Father Brown’s mother and stepfather, Nati and Jack Alfaro (HCH photo | Darlene Dela Cruz)
Bishop Larry Silva ordains Nick Brown (HCH photo | Darlene Dela Cruz)
The newly ordained priest with Bishop Larry Silva during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. (HCH photo | Darlene Dela Cruz)
Diocesan vicar general Father Gary Secor greets Father Brown with the fraternal “kiss of peace.” (HCH photos | Darlene Dela Cruz)
For more than seven minutes the priests lined up to lay their hands gently, silently, purposefully, for a second or two, on Nicholas Brown’s head, as Bishop Larry Silva had done moments before in the act of ordination. Seventy-five of them, more than half of Hawaii’s priestly clergy, sealing one more into their fraternity.
The presbyters’ procession, in the sanctuary of the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa, was just one of several moving moments during the two-hour ordination Mass of local boy Brown, Hawaii’s newest priest, on the evening of May 22.
The ordination was full of clerical solemnity with three liturgical deacons, four ministers of ceremony, eight seminarian acolytes, and 20 more deacons in albs and stoles filling the front pews, presided over by the bishop in gold vestments.
The music was simple but vigorous, the lead organ fortified with brass, woodwinds, strings and Hawaiian implements. The church reverberated with the combined voices of choir and congregation.
The ordination rite began after the reading of the Gospel when diocesan director of seminarians, Father William Shannon, formally presented the candidate for holy orders to Bishop Silva: “Most Reverend Father, Holy Mother Church asks you to ordain Nicholas Brown, our brother, to the responsibility of the priesthood.”
After a brief inquiry about the candidate’s worthiness, the bishop declared, “Relying on the help of our Lord God and our savior Jesus Christ, we choose Nick Brown, our brother, for the order of the priesthood.”
The congregation responded with enthusiastic applause, the first of three ovations the new priest would receive that evening.
Bishop Silva then delivered his homily, a tribute to the arduous, but rewarding, priestly calling.
He described a hypothetical Saturday in the life of a priest, an exhausting scenario of one task after another.
Addressing the candidate directly, the bishop said, “This sacrifice of your time and energy, though draining, brings you much joy because your sacrifice is to love as Jesus loves.”
Nevertheless, he said, priesthood is not what one does, but who one is.
“This ceremony is not a graduation,” he said. “This is an ordination, an ordering of your very person, so that from this day forward, the risen Christ will make himself sacramentally present in Nick Brown.”
That is why people are attracted to a priest, Bishop Silva said. “Because they know almost instinctively that he is different; that he is not himself; that he is a sacrament of Jesus Christ, the one and only true priest.”
Following his sermon, the bishop asked Brown six questions, to confirm his acceptance of his new obligations. Six times, Brown responded, “I do.”
Then in a gesture of humility and supplication, Brown lay before the altar, face down on a lauhala mat, as the congregation chanted the long litany of saints.
Brown then knelt before Bishop Silva who, with the laying on of hands, ordained the 49-year-old former Hawaiian Airlines employee Hawaii’s newest priest.
The 75 priests in the sanctuary, one by one, repeated the bishop’s solemn gesture. Among them was the rector of Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology, Msgr. Ross Shecterle.
Two priests helped Father Brown put on the priestly vestments, stole and chasuble, after which the bishop anointed the newly ordained’s hands with chrism.
Bishop Silva exchanged a fraternal “kiss of peace” — an over-the-shoulder embrace — with Father Brown and presented him with a thick maile lei entwined with a strand of white orchids, prompting applause a second time.
The 75 priests again lined up to embrace their brother.
Bishop Silva proceeded with the Mass with Father Brown beside him at the altar at his left, both sharing in the reading of the Eucharistic Prayer.
Near the liturgy’s conclusion, the new priest gave his ordaining bishop his first priestly blessing. He then addressed the congregation, thanking the bishop, priests and “all of you the people of the Diocese of Honolulu, who prayed and supported me on my journey to the priesthood.” The people applauded a third time.
The bishop’s final remarks, before the closing hymn, was an impromptu plug for vocations.
“For you, young men, there is plenty of room. Think about it.”
Father Brown’s mother and stepfather, Nati and Jack Alfaro of Seattle, witnessed the ordination from the first pew.
“It was so beautiful,” Nati said of the liturgy. “I feel so blessed.”
Said Jack, “I can’t believe it. It really is a blessing. He has been so good and faithful.”
Father Brown’s sister, Debbie Pulis, was also there.
“I am very proud of him,” she said. “He’s very dedicated … a servant leader.”
After the Mass, in the semi-darkness outside the church, as most of the congregation gathered for the reception in the parish hall, the new priest blessed a long line of well-wishers, one at a time, pressing his hand to their heads.
Walking back to the sacristy, Father Brown said he had felt a little “nervous” during the ordination liturgy, but felt the Holy Spirit descend on him in Bishop Silva’s laying on of hands.
“I am thankful to God,” he said. “It has been a long journey.”
Father Brown celebrated his first Mass at the co-cathedral, his home parish, May 24. The homily at the Mass was given by his seminary friend Father Raul Marquez, visiting from Portland, Oregon.
On June 1, Father Brown started his first priestly assignment as parochial vicar of St. Anthony Church in Kailua.
