Fr. Thomas Cahill, MJ
God blessed me with loving Catholic parents and five lovely sisters. My father was very successful in the wedding gown industry. We lived in Beverly Hills, California, just up the street from Lucille Ball and Jimmy Stewart.
The Lord started nudging me at age 12. I experienced a strong sense of the sacred as an altar boy. In 1970, i went to the diocesan college seminary and at the same time was discovering St. Francis of Assisi. Inspired by him i exulted in God’s creation and began to live a rigorously simple lifestyle. My emotions already revved up, i was soon swept off my feet by a local girl named Mary.
I was in a fix! Seminary and a girlfriend didn’t mix. To escape this dilemma, i started to travel. A summer’s vacation to Europe would be extended to around the world in four years. The same period of time it would take to get back on the right track again.
The trip began by sleeping in parks from Rome to Stockholm. After picking grapes in France i started going east, first, to a Kibbutz in Israel. On route to Calcutta, it cost me 15 cents a day traveling through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Several months later, i was cleaning the infected feet of lepers and other such works of charity with Mother Theresa’s brothers in India. My 6-month Indian visa expired, but i was not yet ready to return home.
I pushed onward, trekking, hitchhiking, through Thailand, Malaysia, ferrying on the decks of cargo ships through the Indonesia islands and on to Australia. I was off the beaten path in South East Asia, fascinated by the ways and simplicity of the people. However, at a loss! Adventure was replacing Christ as the focus of my life.
It must have been a shock to my parents, when i finally returned home to Beverly Hills, to see me so changed, a hard core “knight of the road.” The “search” was becoming a way of life. I’d go out to the road, stick out my thumb and took what may come. It was magical! I did think that i was somehow being lead; and so this is how i wandered from interior Mexico, up the coast of California, to Oregon, and to the apple country in Washington and beyond. It was an exciting way of life until …
The tide began to turn in Naples, Florida, where i was working at a resort. One night it hit me that my quest was an illusion and that i was really lost. Whoever i thought was leading me had dumped me in darkness. I was shaken to the core of my being! From the depths of my heart i began to pray to Jesus.
The very next day i received a call from a friend who had also worked in Calcutta with the Missionaries of Charity. He had tracked me down to tell me that his mother had just died. He was terribly grieved and asked if i could visit him. (Our Lord was responding to my prayer.) I got one ride from Florida to where Mike lived in Schenectady, NY. I arrived on Palm Sunday and went to all the Holy Week services with the family. (I would certainly have missed all the holy day services otherwise.) After that, Mike and i would go to daily Mass and then spend hours talking about the Lord, the Church, the Blessed Mother, the saints. This is how i got back on track again.
Mind you, i had been “way off,” so conversion would take some time. With one foot still in the world and one arm grasping on to the Lord, i next moved to Berkeley, CA. Everything imaginable was going on there. Fortunately, a job and some studies, kept me out of most of the mischief, but my lifestyle was still not compatible with what our Lord was expecting of me. I was leading a double life. It was becoming unbearable. I did what i knew best and hit the road again, but this time as a pilgrim.
While visiting a Trappist monastery in Utah, i met a Vietnam veteran with a great devotion to Mary. He encouraged me to trust in Mary and she would guide me.
This was consoling because throughout the adventure i knew that Mary had helped me. He predicted that i would find my niche in a week.
After leaving Utah, i hitch hiked to Phoenix and stayed with a friend i had once known in the seminary. It was my friend’s father, Barney, who introduced me to Miles Jesu. He told me i was going to meet the best spiritual director in all the Valley of the Sun. The moment we entered the front door i knew that God wanted me to stay, but i had to first be accepted by Fr. Duran, the founder of Miles Jesu.
It didn’t seem that he was really thrilled to meet me, a bushy-headed, fuzzy-bearded, traveling monk type. He listened to my story and then said: “Is this just going to be another stop on the way or are you serious about following Christ?” I instantly knew that this man meant business and responded, “i am serious, i do want to follow Christ.” Father said, “Then we will help you.”
The Vietnam vet was right. I did find my niche a week later! It was so clear that our Lord and His Mother lead me by the hand to Miles Jesu. Barney was right about Father and about how the MJ members were really striving to live the Gospel. I remember thinking back then that if i were told to do nothing but wash dishes for the rest of my life in the community, it would be enough for me. I was safe from the dangers of the world, and from the dangers of trying to live a radical spiritual life on my own.
