Normally an ordination takes place in a packed church, with family and friends coming out to celebrate the Mass.
With the coronavirus still severely limiting parish activity, even ordinations are different now.
In an almost empty church in Newark, NJ. Fr. Oisin Martin from Dublin, Ireland, and Fr. Malachy Napier from Georgia were ordained into the priesthood.
The ordination took place in Blessed Sacrament Friary with only a very few family members there to congratulate the new priests. Many more were able to be part of the sacred event online.
“I can’t really put it into words, to have my mother and father here. To see their faces. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my mother and father, their faith, their love for me. And to have one of my brothers here, it give me so much consolation and joy,” Fr. Malachy shared with EWTN outside the church. He will be taking part in missionary work in Nicaragua. “That’s going to be super sweet!”
“Come Holy Spirit, enflame our hearts with the fire of your love. Come HS cleanse our minds of all the wasted thoughts, cleanse our minds of anything that is not anything of God,” prayed newly ordained Fr. Oisin. “Wash us clean of anything that is not of God. Come Lord Jesus, Come Holy Spirit, come into our lives, come into our homes, come into our brokenness.” Fr. Oisin will be returning to Ireland where he hopes to reach those who “don’t know that God is real, don’t know that they can experience His love don’t know how omany false forms of happiness they’ve seized upon, I’m going to be His servant and to seek those He puts upon my path.”
View the video here:
And today we celebrate...