In spring 2012, I found out that I was pregnant. It was my second pregnancy after my daughter and her miscarried twin. The Lord placed a deep desire within my heart to offer a son (or all the sons He gave me) to the priesthood. I saw the need. There is a great shortage of priests. I prayed fervently for at least one son to offer to Him in the priesthood. Shortly after finding out I was pregnant, that child—I believe a son—died.
Pregnancy after pregnancy resulted in the death of each of my unborn babies, including another son in 2016. Five miscarried babies later—my most recent in 2021—the Lord told me that He was not going to answer my prayer for a biological son to offer to the priesthood. The desire was from Him, but He placed it there for a different reason. Instead, He asked me to be a spiritual mother to the priests and seminarians He and His Mother send my way. This past weekend, I was blessed to watch one of those spiritual sons be ordained to the priesthood.
As I sat in the back of the cathedral, praying for the spiritual son laying prostrate on the cold marble floor, surrendering His life totally to the Eternal High Priest, I experienced the deep tension and crucifixion of this calling. The desire for my own biological son clashed with the reality of the spiritual sons the Lord has given me. I love my spiritual sons as if they were my own flesh and blood sons, but the path I have been given with Our Lady of Sorrows is a constant death to my own will and desires.
I share this deep interior struggle with the mothers who read this for a reason. I know how hard it is to let go of your own dreams, plans, and hopes for your sons. I know it is difficult to abandon the gift of grandchildren. I know it is hard to let your sons give their lives to the Church in light of the seemingly endless clergy sex abuse scandals and corruption. It is painful to surrender your sons to the Church and the crucifixion required of them and you in the process, but we need you to do just that. We need your sons—if they are called by the Eternal High Priest—to say yes to the priesthood.
The Lord has not stopped calling men to the priesthood. It is much harder to hear in the noise of our age. In our culture’s drive towards individualism, materialism, hedonism, worldly success, and its idolization of relationships, it is much harder for men to answer this call from the Lord. Many of them have no support or help in discernment. Too many face backlash from their families and friends.
Our lives are not our own. They belong to the Lord. Only He knows the path to joy that He has created each one of us for. The vocation He wants to give to each individual person is the way to our eternal home. This means that if your son is truly called to the priesthood, his ultimate joy will not be found in marriage or worldly success. It can only be found in the priesthood.
For those mothers who are struggling with the loss of grandchildren, let me share a bit of what I have received as a spiritual mother to priests and seminarians. First, when I was given this call from Our Lord through Our Lady, I didn’t understand it and knew nothing about it. I did not know about the Church’s rich history of spiritual motherhood. When I was called, the Holy Spirit overshadowed me in a sense and filled me with the most profound joy. He gave me the eyes of Our Lady, so that I could see the priest-sons the Lord entrusts to my spiritual care with the love of a mother. It is pure gift.
The Lord is the author of true joy. Grandchildren are a great gift, but they are not the only gift. The loss of my own sons is one of the deepest griefs I carry, but the Lord has poured out His light and love in super abundance upon my spiritual motherhood. He fulfills the desires of my heart in ways I never expected. This doesn’t mean that I don’t still struggle at times with surrendering my biological sons to Him and embracing the spiritual sons He has given me. I do. You will struggle too, but over time, through this purification process, you and I will learn how to love more like Christ and His Mother, which leads to joy and peace.
The Lord through His Mother, as the mother of a Priest, invites you to embrace your son’s spiritual children. You are given thousands of spiritual children and grandchildren if you are willing to say yes. The Lord will not leave you empty handed. He will draw you into the life of your priest-son in beautiful ways. Your cup will run over, and the joy of spiritual children and grandchildren will help heal the wound from the lost dreams of biological grandchildren.
For those who are afraid to send their sons into the Church due to the scandals of our day, it is understandable that you are deeply concerned about them. You love them. The reality is, however, that we need your sons to run into the burning building that is the Church. We need heroic, prayerful, sacrificial, virtuous, holy men to douse the flames consuming the Bride of Christ at present.
The Church can never heal and conquer this darkness if good men are not willing to lay down their lives for Christ’s Bride. The Lord tells us in John 15:13, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” The highest calling any son can be given is to lay down his life for others. You and I are also called to lay down our lives by surrendering to God’s will over our own. This is not a calling that is only for someone else’s son. It may be what the Lord is asking of your son.
Finally, without priests, we do not receive the sacraments. Dwindling priest numbers mean that the sacraments are not as freely accessible. It means some areas may not have Mass every week—or in some remote regions of the world only once a year—or access to the rest of the sacraments. Parish closures are becoming more and more common across the West because of a lack of members and not enough priests. The priests we do have are overworked, burned out, and overwhelmed, which is why an astonishing 30% leave the priesthood in the first 5 years. They need help. We need the Lord to send more laborers into the priesthood.
It is the Lord who calls men to be priests, not us, but we have a duty in charity to encourage the sons and men in our lives to openly and actively discern the priesthood. Our children should know that their lives belong to God alone and that He has a plan for them. This means men should be taught from a very early age to discern priesthood, marriage, and religious life. Mothers should be praying for their sons to be called to the priesthood if it is God’s holy will for their lives. Fathers should be doing the same and encouraging their sons to answer God’s call no matter the cost.
The Lord will answer the prayers of mothers who surrender their sons to the Lord for His priesthood. Kathleen Beckman in her book, Praying for Priests: An Urgent Call for the Salvation of Souls, shares the beautiful story of the Mothers of Lu:
The little village of Lu, in northern Italy, is located in a rural area 90 kilometers east of Turin. It would still be unknown to this day if some of the mothers of Lu had not made a decision that had important consequences in 1881.
The deepest desire of many of these mothers was for one of their sons to become a priest or for a daughter to place her life completely in God’s service. Under the direction of their parish priest, Msgr. Alessandro Canora, they gathered every Tuesday for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, asking the Lord for vocations. They received Holy Communion on the first Saturday of every month with the same intention. After Mass, all the mothers prayed this prayer together:
“O God, grant that one of my sons may become a priest! I myself want to live as a good Christian and want to guide my children always to do what is right, so that I may receive the grace, O God, to be allowed to give you a holy priest! Amen.”Through the trusting prayer of these mothers, and the openness of the other parents, an atmosphere of deep joy and Christian piety developed in the families, making it much easier for the children to recognize their vocations. Still, no one expected that God would hear the prayers of these mothers in such a dramatic way.
From the tiny village of Lu came 323 vocations: 152 priests (diocesan and religious) and 171 nuns belonging to forty-one Congregations. In some cases, several vocations came from a single family. The most famous example is the Rinaldi family, from whom God called seven children. Two daughters became Salesian sisters, both of whom were sent to San Domingo as missionaries. Five sons became priests, all joining the Salesians.
The Lord will hear our prayers and raise up many holy vocations to the priesthood and religious life if we surrender everything to Him. Our children’s paths are not ours. They belong to God alone. Turn to Our Blessed Mother who constantly had to surrender Her Son in trust. Through Her prayers you will be given the strength, fortitude, and graces necessary to encourage and pray for your sons to become priests.
The Lord will not be outdone in generosity. He will reward you with tremendous spiritual gifts and joy because you have freely given Him your son as a priest. When you die and come before the Lord, you will be able to joyfully tell Him that you gave Him a priest through whom thousands of souls were saved.
Photo by Tamara Govedarovic on Unsplash
