The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church --and of its vocations, too. WaPo had a remarkably straight story yesterday on the ordination of five men who were inspired to the priesthood by the example of one of Washington's local saints, Monsignor Tom Wells, who was murdered in 2000.
The story doesn't give much insight into Wells' holiness, focusing more on his comraderie and love of sports, but for those of us who witnessed his generosity, saw the devotion with which he celebrated mass, heard his homilies, saw him spending hours before the Blessed Sacrament, he was one of those men whose goodness directs you past himself and towards Jesus. Someone who makes you ask, "How can you not love a God who can raise up a man like that?"
The day he was murdered, one of our local talk-show hosts (whom Msgr. had drawn into the Church) devoted his evening show to letting people tell Tom Wells stories. There was never a more uplifting couple of hours of radio, and many of the stories were amazing. One guy called in whose life was changed because he was hitchhiking and the man who picked him up happened to be Tom Wells. People told how he'd saved their marriages, brought them back from the brink of suicide, and in every call was the running theme that he showed them what God's love is. All without fanfare, just being Tom Wells, a man in love with God and with his priesthood.
Yesterday one of Washington's 12 brand new priests celebrated his first mass in our parish. It was a glorious mass: multiple concelebration, beautiful hymns, everything done with devotion, and the number of concelebrants precluded the use of any distracting altar adults. Our pastor, who is one of Wells' best friends and cut from the same cloth, gave a truly moving homily on the topic of priesthood, focusing especially on the priest as victim. His words were all the more poignant for knowing he and all the priests in the Church had Fr. Wells in mind as he spoke.
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