“You are a priest forever, in the line of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 7:17)

Today is the 2nd anniversary of my priestly ordination. I can honestly say that I love being a priest even more than I did when I started 2 years ago, and at least as much as one year ago! I shed more tears today while celebrating the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass “On the Anniversary of His Ordination” (from the ‘Masses and Prayers for Various Needs and Occasions’), especially at the words of consecration, than I did 2 years ago (likely because I was alone today and could fully let them out)!

I’m so incredibly grateful for this great gift of sharing in the one priesthood of Jesus Christ.

I am also grateful for and all the love, prayers, and support of everyone. I feel this particularly today as so many have reached out to me by phone, text, social media, or e-mail for this occasion.

Thank you so much to all of you for your prayers. Please continue to pray for me, that I will be the shepherd that God wills me to be. Mary, I am all yours. Do with me God, as you will.

Now, to something very few know about.  “The Reveal.”

Actually, on the occasion of both of my ordinations, I consecrate my life as a cleric to God through the Blessed Virgin Mary again and again.

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Dear most Immaculate Virgin, Queen of Heaven and Queen of Clergy,

You know how dearly devoted I desire to be to you, and that I love you above all women. You are my queen now and forever, and have been since I began entrusting myself and all that I am to you.

Therefore, today on this most solemn of occasions, I desire to consecrate my life to you anew, and in particular, this sacred ministry of priestly service that I take up at the call of your Son, made known to me through His Holy Church. May I always live out, without reserve, the giving of myself in total self-giving service with every moment of my life, according to the most Holy Will of the Glorious and Triune God, to whom I dedicate my entire life.

May my Priesthood, my service, my ordination, my ministry, my being a cleric in the one, true, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church of the Living God, be a conduit of salvation for myself and for others. May I keep faithfully that which I promise to do by undergoing this ordination. May I always stay spotless and chaste in God’s sight. May I promptly obey and always hold with filial respect the Holy Father, and my ordinary, both to whom I happily pledge obedience as to Jesus Christ Himself – an obedience lived in accord with the spirit of faith handed on through the Church’s Sacred Scriptures and Tradition. May I always hold the faith with a clear conscience, and faithfully carry out that which canon law and the norms of the Church prescribe for the life of clerics, regardless of any cost or suffering involved.

Since you know how infinitely weak and powerless I am, I ask this today, solemnly, on the occasion of my ordination, that you never abandon me for one single moment. Rather, dear Mary, let your maternal intercession, which is limitlessly powerful with God, accompany my every thought, word, and deed at every single instant of my life. Since I cannot do anything without God, in your sweet clemency, dear Virgin of virgins, grant that I may always remain faithful to your Son in all things, no matter how consequential or seemingly inconsequential they may be. Nothing is too small to do for love. Therefore, let me become one who is “faithful in little things”, who loves with heroic love in even in the smallest of my duties, and let the very odor of Christ and yourself perfume all my actions, for the greater glory of the most Holy Trinity, and for the salvation of as many souls as God wills.

I desire that not one of these souls be lost, and therefore I pledge myself as a willing victim of love, and consecrate myself eternally to the Holy Spirit, that He may transform me into the Son of the Father, and bring me into that perfect relationship with the Father that Jesus and Mary so delight in.

May my brother clerics – priests, deacons, and all clerics throughout the world – receive the same graces and blessings that I ask for myself this day, since all have need of the same help I do. Spare not your mercy. This I ask Lord for the sake of your creatures made in your own image and likeness out of unfathomable and eternal love. They are intended by you to share in your very Divine Life and celebrate in Heaven forever your victory, shared with us, over the evils of death, sin, and the works of the devil whose creaturely power is absolutely nothing compared to that of the Author of Power itself. May you be glorified by completely ending all his schemes and bringing them absolutely to nothing.

Jesus, I trust in you, for your mercy is without end. Please make my heart like unto Thine, for with You we can do all things, but without You we can do nothing. Therefore I humbly beg you to receive me through your perfect Mother, who is the Daughter of the Father, the Mother of God, and the Spouse of the Holy Spirit. She is the “Mystical Rose”, the Immaculate Conception, the Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Our Lady of Good Success, the Mediatrix of all Graces, and the Queen of all, including clergy, saints and martyrs. With her powerful aid, who is one that could not be victorious over sin and death?

Thus You have called, most Holy Trinity. “You flashed, you shone”, and you broke through all my blindness. You shouted loudly enough to reach me through my deafness. Therefore, great sinner I have been, I trust in your mercy, which I know is boundless, and which you desire to lavishly show so that all may marvel at your limitless goodness and have hope for your limitless generosity.

Thus, through and with Mary, I desire to say today – and every day of my life – my definitive ‘yes’, my ‘fiat’, my ‘amen’ to the plans you have for my life, the Church and for the world.  May it be said that I did not hold back from you one bit. If I should fall, though I desire that this never should happen, grant that I will repent quickly and profoundly, resolve with firm purpose to make amends, and quickly instead grow in humility and all the other virtues. Grant that I will be many times higher in your sight than I was before I fell. May I confess frequently with great contrition and sorrow for my sins and imperfections, and thereby grow quickly in the science of divine love. Yet please, I beg you, let myself in my own sight become ever more clearly incapable of even the smallest good without the help of God, so that I may never become prideful in the least.

Grant that I will be truly faithful to your Church, most Holy Trinity, and that through the intercession, protection, and patronage of the most pure, spotless, Immaculate daughter of God whom I love with such great affection, and whom I take to become my best friend after God Himself, may I be always faithful to the Church’s true teachings in its most holy Scriptures and Tradition. No matter how much opposition I may face, may I never swerve from what is God’s Will. Let it be known that I gave myself to you most whole-heartedly, asking the manly help of the glorious spouse of Mary and Foster Father of Jesus, Saint Joseph. Let it be known that I gave myself intending to hold nothing back in reserve, intending to suffer limitless sufferings for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls, for whom you call me to spend myself. May I become ever more conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ, God and man, so as to fulfill this divine commission most perfectly as possible. May I unite myself with Him in all that I do, and draw others into this same mystical union of love.

Dearest and most glorious Heavenly Father, who is beyond all thought and comprehension, who loves us infinitely, and whose love made you send your perfect and Divine Son to die for us in the most excruciating passion: these and all my prayers I entrust to that very same Jesus Christ, who offers us the very power of the resurrection. Dear Father, let me come to know you and love you truly as my Father, in the Spirit of Sonship given us by Christ.

I offer myself to you, Divine Father and most Holy Son, calling upon the limitless power and strength provided by the Holy Spirit who eternally spirates from you both. I ask, seek and knock to be ever more filled from His limitless treasury of Heavenly gifts and fruits.

All of these prayers and desires I offer, mindful of my limitless poverty, to You, through Mary, to whom I ratify my consecration anew this day, affirming my desire to spend my life for souls and the glory of God. This prayer I make through Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you Father, and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.

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