I am in love with God through the gift of faith

The Clarion Herald celebrates “The Gift of Priesthood” with the following reflection from Father Robert Cooper, pastor of Divine Mercy Church in Kenner.

By Father Robert Cooper
Guest columnist

These words of St. Augustine resonate in my heart with deep emotion. 

God is defined in sacred Scripture as love. “God is love, and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him” (1 John 16).
            The Catholic priesthood is the vehicle through which I have been able to experience and participate in the love of God.

I am in love, and my 14 years of priesthood have been an amazing adventure of love. My bride is the Church, the Bride of Christ. 

Most of the time my bride is beautiful to behold and wonderful to be with, but sometimes my bride can be like a nagging wife in curlers or worse yet, unfaithful and corrupt. Nevertheless, Jesus calls me each day to love this Bride with renewed charity made in acts of service, patience and forgiveness.

Yes, I am in love. I love the incense as it makes its way to the sky in praise of God. I love our sacred music and our chants. I love our prayers that console us. I love our cathedrals, our basilicas, our churches and our small mission churches. I love our saints who inspire us so much by lives lived with grandeur and poetry. 

Most especially, I love the martyrs because they preferred to die than to give in to evil.

I love our popes, especially popes like St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, who have provided me with so much inspiration on how to be a good priest in the time that I have been called to serve the people of God.

Priests’ life-changing ministry 

I love the Catholic priests of my life: the priest who baptized me, the priest who heard my first confession and the priest who gave me the holy Eucharist for the first time. I am grateful for those priests who inspired me by their example to follow in their footsteps and to those priests whom I call my friends. 

Most especially, I love to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass. How amazing it is to stand at the altar of sacrifice and repeat those amazing words: “For this is my body which will be given up for you”; “For this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

However, this life lived in love would have never been possible were it not for the love experienced in the home, where my parents passed on to me the greatest gift of all: the gift of faith.

I am in love. I love being a Catholic, and I love being a Catholic priest.

Within any walk of life there are always difficulties, trials and persecutions. Married couples experience moments of tremendous obstacles, and so do priests. However, St. Paul reminds us that love “endures all things” (1 Cor 13:7). 

If you were to ask me what has been my most difficult challenge as a priest, it is precisely what St. Paul affirms to St. Timothy: “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths” (2 Tim 4:3-4). 

I have seen and have heard things that would cause the strongest of men to retreat from the battle. I have not and will never give up because I am convinced that the promise of Jesus is true, that “the gates of hell shall not prevail” (Mt 16:18).

It is important for us to focus on the saints of the Church, not on her sinners, and it is essential that we strive to be among those saints. It is easy to complain and to point fingers; it is difficult to live out the Gospel with authenticity and maturity. 

Fourteen years of Catholic priesthood and the journey goes on because St. Paul also affirms to St. Timothy to “preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching” (2 Tim 4:2). 

My prayer is that I may persevere until that day when the Lord, who called me to follow him as his priest, calls me to be with him in eternal rest. On that day, I, too, wish to proclaim with St. Paul: “I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith” (2 Tim 4:7). 

These years of priesthood have been filled with many consolations. The greatest of them all has been the loving presence of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Through all these years, Mary has always been there to comfort me and to urge me on to fulfill my mission until the end. I long to see her one day in heaven! When we embrace, the suffering of the cross will give way to the bliss of the resurrection.

“To fall in love with God is the greatest of romances, to seek him the greatest adventure, to find him the greatest human achievement.” 

May God bless my parishioners, past and present, for all the ways they have loved me into the priesthood!

Father Robert Cooper is pastor of Divine Mercy Church in Kenner.