My hope is that everyone will realize that he or she has to make a contribution, that it is not something that is left for others or something left only for the priests. The Archbishop recalled that Christ asked for prayers to the Lord of the harvest to bring laborers into his harvest. It's a question of accepting Christ's invitation to pray for a very important need. Part of praying for the coming of the Kingdom is to pray that there will be sufficient priests in the Church. Priests have an opportunity to promote vocations by the joy that they show, he said.
Parents also have a unique opportunity by the way they speak to their children about the priesthood.
They're able to communicate an esteem for the priesthood. It's not a question of putting their children under pressure but a question of letting their children know how much they esteem the priesthood, how convinced they are that Christ's plan for the Church requires the priesthood because it requires the Eucharist. The needs of the archdiocese are far greater than the number of priests at this time can fulfill, he said. Luckily we have been blessed with many priests over the years and still have a good number of them. But it is obvious that as priests grow older and the needs increase that we need more and more young men who are willing to accept the invitation of Christ to follow him.