POWAY – Bishop Robert McElroy ordained Daniel Holgren to the priesthood June 11 at St. Michael’s Parish in Poway.
“We like to live in a world with order, with the foreseeable expectation that when we make a life choice, we can have confidence in where it will lead us and what we will encounter,” the bishop said in his homily. “But the pandemic has reminded us how illusory that expectation is.”
Bishop McElroy suggested that this experience of uncertainty might prove helpful to the 35-year-old former paramedic who would shortly become a priest through the laying on of hands and the prayer of ordination.
Addressing Holgren, the bishop said, “Yours is … a commitment rooted in the humble and sacrificial acceptance of a pathway that, on so many levels, you will not be in control of for the rest of your life.”
But the bishop did provide the new priest with a preview of his future.
“The greatest discovery you will make as a priest is the radiant manner in which you can be an instrument of God’s grace for the people of God,” he said, “and a co-equal discovery will be the wondrous way in which God’s people become an incredibly rich instrument of God’s grace to you.”
