“The sacraments,” said Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) “are a kind of contact with God himself. They show that this faith is not a purely spiritual thing, but one that involves community and creates community.” Of the seven sacraments, priestly ordination – and the subsequent first Mass – involves and creates community like no other. Faithful from far and wide across a diocese, some of whom never even having met the ordinandi, come together as contact with God is made: by God’s power individual men are made priests of Jesus Christ forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

~ David Bonagura, Jr. 

Photos of:

Fr. Karl Romkema, C.S.C. (ordained in 2019)

Fr. Michael Thomas, C.S.C. (ordained in 2019)

Fr. Steve Jakubowski, C.S.C. (ordained in 2024)

(Fr. Steve’s first English Mass at Moreau Seminary, first Spanish mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Notre Dame)