"A Priest Looks at 45" | May 31, 2026

A life can turn on a single promise, and you rarely understand it on the day you make it. Monsignor Don Wolf looks back to 1981, when he was ordained a Catholic priest at Our Lady’s Cathedral in Oklahoma City, then walks forward through 45 years of priesthood with the kind of detail only memory and gratitude can sharpen: a hot, humid day, a cranky air conditioner, and the strange feeling of realizing how fast decades pass.

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Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.

Transcript

Welcome And 1981 Ordination Memory

0:19

Welcome, Oklahoma to Living Catholic. I'm Monsignor Don Wolf, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish and rector of the shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother, and forty-five years ago, on May the 16th, 1981, I was ordained at Our Lady's Cathedral. It was a typical May, hot, humid. The air conditioning at the cathedral was being cranky as it usually was at the 10 o'clock hour. But we were tougher back then, at least it seemed to be so, and we endured the discomfort for the hour and a half long ceremony. It's hard to believe so much time has passed so quickly. I know that's the trope of an old man who's looking back at the years going by, but that it is so commonly said and so blandly expressed doesn't make it false. The years have gone by in a blur. I can scarcely fit into my imagination the truth of the description that this happened four and a half decades ago. But there it is, it was so, I have the pictures. It does take some energy to pause and remember just how long ago this really was. When I was ordained at age twenty five, there were no desktop computers. That still lay eight years in the future for me. The affliction called AIDS was just beginning to crest the headlines. It was something no one had heard of before, and its causes and its meaning was still unclear. I had never seen a woman with a tattoo. That was still three years to go, up to the day I saw a young woman in a restaurant with a blue spider's web figure stretch out from her shoulder up to her neck. I'd never even imagined such a thing until I saw it on the open canvas revealed by her bare-shouldered shirt. Cell phones were, of course, almost 20 years in the future, and smartphones more than a quarter century in anticipation. Oklahoma was not yet the place of a martyr, did not imagine itself to need a shrine, and was not prepared for a national museum dedicated to the victims of terrorism. There was so much to come in the years up ahead, so much that none of us could have imagined. The

When The Pope Was Shot

2:24

unspeakable did almost did almost sideline my ordination. Two years before my ordination, I was in my brother's den, trying on the alb that my sister was sewing for me. We were watching TV when the news broke that John Paul II had been shot in St. Peter's Square. In the first reporting, it wasn't clear if he would survive. This was also a moment no one had imagined. None of us had any idea what his assassination would portend for the church. My first thought as the news hit the airwaves was that my ordination would be derailed. Maybe I thought it wouldn't be appropriate to be ordained upon the death of a pope. The archbishop might just postpone the whole event. We hadn't planned for any contingency like that. Upon the notice of such bad news, it seemed anything might be possible. But of course, good sense prevailed. My worries were baseless. The Archbishop was intent on making sure the ordination went forward on time. Certainly he knew there was nothing we could do in the Archdiocese that would hurry the life of the church forward by postponement had the Pope died. Without any further ado, he called the vocations director who called me to assure me that all was to happen as planned, the ordination would go forward. And of course, the Pope didn't die, and so all my worries were baseless.

Obedience And The Panhandle Assignment

3:45

The day before this, I had reported to the Archbishop's office as ordered. He'd had to make sure that I put on my schedule to visit him so as to receive my first assignment. It was always his practice to let everybody that was to be ordained know that part of the practice of the priesthood was obedience to the bishop, especially including accepting the news about where we're going to be assigned and what we're going to be doing. The joke is always made that when the people in the cathedral hear the one to be ordained say yes to the promise about celibacy, they think those are the hardest promises to live by. But the truth of the matter is that the promises of obedience to the bishop and his successors are the toughest ones. Archbishop Salatka wanted to make sure I understood that being ordained wasn't simply the end of the journey of preparation and formation. Saying yes to the assignment he had in mind for me was also part of the story of readying myself for the priesthood. He wasn't just going to affirm the call I had received, he was making sure I knew it involved being part of the priesthood for the whole diocese, and was at the service of what he evaluated, what he evaluated to be important and necessary for the ministry in central and western Oklahoma. I entered his office to get the news about where I was to go, and it was nothing terribly surprising. He assigned me to Guiman and the parishes in the Oklahoma Panhandle. I'd already spent almost a year there as a deacon, and I was certainly content to continue my time among the people of the Panhandle. I'd been sent there originally because I'd studied Spanish in the seminary. The growing Hispanic presence in that part of the state was becoming notable, and a priest was needed there. The Archbishop wanted me to be a part of this cutting edge ministry, and I was more than happy to know that I was going to a place where I could be helpful and where I could do what no one else had done there before. So being a pioneer was something that I could lean into. The ordination ceremony itself was a little different than we have become accustomed to these days, and that was because the music was a mixture of guitar and organ. It all been planned ahead of time with really very little input from me, which was mostly okay. I wasn't besotted with any particular musical style, and was happy to know that it was all to be taken care of without having to worry much about it. I only note that what we considered normal and expected 45 years ago was something different than what we expect these days. I don't claim it was better. It was definitely different than today. We all celebrated the fact at that time that we were on the cutting edge. My family was there, of course. My mother

