Father Adam Marchese is a priest at St. Margaret Mary in Winter Park, Florida. He is also a military chaplain. For the full episode, download our free app for Catholics:
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.
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