IN 1964, a young seminarian preparing for ordination to the priesthood was told to prepare for death and forget about becoming a priest.
Suffering from systemic lupus, the young man was hoping to make it through the final six months before his ordination. But with the help of God, he didn’t just make it to his ordination, he went much further.
Fr Anscar McPhee celebrated his Golden Jubilee of ordination to the priesthood on July 16 at New Norcia, an incredible effort for someone who would have been happy just to be able to celebrate one Mass.
“Nothing, absolutely nothing, thrills my very soul as to be able to say one more Mass,” he says.
“Everything else gives way, even the most favoured images stored up and treasured in the mind, before the living reality of doing this in memory of him.”
Fr Anscar said the celebrations to mark the occasion were “extraordinary”.
“Roughly 150 people turned up, all faces that I knew, some of them since my very ordination itself in 1964, all people immeasurably special in my life, all of them greatly loved,” he said.
The 75-year-old will now travel to Melbourne for another celebration with his family in the parish church where he first served as an altar boy.
Fr Anscar was born in 1939 in Victoria, and was one of 12 children, three of whom became priests.
He began his novitiate at New Norcia in 1957 as an 18-year-old, and was professed the following year.
After his ordination in 1964, Fr Anscar was placed in charge of the Benedictine Oblates, and later filled the role of novice master.
In 1984, he began ministering in the remote Aboriginal community in Kalumburu, where he stayed until returning to New Norcia in 2012.
Fr Anscar, who is now writing his memoirs, said the celebrations in honour of his Golden Jubilee were reminders of God’s grace and help over the years. “I can’t say how grateful to God I am for all his goodness to me all through the years of my priesthood and even for organising these parties,” he told The Record.
“The priesthood may today be under fire, but sharing in the priesthood of Christ remains beyond all imagination something most beautiful.”