Father Adam Marchese’s Ordination in Orlando Florida | The Life of a Priest

Father Adam Marchese, a priest for St. Margaret Mary in Winter Park Florida, shares with us his encounter with the Eucharist and some pivotal moments in his life. This is an excerpt from the full interview on The Life of a Priest, a podcast available in the Tabella Catholic App.

Father Adam Marchese talks about his beautiful day of Ordination into the Priesthood. Below is the transcript of this segment:

That day at ordination, there might as well have been a million people behind me. The graces that I felt in that moment, I felt the whole church. I felt the whole church triumph and the whole church militant, praying with me at that moment.

And it could have been a full cathedral, there could have been one person in that cathedral. It didn’t matter. The graces of the sacrament are real, and it was such a powerful full moment. So my former pastor from my home parish at annunciation and Altamont Springs is now a Bishop Steven Parks of the diocese of Savannah. And, so he vested me as a priest. And I remember the moment that really set me off, like there were a few tears coming into ordination, but he vested me. And he really took his time and made it a special moment. And when the Chasuble dropped over me and I looked to him, and I’m five eight and he’s six five, so he’s a much taller man than I am, which made it easy for him to vest me, to put the Chasuble on me.

But I looked up at him, and he had tears in his eyes. And I told him, I said, “When I looked up at you at that moment, I saw the love of the father, and it was just the love of the father looking down on me. And I lost it, I absolutely lost it. Just the record and now being vested as a priest, seeing myself in that light. I mean, what we had done at the seminary practice masses and things like that, I put on a Chasuble, it didn’t feel real. I mean, at that moment, it was just, it hit me hard, and I just realized what happened and the grace there.

It was just such an incredible moment. I wish I could even put it into words, but I think that some of the most beautiful graces in our lives are the most difficult to actually formulate into words.