Family Roots And Shared Faith

6:28

had died before I was a senior in high school, and my father died two years before the ordination in 1979. Their absences were notable, of course, but unavoidable. I think their going from us heightened our sense of togetherness for the whole family, my aunts and uncles, as well as my brothers and sisters. All of them were very supportive of me and my time in the seminary. Many of them, my aunts and uncles, had journeyed to southern Indiana for my deacon ordination just the year before. On that morning, 45 years ago, I was surrounded by a cloud of relatives as this ceremony convened. The faith I was affirming and the choices I was making was not only my own, they were collectively shared by all of us. My yes to the vocational choice I was making was hardly a solitary cry from the wilderness of personal conviction. It was a possession of the whole tribe of us knit together by blood and history and belief. I have deep roots in Oklahoma, and there was all measure of other family members there as well. Ordinations brought out parts of the family who are distant, but who regard the celebration of them as of sufficient gravity to meet the challenge of distance in time. Notably, two families of our relations from Western Oklahoma came, as well as one side of the family from Colorado. The Kansans had a bit more involvement in the ceremony than most. They each had members on their side who were priests at St. Gregory's. Not only was it a time when I could when I could say yes to the gift of the priesthood, of the gift of the Spirit calling me to the priesthood, it was a time in which the whole spread of bloodlines and last names could be present to pray and to celebrate with me. There was also a future bishop with me at the time, although neither we nor he were aware of the fact at that moment. Bishop Dan Muggenberg, currently Bishop of Reno, Nevada, was there with his father and mother, who were my great aunt and great uncle. He was fifteen years old at the time and had just finished his sophomore year in high school. He told me later it was the first ordination that he'd ever been to. He outpaced me quite a lot and given his place in the hierarchy, he certainly has done that all of his life. My first ordination was Father Stephen Byrd's in 1976, a year after I went to the seminary. That whole side of the family was there to support me, which was a blessing to me. And Blessed

Blessed Stanley Rother In The Lineup

8:52

Stanley Rother was present. He'd come up from Guatemala a few days before and was staying with his parents in Okarchi. I saw him as we were lining up for the entrance procession in the rectory of the cathedral, and we had a brief conversation about his challenges in Guatemala. It was a moment in which I felt most honored even then. He and his associate had left his mission in a hurry in January of that year, just thirty minutes ahead of a death squad who'd come to kill him. They'd made it to Guatemala City and then on to Oklahoma City, arriving in short sleeves amid the biting cold of a January evening. And for the next three months, Stan had stayed in Okarchi. He had made his way back to Guatemala in time for Holy Week in April of that year. His presence there on that day at the cathedral was of true significance, especially given that the last time he'd come to the gates at the airport in Oklahoma City, he'd been fleeing for his life. Standing with them there at that moment was like standing next to a character in a history book. At least it felt like that to me. Now I know it would be more accurate to say that it was most like standing next to someone from the lives of the saints. We walked into the cathedral together. My spiritual director from the seminary was there as well. It was the common expectation that a representative of the seminary would come for the ordination. The seminary faculty had accepted the responsibility of forming me for the priesthood and had spent years making sure I'd done all the requisite preparation during my time there, which in that case was six years. The president rector had first told me he was coming, but he had to bow out because an eruption and an eruption in his busy schedule. The president rector had been good to me during my time. It was he who had founded the program of formation with the Spanish speaking that I had benefited from so much. But the spiritual director was a good guy. He fitted into all of the energy and excitement of the moment. It was good to have him there.