After several years, i was invited to the Miles Jesu seminary in Rome. What an education it was living for five and a half years in the Eternal City so packed with history and culture, living so close to the Holy Father! I had the opportunity many times to listen to the Pope in person and shake his hand.
The classes at the university were demanding and even more so because they were taught in Italian. I never studied so hard in my entire life. Often i studied in the chapel on my knees begging for the Lord’s help. I had to learn how to study all over again. It’s amazing that a guy who had always preferred sports, friends, and fun to studies, and who was even anti-intellectual, graduated from a Pontifical University with 2 bachelor degrees and a masters in sacred theology, all magna cum laude.
I am grateful to God for the profound formation i have received in Miles Jesu. In the years while i was on the road, i was searching desperately for ‘self-fulfillment.’ Now in serving Our Lord and giving my life to others as a priest, God has filled my life and continues to throw out ever-greater challenges. It is my greatest desire to become what we Miles Jesu members pray for every evening: to be more humble, more fervent, and more zealous for the salvation of souls; and to be the best for the glory of God.
Priestly Celibacy
Prof. Michael F. Hull
Celibacy, the unmarried state elected in light of the Catholic faith, is the Church’s norm for her sacred priesthood. The priest, “chosen from among men to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins” (Heb 5:1), promises celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of God. The Church’s understanding of the magnitude of priestly celibacy has developed gradually and matured from the Lord’s own witness as a celibate and His commendation of celibacy in the Gospels—through Saint Paul’s 1 Corinthians 7, Pope Saint Leo I, Pope Saint Gregory I, Lateran I, and numerous other “moments” in Church history—to our own day under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Observed with rare exception in the West by priests and by all bishops, celibacy is also observed by some priests and all bishops in the East. In recent times, the Church has proclaimed vigilantly the importance of celibacy, for example, in Pius XII’s Sacra Virginitas, Vatican II’s Presbyterorum Ordinis, Paul VI’s Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, John Paul II’s, Letter to Priests on Holy Thursday (1979), and the Congregation for the Clergy’s Directory for Ministry and Life of Priests.
Priestly celibacy is an invaluable witness to the kingdom of God: “Truly, I say to you, there is no man who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive manifold more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life” (Luke 18:29–30; cf. Mark 10:27–30). In imitation of the Lord, the priest promises to live solely for his sacred apostolate, in the hope of being one of those “who follows the Lamb wherever he goes” (Rev 14:4). Priestly celibacy allows not only for imitation of the Lord but also for personal sacrifice and sanctification. “For this reason,” Pius XII writes, “the Church has most wisely held that the celibacy of her priests must be retained; she knows it is and will be a source of spiritual graces by which they will be ever most closely united with God” (SV, n. 40).
The unique status of the priest as the alter Christus among men demands of him a distinctive pursuit of Christian perfection in the mystici corporis Christi. Intimately and extraordinarily configured to Jesus Christ the High Priest by his sacred ordination, it is the priest who sanctifies (munus sanctificandi), teaches (munus docendi), and governs (munus regendi) in His name. Just as the world finds difficulty in comprehending the Messiah, who “was led like a lamb that is led to the slaughter” (Isa 53:7), so the world finds difficulty in comprehending men who are only “anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit” (1 Cor 7:34). Celibacy gives testimony, both for those who live it and those who see it lived, to the life hereafter. “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matt 22:30; cf. Mark 12:25). To be sure, “not all men can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given” by God (Matt 19:11). Priestly celibacy is a gift concomitant with the vocation of the priest, the call from God, the invitation to love not only exceptionally but exclusively. In the response of total dedication and love to Christ and His Church, the priest is guaranteed the graces necessary for his life and work. Unfortunately in a world darkened by original sin and the consequences thereof, celibacy is too often thought of as unnatural when, in fact, it is supernatural. In many parts of the world, a period of decline in priestly vocations, which is simultaneous with consumerism, materialism, and sexual licentiousness, seemingly indicates celibacy’s ineffectualness. But the polar opposite is true: “where there is sin, grace abounds all the more” (Rom 5:20). Now, perhaps more than ever, the world is in need of the Lord and the witness of priestly celibacy. “He who is able to receive this, let him receive it” (Matt 19:12).