Homily of Bishop James Curry given at the 30th anniversary of priestly ordination of Mgr Roger Reader on the Solemnity of St Joseph, 19 March 2026, at the Church of the Transfiguration, Kensal Rise

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Grace and peace to you on this Solemnity of Saint Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Imagine a quiet carpenter in Nazareth, suddenly thrust into the greatest mystery of salvation. No words from him in Scripture, yet his ‘yes’ to God echoes through eternity. Just as our dear brother and friend Mgr Roger said ‘yes’ to the invitation the Lord to come follow him.

We Join Mgr Roger in thanking Almighty God for 30 years of priestly life in the Catholic Church. On that momentous day in 1985 you and the other ‘first eleven’ were ordained priests by Cardinal Hume in and for the Catholic Church.

You of course had heard the call of the Lord first in the midst of the Church of England. You, dear Roger, like so many others served the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth in that Christian community.

Tonight, we can acknowledge the grace of those years and the part they played in your pilgrimage of faith and the lives you touched.

Just a few months ago we rejoiced that St John Henry Newman, fellow pilgrim of yours, was raised to the dignity of Doctor of the Church. You, like Newman, enjoyed being an English man abroad, with your gift for languages, and your love of travel, music, literature and friendship. There the similarities happily for you and us end.

For Newman his ‘conversion of the heart’ and move towards the Church of Rome was not a sudden dramatic break with his past and all that had formed him in the Church of England. Rather, it was a gradual interior transformation that reshaped his very self and world view. In Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Newman describes conversion as ‘a positive, not a negative character.’ It is, for him, a growth that adds truth to the mind rather than merely subtracting error. For Newman, the heart’s conversion is first a movement of conscience: ‘the conscience…speaks to the interior Master… and the individual abandons themselves to the Father.’ This interior shift is completed only when ‘the mind is below truth, not above it, and is bound… to venerate it.’ All this movement takes place with the Holy Spirit’s guidance.

This evening as we ponder God’s covenant promises, from David’s throne to Abraham’s faithful descendants, in the just man Joseph, we can learn from the Saint’s hidden life. In this we can discern God’s faithful love, fulfilled in Josephs acceptance of his vocation as the foster and legal father of Jesus, to be a spiritual father in the formative hidden life in Nazareth, a shared life of love, prayer and service shared with our Blessed Mother Mary.

Joseph’s docility to the divine will mirrors the faith praised in today’s readings: a covenant sworn forever, righteousness through unwavering trust. God entrusts his Son to Joseph, and Mary, his parents, just as the Lord entrusts the Saviour to his priests and their people today.

Saint Joseph teaches us total docility, especially for those called to shepherd the Church, who, as they imitate Joseph’s hidden and humble service, are called to be extraordinary in ordinary things.

Just as Joseph went looking for the young Jesus so to the pastor seeks out, as you have done in your prison ministry

Priesthood is not a career; it is rather God’s pure gift, a sacramental share in Christ’s eternal priesthood. ‘You did not choose me, but I chose you,’ Jesus says. Priests, like Joseph, say ‘yes’ forever, celebrating for and with the people of God the unbloody sacrifice of Calvary, nurturing families of faith amid today’s trials.

Dear friends, in your families, parishes and in your own prayer, invoke Saint Joseph to shield your homes as he did the Holy Family. Dear young friends, listen for God’s whisper, perhaps in a call, a vocation to priesthood or consecrated life. Dear priests gathered here tonight, renew your fiat: to be stewards of God’s mysteries.

To be a priest is not about standing apart; it is a call for the priest to stand within the ache and beauty of the human condition. Priesthood is a posture of availability, a willingness to hold the tensions of life, faith, doubt, joy and sorrow, yearning and fulfilment, and to do so without fleeing. The priest becomes a bridge not by solving everything, but by refusing to walk away.

Spiritual fatherhood flows from this same rooted compassion. It is not about authority or control, but generativity. That is the capacity to give life, to bless, to create space where others can grow into their truest selves. The spiritual father bears others’ hopes and disappointments with tenderness, offering steadiness when the world feels uncertain.

Priesthood, then, is not an escape from vulnerability. No, it is a deep embrace. It is the sacred act of standing near the cross, one’s own and others’, with faith that resurrection is always gestating beneath the surface of things. It is, as Fr Ron Rolheiser writes, learning to ‘hold’ the world, to love as God loves: patiently, incarnationally, fruitfully.

There is a quiet truth at the heart of priesthood that often goes unnoticed: that the priest is called not first to do, but to be. The profoundest meaning of priesthood is incarnational. It is about presence: steady, compassionate presence that allows others to experience the nearness of God in their own human story.

A priest is not meant to stand above life but within it — to live among the tensions, questions, and longings that define every human soul. Priesthood is a sacred willingness to hold those tensions without rushing to escape or to close them too quickly. In a restless, distracted world, this faithful holding becomes its own kind of sacrament. It tells people quietly: You are not alone. The mystery you carry is holy.

And this is where spiritual fatherhood begins. To be a spiritual father is not to possess or to manage others; it is to bring forth life in them. It is to help people grow into freedom, to affirm their goodness, and to call forth their gifts.

The spiritual father gives life not by control, but by compassion; by offering blessing, stability, and the kind of love that does not demand quick results; by offering generativity,  the fruitful love that continues to give even when visible success fades. This is the test of mature priesthood: the capacity to bless even from our own emptiness, to give life when our own hearts feel tired, to keep faith in a resurrection that has not yet revealed itself. The priest’s daily call is to trust that every hidden act of care, every moment of patient listening, plants a seed that the Spirit will bring to life in God’s time.

Ultimately, the priest is a father not because of title or function, but because he participates in God’s own generative love. Like the Father, he seeks to bring life out of chaos; like Christ, he stands among the wounded and says, ‘Peace be with you.’ This is the quiet courage of priesthood: to stay faithful in the long middle places of life, to hold vigil where others grow weary, and to believe that love, poured out generously, will always bear fruit.

As we reflect on what it means to be a priest and spiritual father, we ask for that grace: to stand within our world with reverent presence, to love steadfastly, and to trust that even our unseen kindness is part of God’s ongoing incarnation.

Thank you for your service in the parishes of New Southgate, Kensal Rise, Willesden Green, and your work with young offenders in HMYOI Feltham; in your national role for the Bishops’ Conference in the prison service supporting chaplains; in your continuing chaplaincy to the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, and, of course, in your care for the late Cardinal Murphy O’Connor as his domestic chaplain for many years.

May St Joseph’s silence before God, his courage, vocational fidelity and obedience teach us to treasure Christ in our hearts and carry him to a waiting world.