Seminary Discernment And Certainty

10:55

I was the only one to be ordained that day. I'd entered the seminary in 1975 as a junior in college. After two years at Oklahoma State, responding to the movement of the spirit in my life, I applied to become a seminarian for the archdiocese. That was in the middle of my fourth semester. I did all the requisite applications and interviews and was accepted in June of that year. At that time, there wasn't a very thorough preparation progress for those of us going to the seminary, so I had no idea who might be a part of my seminarian class. Until, in fact, until I arrived at St. Myanred Seminary in southern Indiana in August of that year, I had no idea whether there were any others at all studying for Oklahoma. And if there were, whether they were going to be with me there. I was relieved to find out as I arrived that a number of us from Oklahoma were there, including two other guys in my class. Later I found out there were four others who'd entered my class that year with me. But seminary is a time of discernment. During the first two years we spent finishing the bachelor's degree, all five of us completed. But by the time our theology studies began, we were down one. By the end of the first semester, another had left. By the end of the first year of theology, I was the only one still present. It was disappointing when the others decided to leave, but I didn't feel distressed. From the first day I arrived at the seminary, I knew I'd made the right decision, and I knew that I'd get ordained. Unlike the others, there wasn't any wrestling with the necessary assurance about the vocation. I was certain. That didn't make it necessarily easier. There were plenty of difficult moments to navigate, but I didn't have any tough moments wondering if I really belonged there or if I should have been doing something else. I knew. So when I walked down the aisle of the cathedral for the ordination to begin, I knew I was in the right place, doing the right thing. Of course, I had not the slightest idea of what becoming a priest would really mean. During the year I was a deacon and was living and working in the parish, I'd become somewhat acquainted with what the pastor did. I enjoyed the time I had with the people there, and I looked forward to getting back to them. But beyond a vague idea of being a leader in the parish and celebrating Mass and the other sacraments, I didn't know what would be required of me or what I should be doing. I was so naive that one of my concerns was whether they would actually be enough for me to do. I didn't have any hesitation about saying yes. I just didn't really know what such a thing would mean for me. The more I the more years I've spent in this vocation, the more I realize that it's not all that different in its demands from the other vocations for a lifetime commitment. When a young man stands in front of the altar with his beloved and says, I do for the rest of his life, he doesn't have that much of an idea of what his life will be like. He's been surrounded by the truth of commitment by other people his whole life up to then, and he's observed any number of couples as they live out their years together. But figuring out what this will mean for him personally is usually beyond his imagination. The couple say yes to one another, and then they get busy living out that affirmation to one another in the ways that they can. It's in the doing that they come to understand what it is. And priesthood's the same way. We aren't given a prelude into the life we are to live as if it were an agenda or a plan. We say yes and then walk into our lives as they happen among us. That's what I did.

A Charge To Save Many

14:34

Now at the end of the ordination, Archbishop Salakka asked everyone to be seated. He was famous for that. The priest joked that it was the time for his second sermon, since he often went on for a long time talking about what concerned him. It was only a little gentle ribbing. Most of the time his second sermon was better than his first. On that day, he thanked everyone for coming, for being a part of the life of the diocese by their participation, symbolized by their presence at the cathedral. And then he turned to me and said, May your priesthood may be the occasion of the salvation of many. He didn't elaborate and didn't explain any further than that. He explained that priesthood was to was to be living out the proclamation of Christ to everyone. And then he had me process down the aisle with those words ringing in my ears. I've been to ordinations during the previous years, and he never said that to any of the priests he ordained before me. And I went to all the ordinations he performed until he retired in 1993, and he never repeated what he said to me at that moment. In all of our time together, he never disclosed to me what he had in mind concerning this last instruction. And I never knew exactly what he was trying to prompt in me, but I never forgot what he said. And I could never ignore the passion with which he said it. In his mind, my priesthood was to be the link pin in what would take when what it would take to bring the gospel forward during my years. It was a daunting kind of admonition, and I've never left it behind. When I think about this date, I always wonder whether I've lived up to what he had in mind for me. I hope that my priesthood has been the occasion of salvation for many.

