We Well, I certainly do want to thank all of you for being here today on this most happy occasion.

 The St. Luke Parish Family Community extends a special warm welcome to those visiting from other parishes, some of my previous assignments, and certainly to those who have traveled highway distances to be here this afternoon.

Again, I am deeply grateful to you all, as I am to our choir voices, my deacons, Fr. Jerry, and just every other person who had any part at all in the planning and presentation of today’s liturgy and the reception afterward which is down this eastern hallway in the cafeteria.

This all started back when I was in the 3rd grade grateful to priests and sisters along the way.

Forty years ago today it sure was a rainy day in Erie, PA. It wasn’t just a day-long drizzle either. It rained rather heavily practically all day long.

I remember some of us in the 1968 ordination class were wondering if this was some kind of bad omen being cast upon our futures.  Any of you here this afternoon who were with me that day will surely remember what a stormy day in May that it was!

But our hearts were full of faith and trust in God’s calling us to join His company as His ordained ministers. In today’s Scripture reading we just heard about mending our own ways, encouraging one another, and living in love and peace so that we could go out and help save, at least our assigned corners of the world, and not condemn them.

Very much in that spirit, we boldly and courageously stepped forward in St. Peter Cathedral downtown and responded: “Ad sum” Latin for “I am here,” when each of our names was called out.

Now let’s remember for a moment just what was going on in the world of 1968 that we would be stepping back into as newly-ordained priests, trying to help our Lord save and not condemn.

In January of that year, a California doctor performs the first American heart transplant and medical technology begins a whole new pace, the benefits of which we enjoy today in what my dear Mother, who died last year at 104, always loved to say: “It’s wonderful what they can do for people today.”

In fact in 1968, the average life expectancy was only 70.2 years. Now curiously, it is only up to 78, according to ABC News. It seems like it is higher than that, however.

In April of 1968 President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Acts, a major historical moment after all the urban riots and civil strife of the mid-60’s, and in the same month Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated. For as shocking and dream-shattering as was that crisis, just two months later, on June 5, another dream-seeker, Sen. Robert Kennedy, after winning the California Democratic primary, is also shot and killed.

Our entertainment appetites were consumed with Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, Here’s Lucy, and Mayberry R.F.D.

You could buy a nice new house for just under $15 grand.

Average income was $7,800 per year. A new car averaged $2,800. Monthly apartment rents averaged $130. Movie tickets sold for a buck and a half.  Gasoline was 34 cents a gallon, and 1st class postage was 6 cents a stamp. Sugar was 60 cents for 5 pounds. Coffee was 93 cents a pound. Hamburger was 50 cents a pound, and bread was 22 cents a loaf.

The Vietnam War was still raging and was as controversial then as the Iraqi War is now.

All the anti-establishment, anti-authority, anti-parents, even anti-church movements had taken firm hold in the culture of America, all of which resulted in such deep polarizations and disunity that we still feel their effects today.

Just look at how politics has become a spectator sport, and where you sit, on the right or on the left, is in effect, where you stand.

Cries and calls for national unity, even today, unless they be I response to a national crisis such at 911, they are largely tokens of political politeness.

And as if society wasn’t being shaken up enough, even the Church herself was changing centuries-old practices that really had people on edge.

With the Second Vatican Council just closing the language at Mass was changing form Latin into English.  The priest was now turned and facing the people.   

We began eventually to receive communion in our hands.

Except for the Fridays in Lent, we could now eat meat on Friday if we substituted some other act of penance. Suddenly centuries-old absolutes were changing and who could be sure about anything?

And there was strong talk and expectation that the Vatican would change the rules on celibacy and allow priests to get married.

Since that never happened, many, many of our contemporaries in the class of 1968 across the country left the active ministry for very productive and contributing lives of service in other fields.

So with all of that instability, most of which we thankfully were too young to be frightened by, we were ordained and stepped forth into a world to bring hope for the future, and as we stepped out of the Cathedral for one brief but blessed moment, the clouds cleared and a ray of sunshine shone upon the 7 new priests of 1968, Msgr. Brugger, Msgr. O’lowin, Msgr. Ritchie, Fr. Simmons, myself, Msgr. Urbaniak, and Fr. Woznick. And we’re all still in and working, which in itself is an exceptional rate of retention.

That was the main theme, hope for the future, my very good and dear friend, the late Msgr. Joe Reszkowski, preached at my First Mass back at my home parish, St. Joe’s in Sharon. He urged me to strive always to be a sign and source of hope to what so often for lots of people feels like a hopeless, helpless and hapless world that we live in.

For forty years, those words have always stuck with me, and I have tried my best to live up to them. And the song we’ll sing next at the Offertory, The Servant Song, echoes my sentiments and intentions much more beautifully.

My ministry all started when I was a deacon in Meadville at St. Agatha's then as a priest, teacher, assistant headmaster, and acting pastor at St. Michael’s and St. Joseph’s and at Central Catholic High School in DuBois for three years, then at St. Boniface and St. Patrick’s here in Erie while teaching at Cathedral Prep for eight years, then for 12 years to the Gannon Community and on weekends at St. George’s, then at my first pastorate for five years at St. Paul’s, and now for ten and a half years as the pastor of this wonderful faith community, the parish of St. Luke.

And never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that I would be so privileged to be it’s pastor.

I have been truly blessed all along the way, much more than I’ve ever deserved, in having to invent and implement new survival skills and energies that we never learned in the seminary, which is true of any profession. And would I do it all again? You bet, in a heartbeat!

So please join me in this liturgy, giving all the thanks and credit to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for so generously providing me with what I’ve needed.

Thank you all again for being here, and thank you all, each and every one, for what you’ve done and been for me, may the Lord bless you, and keep you, may He let His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you, and may you always feel that He keeps you in the palms of His loving hands!

       Thank you.