivered from the snares of our enemies.”

What’d I tell you? I could spend hours with that one. Secret sins? It kind of immediately prompted me to want to ask my guardian angel to help me truly examine my conscience, rolling up the carpets and sweeping out the dust as it were.

Next, the Prayer over the People, which is a prayer said immediately after the Postcommunion on the weekdays of Lent:

“O Lord, we beseech Thee, shed light upon our minds by the brightness of Thy glory, so that we may see what we must do and have the strength to do what is right.”

The Roman liturgical tradition is nothing if not concise. And isn’t this something many of us ask of Our Lord every day? Show me what to do! The key here is the follow-up petition that He give us the strength to actual do it.

As I’ve been saying, these are darkening times. If I wake up on April 3 and there is no new document to view, I will give thanks to God for the additional day. If we get “cancelled” before that? Well… Lord, enlighten my mind now so that I may see what I must do. I have no fear nor doubt that He will give me the strength to do whatever that is.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!

A new report from an organization calling itself Vocation Ministry can be found on Aletia here. The headline is interesting. “New Report Examines the State of Priestly Vocations in the US”. Here’s the long and short of the article.

Young men don’t want to be priests.

There’s a shock for you.

The article goes on to offer potential reasons why the numbers are down at every level. And by the way, these numbers are nothing new. There has been a vocation shortage ever since the early 1970’s. Wonder what happened then…

Here are some of the proffered reasons why our lads aren’t eager to give themselves over to God. First and perhaps most laughable is the notion that dioceses have put too much of a focus on sacramental initiation (presumably their wretched lay-run RCIA “programs”) to the exclusion of focusing on vocations “awareness”. FYI, I hate that term “awareness”. In any event, this assumes that one cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. You focus on bringing in adults to the Church that literally zaps your resources to have a couple of priests staff a vocations office? I’m not buying it.

Another reason offered is that young men do not have priests in their lives. We’re getting warmer but… Even those who attend Mass with their families every Sunday aren’t inching toward the seminary. But while we’re on it, we could look into the mixed-sex sanctuary and see if there isn’t a connection there as to why young men really aren’t drawn to the altar. I’m totally being facetious. Of course that’s a reason.

The report also goes on to suggest that materialism is a problem. Again, duh. But why is no one preaching against this? Oh that’s right. Because the focus over the past 50 years has been to “dialogue” with the world and never to make anyone feel bad. And so we here nothing on sin and conversion, nary a word on growth in personal holiness, and forget those really hard teachings… Boy, we don’t want anyone to walk away upset with us.

I have my own thoughts on this. Would you like to hear it? Here it goes…

No young man wants to be a priest in a gay Church with a hippie Mass.

Too blunt? I was on the inside, and that was 25 years ago. Believe me, it’s only gotten worse.

St. John Vianney, pray for us!