Florida Catholic | Diocese’s Two Newest Priests Followed Different Paths To Same Spiritual Plane

MULTIMEDIA PRESENTATION: Ordination of Fathers Clement and Cummings

Ordinations: different paths, same priesthood

Diocese’s two newest priests followed different paths to the same spiritual plane.

JANET SHELTON | FLORIDA CATHOLIC ST. PETERSBURG BUREAU EDITOR

Published: 05.20.08

Deacons Timothy Cummings, left, and Philip Dac Clement wait patiently in the narthex of the Cathedral of St. Jude the Apostle prior to the beginning of the Liturgy of Priestly Ordination.

ED FOSTER JR. | FC
Deacons Timothy Cummings, left, and Philip Dac Clement wait patiently in the narthex of the Cathedral of St. Jude the Apostle prior to the beginning of the Liturgy of Priestly Ordination.

ST. PETERSBURG | While other kids pretended to be Darth Vader and Luke, Timothy Cummings played priest. As a young man, Philip Dac Jason Clement suffered personal tragedy.

On May 17, the two men who traveled vastly different roads to the priesthood came to the same spiritual place when Bishop Robert N. Lynch ordained them priests in the Cathedral of St. Jude the Apostle.

“God can’t do any better for us, in many ways, than he is doing in our presence,” said Bishop Lynch as he started the Mass. Hundreds apparently agreed. Those who came to witness the ordination included priests and deacons, seminarians, religious men and women, and the family and friends of those being ordained. Archbishop John C. Favalora of Miami and Bishop Emmanuel Bushu of Buea, Cameroon, also joined Bishop Robert N. Lynch in the sanctuary.

Who are the new priests?

Father Timothy Patrick Cummings’ mom, Bonnie Cummings, remembers her oldest son pretending to celebrate Mass for his younger brothers and sisters. His father, Tom, who pursued the priesthood as a young man, also thought his son might have a calling, but was careful not to push in that direction.

“You don’t want to push one way or the other,” he said. “God pursues you.”

Father Cummings was born in New York two days after Christmas 1968. He earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from the University of South Florida and served in the Navy. He then worked for Grainger Industrial Supply.

Father Cummings’ call to ministry began to unfold when he was asked to prepare 10th-grade students at Nativity Parish in Brandon for confirmation and work as a core team member of the parish’s Life Teen program. In his time of formation, he has served at Light of Christ and All Saints parishes in Clearwater; St. Justin Martyr Parish, Largo; St. Clement Parish, Plant City; and St. John Vianney Parish, St. Pete Beach. Father Cummings was ordained a transitional deacon in April 2007. His first assignment as priest will be at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, Dunedin.

Father Philip Dac Jason Clement, 37, is a native of Marrero, La., who started thinking about the priesthood in his senior year of high school. After leaving Louisiana State University with degrees in kinesiology and physical therapy, he worked as a therapist in the New Orleans area. He became a member of the Marian Servants of Holy Spirit, a pious association of the faithful, and was ordained a transitional deacon April 2007. The Marian Servants gave him the name Philip.

Father Clement’s formation period included service at Light of Christ and Nativity parishes. His favorite saint is St. Mary Magdalene, whom he calls a great example of love and perseverance. His first assignment returns him to Nativity, where he will serve as a parochial vicar.

Father Clement’s mother, Yvonne Clement, said she always “had a feeling” her son could become a priest but was still a little surprised when he told her. Before pursuing the priesthood, he was engaged; his fiancée was killed in a car crash.

For Father Clement’s parents, their son’s future life became personally real when they took up the priest’s vestments and helped him put them on.

“That was the moment,” his father, Danny, said, “when he became a priest to us.”

Ordinations put the church’s gift for combining the sensual and spiritual on full display. Incense drifts through the cathedral aisles, the congregation is sprinkled with holy water, and a chorus with trumpets heralds the importance of the occasion.

The rite contains 12 steps. It begins with the calling and presentation of the candidates and includes: a promise of obedience to the bishop and his successors; the laying on of hands, in which the bishop places his hands upon the head of each candidate and prays for the gift of Holy Spirit; the anointing of the new priests’ hands with sacred chrism; and the giving of the paten and chalice to the new priests.

The ceremony marks a life-changing occasion. In his homily, Bishop Lynch talked about the Transfiguration, when three apostles went from the joy of seeing Christ transfigured to the realization that he would die.

For the apostles, “The moment of exhilaration and joy and unparalleled happiness (was) followed by the hard, challenging and painful reality of what would happen to their friend and Lord,” he said.

The priesthood, too, would bring moments of joy and exhilaration and times of weakness, Bishop Lynch said. In fact, their greatest successes in ministry could very well come from those moments of weakness, because recognizing personal weaknesses can make one calmer, more compassionate and more successful at doing God’s work.

“Like the moment of Transfiguration, embracing priesthood is, in very real sense, more of an invitation to live a life of weakness instead of strength,” the bishop said. “(Jesus) chose to descend from the power and strength of that moment on Tabor in order to ascend the smaller hill of Golgotha and the throne of the cross, and on that journey he experienced genuine human weakness: fear, doubts, betrayal, denial, uncertainty. Human weakness which gives birth to unselfish service is a hallmark of his ministry and ours.”

The new priests need not fear the difficult times, he said, because like the apostles and Jesus they would not be alone.

“Wrap yourself in the Lord Jesus always, knowing that he walked from Tabor to Golgotha confident of only a few things: He was following the will of his father in heaven, and the same father would give him the strength to overcome his and the weaknesses of others for the sake of the truth,” Bishop Lynch said.

“The Lord will be with you. The church will love you and will support you, and the saints, to whom we will soon pray, will intervene for you.”

After 20 years of broadcasting — silence

ST. PETERSBURG | For 20 years, people in the St. Petersburg Diocese who couldn’t get to major events at the Cathedral of St. Jude the Apostle could always hear what was going on via the radio. First on WBVM, “the voice of Mary,” and later on Spirit FM 90.5, important celebrations such as the Easter triduum were brought to more people than the cathedral could possibly hold through the diocesan radio station.

Needless to say, Spirit FM’s Mary Jo Murphy was nearly speechless when she made her standard sound tests to the station – minutes before the diocese’s May 17 ordinations – and ran into a wall of silence.

Mary Jo Murphy broadcasting from the soundbooth at the Cathedral of St. Jude the Apostle.

ED FOSTER JR. | FC FILE 2005
Mary Jo Murphy has been broadcasting events from the sound booth at the cathedral for over 20 years.

“I’ve been doing this almost 20 years and this has never happened,” Murphy said. “I always call over ahead of time. … (This time) there was no feed.”

The station had set aside two hours for the ordination, with the plan that Murphy and her brother, Father Michael O’Brien, would deliver commentary. Unable to get things up and running again, the two divided their efforts between verbal descriptions of what was taking place and troubleshooting via cell phones with the radio station.

To fill time, the station aired pre-ordination interviews Murphy had with the new priests. When the ordination rite began, Murphy and Father O’Brien did a play-by-play, handing off a cell phone to one another when it came time to speak.

As it turns out, the problem was with the phone company. Murphy said a switch issue not only shut down phone service to the cathedral, but also several other areas of Pinellas. By the time the issue was resolved, the ordination Mass was over.

Murphy was disappointed.

“The celebration was so beautiful, and all they could hear (were us),” she said. “We (the station) felt it was important for people to hear the ordination of these priests.”

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Ordinations: different paths, same priesthood

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