All I Want Is to Know Christ

When I was young and at the junior seminary, I spent one summer with my Aunt and Uncle. One day I overheard a conversation they were having about me with a neighbour. They were telling them that I wanted to be a priest. “He is young. He will get over it”, they assured them. I never did get over it.

What you want to do when you are fourteen might be very different from what you eventually do in life. I felt that this is what God wanted of me. In my year before ordination I was helping as a deacon in a small London parish with a very kindly priest who was very earnest but could be difficult when dealing with parishioners. I spent much of my time doing house to house visiting and some people shared with me how critical they were of his ways. In my formation it had not crossed my mind that, as a priest, you could be serving people who will disagree with you and perhaps be unhappy with you as a priest. I came to understand that God was not asking me to be priest because I was especially clever or gifted. Sharing in the priesthood of Christ through ordination was the way He was asking me to follow him. And my ordination was just the start of the race I am still running to capture the prize that is Christ and the Kingdom.

This came to me as I read the second reading for this Sunday from the letter of St. Paul to the people of Philippi. “I believe that nothing can happen that will outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” For me and for every baptised person our life consists in assimilating the life of Christ into our life, to conform our life to His and thus to embrace the cross. St Paul is saying that perfection comes through faith in Christ. I ask myself today; am I able to say ‘All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection”? I am asking for the grace to be able to know what my priorities are. This is true of each one of us. We need to make choices in the way we live. We need to decide what is most important in our life.

St Paul is encouraging us to forget the past and look to what lays before us. Thousands of years before the prophet Isaiah, as in our first reading, says, “No need to recall the past, no need to think about what was done before. See, I am doing a new deed, even now it comes to light; can you not see it?”

If I am not careful I can go over and over the mistakes and bad choices I have made. I hopefully have learnt from these bad choices and I have asked forgiveness of those I have hurt but like St. Paul I am racing forward. In these next two weeks this will mean walking with Jesus His way of suffering so that we can share in His resurrection.

Canon Father Anthony Charlton
Canon Father Anthony CharltonParish Priest