Old Ordination Traditions And Their Return

16:24

Following, there was a brief reception at the parish hall. All those years ago, the traditions of ordination that so many people get excited about today were very much on the wane. I'd heard that it had been a great tradition for people to be blessed by the newly ordained priest on his ordination day. It was considered a particularly powerful and stirring thing in the minds of those who received it. But practices such as those were thought to be old fashioned and ill-informed by all of us priests by then, so there were no long lines of those to be blessed, like there are now. In fact, the archbishop asked for a blessing when we got out of the cathedral, and my grandmother asked me to bless her. And that was the sum of it. This was part of the spirit of the times. In our day, there's been a revival of older traditions about ordination. I watched them with some distance. They were never a part of my expectation or practice, so I don't look at them wistfully or with longing. I appreciate that this is a different time, and the men ordained are conditioned with different expectations, so they enter into the moment differently than I did. It wasn't anything personal. Neither the priests of the diocese nor the seminary at the time talked about those traditions, and since they were not prom since they were not promoted, they were not expected. There's a tradition also that the priest would take the cloth that he washed his hands with and that bound his hands following their anointing their being anointed with a sacred chrism. He would take that cloth and give it to his mother. According to the tradition, she would keep it and then would be buried with it. It would be a kind of prize for her, a measure of her participation in the priesthood of her son. It's an old tradition, but I never heard of it until I'd been ordained five or six years. No one at the seminary and no one in the diocese mentioned it once to me. I think that when it came time to wash the chrism off my hands, I did it with the paper towels and the sacristy next to the sink. And besides, my mother had been dead for nine years already. The tradition didn't have much traction. There's another tradition that a priest would take the purple stole he used for hearing his first confession and give it to his father. This stole would be buried with his father as a sign of the paternal participation in the founding and sustaining of the priestly vocation in the family. It's a charming symbol of the familial foundations of the priestly life and a reminder that the calling forth of a priest to serve the people is not simply an individual initiative, but comes from the intricate sustainment that the family provides. But no matter how charming and meaningful this tradition is and how much it has been a part of the church, I never heard of it until last week. I couldn't tell you if it's 500 years old or was invented three months ago. And besides, my father had been gone almost three years by then. It would not have been a particularly powerful symbol either. The priesthood in my day was not diminished. By every measure, it was important and highly regarded, at least I found it to be so. But the overt relationship to priesthood and priests was changing. In the seminary, we were admonished to focus on our oneness with the people we served, rather than being reminded of the uniqueness of our vocation or the particular capacity that we received as priests. In my seminary, unlike today, we were forbidden to wear clerical collars until we became clerics, that is, until our last year when we were ordained deacons. This was a symbol of the focus on our identification to be, first of all, servants, and only secondly, clerics. All of us who were ordained were schooled in the expectations of our vocation. But at that time, it was regarded as truly retrograde to focus too much on the priestly accoutrements. I didn't have to worry, though. My grandmother called me father from the moment of my ordination and never called me anything else for the rest of her life. And of course, everyone in all my parishes have addressed me the same way, and have always respected the vocation I was given. On the night

First Mass Tornado Sirens And Signs

20:39

of my ordination, we had a great party at the Czech Hall in Yukon, which had always been the venue for the great celebrations in my family. We danced until the early hours of the morning, which is also a long tradition in the family, and everybody went home happy and content, especially me. It was wonderful. The next afternoon was my first mass. There wasn't much to say about it. It was a regular Sunday Mass. There were only two noticeable different notable differences besides my nervousness and anxiety about it. The first was that Father Rother was there. I was happy to know that he had stayed and was participating with me. It turns out to have been the last Mass he ever celebrated in Oklahoma. The second was that as the music began and I was walking down the aisle of Immaculate Conception Church, my home parish, the tornado sirens began to wail. It had been hot and humid all day, and the clouds were building in the afternoon. It was truly tornado weather. And of course, the church was full of Oklahomans, so when the sirens went off, we just went on with mass. Just as I was beginning to the opening call to repentance, there was a gigantic thunderclap that shook the entire building. Fortunately, it was the culmination of the storm. When Mass was over, we processed down the aisle and into the parking lot to cool breezes and a clear sky. I think there might be something to the signs that we encounter. My priesthood was a gift to me. I could never have imagined it had I been free to invent my future, and yet it was entrusted to me from God's goodness. These years have been all grace to me. I couldn't have been given a greater gift. God only knows how much longer I have to receive this gift. My one hope is that it remains a gift to the whole church. Back in just a moment.

A Poem And A Closing Invitation

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I have a poem today called When the Divine. When the Divine in Glorious Time moves among us, God's choice in his voice is a real plus. Miracles and signs, all God's rhymes, announces God's plan. We note and then act then upon new facts, and then act again. And the world alters, muzzled and haltered, never to be the same. Wonders abound, the lost are found, there's hope for the lame. Our appetites and desires, the ideas that inspire, move us all, as God's voice does when we're abuzz with his call. So let's not be asleep, we should all keep to God's will. Turn our lives true, let the divine ensue all his ways instilled. That's when the divine is a good thing. Certainly for additional ordinations to take place this year, as well as a time when all of us can begin to lean into some of the leisure available to us in the summertime. I hope that uh that both of these things, the ordinations as well as this uh special time of leisure, can be something that we can uh uh benefit from and an opportunity for all of us to uh take the opportunity to continue to join us here on Living Catholic. Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more, visit okcr.org.