O HEAVENLY FATHER it has pleased You in the mystery of Your incomprehensible — yet as tangible as the very reality of my existence — love for me, and the billions of my brothers and sisters on the face of the earth in this moment — that we should have crossed the portal into this new millennium, the third of Your Only-Begotten Son’s Holy Incarnation.

Father, my mind can describe relevant theological facts, my mind can list pertinent observations from nature, even my imagination can gaze as far as my eyes are able into the night sky and marvel that wherever that place is where what is created is not there You are still, You who reveal to us the ultimate purity of being: I AM WHO AM.

Father, both faith and reason sear across my being as the double-edged sword of Your word, revealing yet not defining, touching yet not overwhelming, inviting me to be Yours through obedience to Your Holy Will, written in tenderness upon my heart in the moment of my creation by You — a tenderness which in the same moment blesses me with free will.

Father, for my existence, for the blessing of every moment of life, for the gift of Your Son, for trees, water, stars, snow, rain, food, shelter, for all that is life, for my brothers and sisters, for my enemies, for those who love me, for those who do not, for the gift of the Holy Spirit, for everything — thank-You Father.

O LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST, how aware I am that through the mystery of Holy Baptism I, as a member of Your Mystical Body the Church on earth, am a living treasury of faith, of the Holy Gospel, and as an ordained priest, of the treasure of sacramental life.

Jesus, how my being yearns to truly know You, to follow You into the depths of Your Holy Mysteries, to live the Gospel with my life without compromise.

Jesus, how my being yearns, how I burned with love and desire as I watched the television images of my brothers and sisters across the earth welcome the new millennium. I burned with love for every human being, burned with a desire everyone should not only come to know You and Your Holy Gospel, but that everyone should be in relationship with You and that we should all love and serve one another.

Jesus, by the will of the Father and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit I have been ordained in Your person as priest — in the pure stillness of this dawning of the New Year, New Century, New Millennium, in the rushing lavishness of grace in this Great Jubilee Year — grant I be not only a good and holy priest but truly priest of the poor, the wounded, the anawim.

O MOST HOLY SPIRIT, if we are to move across this new year, century, millennium, with lives that are peaceful, holy and without sin, then we must come not only to know You, but to love, trust, accept and obey all Your movement within our beings.

Holy Spirit, illumine everyone on the face of the earth, not as judgement or condemnation, but as gift of that enlightenment which renders us desirous of surrendering to Your sanctifying activity within our lives and all creation.

O MOTHER MARY, Mother of the Children of this new time, of this new opportunity to begin again in Christ in this moment of grace, intercede for us that we may open wide the doors of our being to Him, without fear.