Permeate the world with a Christ-like example

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald

Dr. Tom Neal used to teach on the faculty of Notre Dame Seminary, and he is now chief of evangelization and mission engagement for the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee in Florida.

That’s a long title to fit on a business card, but as Neal told nearly 300 vocations advocates who attended the Serra International Convention in New Orleans last week, the Christian life in many ways can be boiled down to this: Are you a walking saint?

In the Our Father, the petition to God the Father is that our lives would be transformed so as to make God’s kingdom alive, right here and now.

“That is the most radical, bold and dangerous prayer anyone can ever pray because God will answer it – ‘Make me a saint,’” Neal said. “Leon Bloy, an early 20th-century French philosopher, famously said, ‘The only real tragedy in life is to have failed to become a saint.’ So, you might say, our life itself should be a vocations billboard. Our ‘yes’ to the will of God is the text that we should comment on. Our life should be worthy of a Sunday Gospel.”

People are watching

Neal joked about a letter his grandfather once wrote him as a child that resonates with him to this day.

“You’re never a complete failure, Tom – you can always serve as a bad example,” he wrote.
“We are called to be saints, to be billboards, not because we are living perfect, pristine lives; not because we are so clean, perfect and righteous,” Neal said. “God, no. Our God is a God who presides over the mess that is in us, the mess that is us. Our God came down from heaven to get down and dirty with us and to redeem us.”

Neal is a gifted storyteller, and he used the parables he has witnessed in his own life to explain that small acts of kindness and sacrifice have the ability to serve as “leaven” to permeate the world “and make it rise.”

“How many Catholics see their goal in life as sanctity, holiness, Christ-likeness, quiet heroism, fidelity to commitments, fidelity to daily duty as well as the supreme commitment to live with the love with which Christ loved us sacrificially from the cross?” he asked.

Neal’s father was Russian Orthodox and his mother was Roman Catholic.

“The liturgy in the Russian church was about 2 1/2 hours long, and the Irish Catholic priest’s Mass was about 35 minutes long,” Neal said. “One Sunday in my dad’s church there was a visiting priest who was preaching. It was around the time of the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, and he was preaching on respect for life.”

Parable of a mother’s love

The priest shared a story about a woman from Russia who got pregnant in the 1950s and then had complications and was advised to have an abortion. Russia, at the time, had one of the highest rates of abortion in the world.

The woman, a pious Orthodox Christian, refused. During her labor, she told her husband she wanted to hold a crucifix “as a sacramental to draw strength from.”

“The priest said she squeezed the cross so hard that her hand bled on the cross,” Neal recalled.
After giving birth, the woman hemorrhaged so severely that she died. The boy grew up, had thoughts of the priesthood and then entered the seminary. On the morning of his ordination, his father, who had never remarried, gave his son a gift.

“You could imagine what it was,” Neal said. “It was the cross his son had never seen.”

 On the cross were traces of the boy’s mother’s blood.

“The father told him, ‘I want you to live a life worthy of your mother’s sacrifice. The heart of the priesthood is sacrifice, and your mother was your greatest teacher,’” Neal said. “This is my body, broken for you; my blood, shed for you. He said, ‘If you ever feel tired or discouraged or you want to quit, I want you to take this crucifix, look at it and think of all your mother’s love and sacrifice and hugs and kisses and tears and words of encouragement. Everything she wanted to give you for the rest of your life is in this cross.’”

Then, the priest paused, reached under the pulpit and pulled out a cross.

“That was my mother, and this is that cross,” he said. 

“At the end, he said, ‘This is exactly what the Eucharist is. Jesus took the bread and wine in his hands, and he pressed into it all his love, all his heart, all these words of encouragement, all his strength, all his sacrifice, so that we could take that into ourselves when we feel discouraged and receive it and feel empowered to move forward to live a life worthy of the Holy Eucharist and sacrifice made for us – so that we ourselves become what we receive,’” Neal said.


Saint to saint

Neal’s mother Peggy, who died in 2019, was suffering from dementia late in life and fell face-first walking up the steps to church. Her face was battered and bruised, and she went to the hospital, where her long-time pastor, who was suffering from colon cancer, was also being treated toward the end of his life.

Neal’s mother was rolled into the priest’s room, where he reached out from his bed to bless her. 

The next morning, Peggy’s face showed no signs of cuts or bruises.

“I watched a saint bless a saint, and I watched a saint begetting a saint in front of me,” Neal said.

‘You’re my father’

Neal’s final parable involved a seminarian from Ghana, who studied at Notre Dame. The seminarian’s father was a polygamist, so when Neal taught a course on the sacrament of matrimony, the teachings fascinated him. The teacher and student met every week and developed a close bond.

After he was ordained, the new priest celebrated Mass of Thanksgiving at a church where he had interned. Neal attended and sat toward the back. 

At the end of Mass, the priest shared excitedly that he wanted to introduce the congregation to his father. And, then, he pointed to the back of the church and said, ‘Dr. Tom Neal. He’s my father.”

After Mass, Neal asked him why he had said that.

“From my country, if you’re away from your father, you have to find another one because you can’t ever live without your father, and God gave me you,” he said.

When Neal asked him for a blessing, the priest insisted that he receive Neal’s blessing first. The two kept moving lower and lower to receive the blessing from the other.

“Finally, he gets face down on the ground in front of me and he says, ‘Bless me,’” Neal said. “So, I put my hand on his head and said a little blessing. He got up and blessed me. I got up and walked away, and I thought, ‘That’s the priesthood. He exists for us. The catechism says the ordained priesthood exists for the baptismal priesthood. Bless your priests before they bless you.”

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