A clear calling, acted upon when the time was right
Bishop-elect Ralph B. O’Donnell cannot imagine his life without the Priesthood.
“I’m so grateful that God has called me to be a priest,” he said. “I know the gifts and charisms he has given me are well suited for the vocation that he’s called me to. And that call has been facilitated from my earliest years.”
Bishop-elect O’Donnell grew up in a household awash in Catholic spirituality and priestly influence.
He looked up to his uncles — Father Ralph M. O’Donnell, after whom he was named, and Monsignor Edward C. O’Donnell, who helped pay for him and his nine siblings to have a Catholic education — and imitated them in acting out the Mass, beginning when he was 5.
“My uncles were regular visitors in our home and helped look after our well-being,” said the bishop-elect. “They were mentors and often talked about the Priesthood. Their lives and vocations always were presented to us as very valuable and something we should respect.”
His father died before the future priest and bishop turned 2.
His mother and grandparents prayed constantly for the whole family.
“Certainly, the impact of our Catholic identity was central,” said Bishop-elect O’Donnell. “My mom lived her faith simply in such a way that you knew that prayer and reliance on God’s grace were a big part of her life.”
The School Sisters of St. Francis and the lay teachers at Our Lady of Lourdes School set a clear example of practical, everyday Catholic living.
“I was very fortunate to grow up in a home where prayer was a regular part of our life,” said Bishop-elect O’Donnell.
Our Lady of Lourdes Church was right outside the back door of the family home in the Bancroft neighborhood of Omaha.
His family also included several who answered the call to Consecrated Life — an aunt, Dominican Sister Marie Patrice O’Donnell — plus five first cousins.
“It was very natural to have religion as part of every aspect of my life,” he stated. “You breathe in the idea of vocations from all those people, and eventually you’re going to catch it.”
He planned on entering priestly discernment and formation at St. John Vianney Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, after high school.
But he hesitated at the last minute.
“It just wasn’t the right time,” he recalled. “I just wasn’t ready.”
Instead, he enrolled at the University of Nebraska, located across from St. Margaret Mary Church, where he would later serve as pastor.
At the end of his sophomore year, he had what many refer to as a “call experience.”
“I went to the Baptism of the niece of a family friend,” he recalled. “I remember being there and seeing the process, and the priest spoke about our commitment as a faith community to that child, about how we all need to witness to the faith.”
While driving home, the future bishop was filled with inspiration and with gratitude for everything God had given him.
“And it moved me in the sense of asking the question, ‘Am I being called in a particular way to live my faith?’” he recalled.
He realized that the only way to find out was to go to the seminary and do the hard work of discerning whether God was calling him to be a priest.
“I contacted Monsignor Furlong, my pastor back in Omaha,” he recalled. “He contacted our diocesan vocation director and also told me about Conception Seminary College, which was where he had gone.”
The seminary, located in northwestern Missouri, is a ministry of a community of Benedictine monks whose monastery was founded there 150 years ago.
“I went there, and it was great,” the bishop-elect said. “And, you could say, the rest is history.”
He then studied theology and continued his formation at Mundelein Seminary at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois, near Chicago.
On June 7, 1997, in the Cathedral of St. Cecilia in Omaha, Archbishop Elden F. Curtiss, now retired, ordained him to the Holy Priesthood.
Sharing in the mystery
Bishop-elect O’Donnell pointed out that the Priesthood is a direct sharing in the life of Christ.
“Christ is the Priest, the High Priest,” he said. “It’s his gift, through his life, death and resurrection. And so, the Priesthood is this sharing in that life that brings us the Eucharist and the Sacraments.
“And in the Catholic tradition, that’s the very heart of who we are,” the bishop-elect continued. “Christ has instructed us to share in the Eucharist in remembrance of him, and so through the Priesthood, he’s with us.
“That’s part of the mystery,” he said. “The gift of the Eucharist is tied directly to the Priesthood and the Sacraments.”
Bishop-elect O’Donnell is thoroughly convinced that being Catholic matters.
“What a tremendous gift we have in the Deposit of Faith!” he stated. “The Apostolic Succession, borne on the witness of the martyrs, the Apostles named in the Gospel.”
The words of Christ were entrusted to his first followers, who shared them in the oral tradition, which was eventually written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and passed down from generation to generation, from the Apostolic Age through the Fathers of the Church and all the way to today.
“And yes, we work alongside our brothers and sisters of different denominations, as the Vatican II documents encourage and exhort us to recognize the gift of truth as it can be found in all the world religions,” said Bishop-elect O’Donnell.
“But most importantly, to recognize that the fullness of truth is revealed in Christ Jesus,” he said. “And the sacrament of Christ is the Church, with him as the head. And so, we receive it as a body, together.”
The bishop-elect said being Catholic means “to live out the gift of our Baptismal promises.”
“Every time we recite the Creed, we testify that we are born of the waters of Baptism and we live that Baptism out in service of one another,” he said. “Discipleship, through our Catholic faith, is supposed to look like Jesus working in the world.”
Faith in action
Parishioners and coworkers have continued to help form Bishop-elect O’Donnell throughout the past 28 years and teach him about ministry.
“I think my whole life has been a process of learning how people learn the love of the Lord through action,” he said.
He pointed to St. Paul’s analogy of there being many parts but one body in the life of the Church — the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12).
“It’s been my privilege over the years to work with so many religious and lay leaders who have brought their life experience into their day-to-day service — reflecting the reality of parish life, and the sense of life as service,” the bishop-elect stated.
Some of the information in this article came from a 2004 story by Randy A. Grosse in the Catholic Voice, news outlet of the Archdiocese of Omaha.
