The following letter from Catholic Extension Society President, Father Jack Wall, appears in the Spring 2022 edition of Extension magazine. Featured in the photos in this letter are lay people, religious and clergy fulfilling their unique, God-given vocations throughout the country. We are proud to support their ministry and excited to share their stories in the completed magazine, which can be read at catholicextension.org/magazine.
Before beginning his public ministry, Scripture tells us that Jesus retreated to the desert for 40 days of prayer and fasting. This moment in the life of Christ became the basis for our Lenten season.
Before my ordination to the priesthood in 1968, I elected to retreat from the seminary for a year of discernment, to help me determine whether I was truly being called to be a priest. I found that going to the proverbial desert enabled me to hear the voice of the Lord with greater clarity.
During that grace-filled time in my life, I befriended a wise person who would become one of my lifelong mentors, the late Msgr. Dan Cantwell.
Father Jack Wall (left) as a young priest with his mentor, the late Msgr. Dan Cantwell, in the Archdiocese of Chicago.
I remember one day having a heartfelt conversation with him regarding my future. He said,
“Jack, I cannot tell you whether you should become a priest. But I can tell you that you should not become a priest if you don’t first believe in the priesthood of the faithful.”
Msgr. Dan Cantwell
Those words have forever stayed with me.
Only three years earlier, the Second Vatican Council had developed what would become a seminal teaching document called “Lumen Gentium,” which reoriented our thinking on what a “vocation” is and how it is properly exercised.
It turns out all of us, not just a few of us, are called to do God’s work in the world.
The council fathers helped us see that the vocation of the “ministerial priesthood” and the vocation of the “priesthood of the faithful” (meaning all baptized people) are not on two different wavelengths. Rather, they are closely interrelated because each is a “participation in the one priesthood of Christ.” All the baptized faithful exercise their “priesthood” through prayer and “witness of a holy life, and by self-denial and active charity,” the council told us.
This is what Msgr. Cantwell was trying to make sure I fully comprehended if I were to be ordained a priest.
The latest magazine attempts to show you the good that comes about when both the ministerial priesthood and the priesthood of the faithful embrace their respective vocations. They do not exist in competition with one another. They complement one another.
You will read stories about ordained people, religious women and men, and laypeople who have accepted God’s calling and have worked hard to bring about hope and transformation in the poorest regions of the country. Catholic Extension Society supports all their vocations.
Catholic Extension Society has always supported the ministerial priesthood through our close collaboration with bishops in Extension dioceses, our funding of missionary priests serving in far-flung communities and our funding of the education of hundreds of seminarians each year.
Simultaneously, Catholic Extension Society fully supports the gift of religious life through our partnership with countless religious women and men working in solidarity with God’s people throughout the country.
And, in a very special way, Catholic Extension Society supports the largest priesthood, namely all the baptized faithful, by funding the salaries and education of lay leaders in the Church, investing in youth and young adult leaders and funding ministries that help families raise their children in the Catholic faith.
I constantly remind our staff members at Catholic Extension Society that they must have “vocational sense” about what they do, in the hope that they see their work not just as a job or career but as something that is significant for the future of our Church and country.
I share that same sentiment with all of you, our donors, who have embraced our mission. I hope you too feel a vocational sense about your choice to support us. In doing so you are affirming your own vocation as a baptized person called to charity and generosity, and your support is affirming the vocations of the thousands of people in Extension dioceses whom you are helping.
Our Lenten season calls us to prayer and reflection, as well as sacrifice through almsgiving, fasting and abstaining.
“My sincerest prayer for this Lenten season is that God may bless all of you for the gift of prayer and almsgiving that you have already provided us.”
May this Lenten season prepare us to receive Christ’s gift of self-sacrificial love, which leads to a whole new creation—a whole new way of being human—and brings us into closer communion with God and one another.
May God bless you and all whom you love.
