Frs. Brady Gagne, Timothy Sanchez and Aaron Siehr were ordained to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee on May 17 at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Milwaukee, by Archbishop Jeffrey S. Grob. Starting in mid-June, Fr. Gagne will be associate pastor at St. Frances Cabrini and Immaculate Conception, both West Bend; Fr. Sanchez will be associate pastor at the Racine Community of Eight parishes of St. John Nepomuk, St. Joseph, St. Patrick, Sacred Heart, St. Richard, St. Edward, St. Lucy and St. Sebastian; and Fr. Siehr will be associate pastor at St. Charles Parish, Hartland. See a gallery of ordination photos here. (Photos by David Bernacchi)

What does love look like?

For a little girl forced to witness the very worst side of humanity, it looked like a raspberry.

Ilse was six years old during the time she was held captive at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the German concentration camps, during the Holocaust. One day, she stumbled upon a raspberry. Ilse saved this treasure all day, and in the evening excitedly presented it as a gift to her friend Gerda Weissmann Klein.

“Imagine a world in which your entire possession was a single raspberry,” Weissmann Klein would later write in her 1959 memoir, “All But My Life.” “And you give it to your friend.”

The power and simplicity of such a love is what the Christian life requires, said Archbishop Jeffrey S. Grob in his homily at the May 17 Rite of Ordination of Priests at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee.

“Our dear Lord still imagines such a world,” the archbishop said in sharing Ilse and Gerda’s story. “In fact, to be a follower of Jesus Christ demands that we love like this.”

With the ordination of Frs. Brady Gagne, Timothy Sanchez and Aaron Siehr, such a self-sacrificing love is “made tangible,” said the archbishop, as to be ordained is “to lose (oneself) in the priesthood of Jesus Christ.”

In the priesthood, a man is called to imitate Christ in the greatest gesture of love — the offering of his life for others. (John 15:13) Archbishop Grob reflected on different ways that love would be born out over the course of priestly ministry. “The instruction of the Ordination Rite gives us a few marching orders,” he said, addressing the three men becoming priests.

In the Roman Pontifical, which contains the Rite of Ordination, the priest’s role within the Christian community is described thus in the suggested homily, which Archbishop Grob quoted:

“You will exercise in Christ the office of sanctifying, for by your ministry the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful will be made perfect in the celebration of the mysteries. It is united to the sacrifice of Christ, which is offered through your hands and in union with them in an unbloody manner on the altar.”

“In this way, the ritual continues,” Archbishop Grob said. “You will keep Christ’s love real — your love for him (and) your love for those whom you today are ordained to serve: the Church.”

The archbishop urged the ordinandi to “fulfill, therefore, the ministry of Christ, the priest, with abiding love and genuine joy. Seek not your own concerns but those of Jesus Christ.”

In the final moments of his homily, Archbishop Grob shared a quote attributed to St. Augustine: “(Love) has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has the eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of others.”

“That’s what love looks like, my dear sons,” he concluded. “Never grow tired of being on fire with his love.”

See a gallery of ordination photos here.