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A Columban ordination on the Feast of Sts Peter and Paul Saints Peter and Paul , El Greco, painted 1605-08 Earlier today I attended the ordination of Columban Fr Rodolfo Christopher Kaamiño IV in Immaculate Conception Cathedral, Ozamiz City. The ordaining prelate was Archbishop Jesus A. Dosado CM of the Archdiocese of Ozamiz. As a deacon Father Chris was working in Malate Parish, Manila, which the Columbans have been taking care of since we came to the Philippines in 1929. He will continue to work there as a priest for some months before receiving an overseas assignment. He spent two years in Taiwan as a seminarian on his First Mission Assignment. Among the five Irish Columbans in Malate killed by the Japanese in February 1945 during the Battle of Manila, when around 100,000 died, mostly civilians, was Fr Peter Fallon, the first Columban parish priest of what then was the town of Misamis, now Ozamiz City, when we came to Mindanao in 1948. The first bishop of the Prelature of Ozamiz

  El Greco, Altarpiece , 1597-99  Readings   (New American Bible, used in the Philippines and the USA) Gospel John 6:51-58 (Jerusalem Bible, used in Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, Scotland) Jesus said to the Jews: ‘I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.’ Then the Jews started arguing with one another: ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ they said. Jesus replied: ‘I tell you most solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him. As I, who am sent by the living Father, myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me w

No matter where you fall on your opinion of this man , it is time now to pray for everyone concerned. In particular, we should be praying for the many people who placed so much faith in his ministry. They are finding all of this quite devastating. Let us pray. . . . For priests who are ill or in any kind of difficulty, that our prayer may reach them all and give them true spiritual consolation, that it may strengthen their certainty of the Lord's love for them, which is also manifest in the sign of his Cross. For those called to the priesthood, that their choice may be motivated solely by the desire to glorify God and to serve him in their brethren, communicating to them the gifts of the divine mercy of the Lord who came to find those who were lost and to restore to life those who lived no longer. For priests who are in difficulty, so that, through prayer, they may accept enlightenment from the Lord in order to rediscover the joy of their identity as men in the world but n

We continue to pray this month for priests, that they may always be true witnesses to the caring and merciful love of God. Prayer For The Sanctification Of Priests O God our Father, rich in mercy, who in the Blood and Water which flowed from the Heart of Christ, your Son and our Lord, poured out your infinite love upon all humanity, we beg you to grant that we may respond faithfully to your goodness which has made us ministers of reconciliation among our brothers and sisters. Let us pray together saying: Pour out your mercy upon us, OLord! 1. For all priests scattered throughoutthe world, that they may rediscover their priestly vocation as a "mystery of mercy" and, drawing plentifully from the sacramental source of the Eucharist and Reconciliation, may become channels of mercy for the world, let us pray: 2. For the new evangelization, at the dawn of this millennium, that in every priest the Lord may inspire a deep desire for holiness in his own specific state to live the

 God reveals Himself to us in a multitude of ways each day. One of these moments came this past Sunday at a Mass of Thanksgiving celebrated by one of our parish priests who was celebrating his tenth anniversary as a priest. It was one of those special Masses that made me happy and proud to be a Catholic. There were several moments during this Mass that stood out, but the one that remains with me is one that occurs anytime I attend a Mass that is concelebrated. Fr. Luke had not only our pastor and one other priest from our parish, but also two other brother priests from another parish concelebrating with him~seven priests total. Seeing them around the altar especially during the Consecration was a powerful sight. All I could think at this moment was:"There is the powerful line of defense against the powers of hell." Now I know it doesn't matter whether there is one priest or 20 celebrating a Mass, but as I said the visual was powerful. About three years ago, I felt the