It’s also about all mothers — about a superpower that mothers have.
We live and we plan things. We think a lot about who we are and what we’re going to do and what we’re doing. We think we know who we are.
And when I was Deacon Vitaliy’s age — at forty-six — I learned something about myself that I had no idea about. It changed the whole causality of my life. I thought I knew why things happened, and at forty-six I learned why they happened.
My father had died in 2006. This year marked the twentieth anniversary of his death. My mother came to Ukraine, where I served as rector of Ukrainian Catholic University.
There was a tabloid newspaper — Express. One journalist, always looking for a little spice, a little human-interest story, found out that the rector’s mother was in town. So she interviewed her.
One of my friends brought me the newspaper and said, ‘There is an interview with your mother here.’ So I read it, and I found out the following.
Some of it I knew. My parents were married in 1951, and they did not have children for nine years. I knew they had been told my mother would not have children. They even started adoption proceedings, and then my mother became pregnant with me.
But this is what I did not know.
My mother was thirty-four years old, and in the late 1950s that was considered an advanced age for a first child. She feared there might be birth defects.
During the month of May, at May devotions, my mother made a vow. She said: ‘If this child is healthy, and if it is a boy, I am going to try to raise him to be a priest.’
I never knew anything about this.
My mother was very subtle. She said nothing. She did nothing special. She never talked about it. She never pushed me.
Some of you may remember how few young men were entering seminaries in the 1970s. There was almost no one. I was the only priest born in the United States ordained for our Church in 1960 in all four dioceses.
Some of you knew my parents. My father was a dentist. All of us were supposed to become doctors, dentists, lawyers — maybe engineers.
Whenever it became clear that this kid studied well and played sports, people would come up to my parents and say: ‘You have to do something to save him from this peril of priesthood.’
And let me tell you — my father did everything he could to save me from going down that route.
My mother said nothing.
She just prayed.
I knew she supported this. I went to a Catholic boys’ school — Christian Brothers Academy. Six hundred boys. I graduated in 1978. Not a single one of my classmates was considering the priesthood.
This was not what middle-class white American or Ukrainian-American young people were expected to do. It was like being a black sheep. There were many questions, and sometimes even ridicule.
And I always wondered how I had this sense of vocation.
I thought, well, it just happened. You continue praying.
My vocation took a long time. I finished seminary at twenty-two and was not ordained until I was thirty-eight — something like our Deacon Vitaliy here.
I have been seeing Vitaliy in New York for the last twenty-five years during my visits. I know the Lord works in very different ways.
Dear mothers, I assure you that your prayer is powerful.
Pray for your children.
We have a beautiful organization called Mothers in Prayer. They pray first of all for their children, but also for many other intentions.
Prayer is very powerful.
I thank my mother for her prayers.
I did not understand what happened, how it happened, and why it happened until I was forty-six years old — reading a newspaper.
Imagine reading in a newspaper about the essential thing in your life.
There is a lot of mystery.
If we pray for people, they might not know that it is our prayer guiding them, accompanying them, bringing down God’s grace.
Prayer is a great gift. It is a great mystery. And the prayer of mothers is special.
I thank you for your prayers.
I thank God that He gives us Mary, the Mother of God, who prays for us.
And I encourage all of us to remain in this mutual intercession.
Just as we gather together at one table, let us also pray for one another.
Ukraine was supposed to fall in three days or three weeks. It still stands.
It is a miracle.
I think it is because so many people around the world are praying.
And may God bless our mothers. All the life that you have given — may it be returned to you a hundredfold.
Christ is risen!
