Many thanks to Lee in the combox for the link to this post on Kansas City Catholic which has an obituary of Monsignor Heliodore Mejak, 1909-2007. Father Mejak ("he disdained any title except Father") was the world's longest-serving pastor (that would be "parish priest" in the UK), 63 years in the same parish: Holy Family, Kansas. At age 98, he continued to say Mass every day in the Church. He died on Christmas morning. He loved his parishioners and his parishioners loved him. May God now give him the reward of his labours and say to him"Euge serve bone, et fidelis: quia super pauca fuisti fidelis, super multa te constituam; intra in gaudium domini tui."Of course, he would want us all to pray for him as well, that God may forgive any sins he committed through human frailty.
Well done, good and faithful servant, because you have been faithful over a few things, I will set you over many: enter into the joy of your Lord.
Among the many good things in this heartwarming tribute from one of his parishioners, one point caught my eye : Father Mejak
was very proud that his parish had no paid employees and was staffed entirely by volunteers.
4 comments:
What a wonderful Priest..thanks for telling us about him..
Let his life be a template on how every Priest ought to live his Ministry - No excuses!
Rounding off this story a bit, here is a link to another obit:
http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/story/422280.html
And a few paragraphs from it:
Mejak may be best known for his resistance to changes in the church. Holy Family, a Slovenian parish, drew people who believed as he did. He was the last priest in the archdiocese to stop celebrating Mass in Latin in the wake of the Vatican II church reforms approved in the 1960s.
Mejak did not want laypeople to serve communion and said the host should only be served directly from a priest’s hand, rather than placing it in the hand of the recipient. He wanted people to kneel rather than stand for communion.
When Vatican II called on people to shake hands or hug as a sign of peace during Mass, Mejak ignored it.
“He said the presence of Jesus Christ on the alter should be the focus, not each other,” Grelinger said. “A sign of peace was something that distracted from the Eucharist.”
Kirk Kramer, an editor of the Digital Library of the Catholic Reformation in Virginia, attended Holy Family Church in the 1980s while a student at the University of Kansas. He recalled Mejak’s church as a refuge for Catholic traditionalists.
“His parish, his church was a haven of holiness,” Kramer said. “There was a sense of the sacred and the mysterious and the beautiful at a time when you had to look for that. When you went to Holy Family, you got the Mass of the church, authentic Catholic doctrine and not theological opinion.”
"Euge serve bone, et fidelis: quia super pauca fuisti fidelis, super multa te constituam; intra in gaudium domini tui."
Well done, good and faithful servant, because you have been faithful over a few things, I will set you over many: enter into the joy of your Lord.
These are the words, I think, we would all like to hear said to us one day. Will Tony Blair? Sorry, couldn't resist...
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