Some 40 retired clergy from across the Archdiocese came together last week at St John’s Pro-Cathedral on Tuesday 7 July for the annual Retired Clergy Mass, followed by lunch at The Westin.
Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB celebrated the Mass and was joined by Auxiliary Bishop Don Sproxton, Vicar General the Very Rev Fr Vincent Glynn and Episcopal Vicar for Clergy the Very Rev Fr Minh-Thuy Nguyen.
Archbishop Costelloe told the clergy gathered there was something providential about meeting at the Pro-Cathedral, the place where he acknowledged, as Archbishop Emeritus Barry Hickey once put it, the local Church began all those years ago.
Archbishop Costelloe chose the Mass for Vocations for the occasion, drawing on the Gospel account of Jesus sending labourers into the harvest.
“The harvest is rich, but the labourers are few,” he said, encouraging the priests to keep asking the Lord of the harvest for “good men, wise men, balanced men, hard workers, men of the gospel” to carry on the work they had begun together.
Archbishop Costelloe also drew attention to an earlier line in the same passage, where Jesus looks at the crowds and felt sorry for them because they are “harassed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd.”
He continued by inviting clergy to look back on the ways they had spent their lives, lifting up people in that very condition.
“That’s the cause for our gratitude,” he said, “our thanks to God for the gift of the ordained ministry that He has given to us, and through which He has been a part of the lives of so many people.”
Priests and bishops are called to be a living sign of the presence of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, he said, and retirement does not change that.
Some of the men present were as busy as ever, Archbishop Costelloe highlighted, undertaking supply Masses across the diocese, while others were limited by ill health. “But we remain priests,” Archbishop Costelloe emphasised.
Recalling an image Pope Francis often used, he said a shepherd sometimes walks out in front to lead the flock, sometimes in the midst of it to support and encourage, and sometimes behind, helping the stragglers to catch up.
For most of the retired priests, he suggested, it was that middle place that fit best.
Archbishop Costelloe continued by speaking about a question Pope Leo XIV recently put to a group of Italian bishops, one the Archbishop said, applied just as much to every priest: “What face of God do you allow to shine through your ministry?”
He offered it, he explained, not as an examination of conscience but as a way of reflecting on what God had achieved through each man’s years in the parishes.
Had the people they served met the face of the merciful Christ? Archbishop Costelloe said he felt confident that, for the most part, the answer would be yes.
“It has been the face of Christ that I have tried to bring to my people,” Archbishop Costelloe said.
“It’s the heart of Christ that I’ve tried to share with my people.”
The question, he added, is one that pastors must keep asking, whatever their circumstances or state of health.
“We still encounter people. What face of God do I allow to shine through my life and through my ministry?”