Fr. Bob Kreckel Sixty-Sixth Anniversary of His Ordination

Today is very special for me. It is the Feast of St. Boniface and the Sixty-Sixth Anniversary of my Ordination to the Priesthood. I offered my first Mass at St. Boniface with my Dad at the organ playing a Mass that he composed for the occasion. It was at St. Boniface, a typical pre-Vatican II parish, that my vocation was nurtured, thanks to a joyful, young priest who was gifted at working with youth and who fostered many vocations to priesthood. I spent my priesthood in four other parishes.

The first was at St. Alphonsus in Auburn, a mid city of 74,000 with seven Catholic Churches and another was added while I was there. St. Alphonsus was like St, Boniface, originally a German parish with many organizations and activities that tried to meet all the needs of it members, spiritual, social, and at times material. It had organizations for all different groups of men women and children; a summer Camp on Owasco Lake and a soda fountain for Sunday night youth group meetings in the Parish Hall. It was a wonderful experience for me because it was like the parish where I grew up. The great lesson I learned there is the importance of community with a pastor who knew his people by name and even my maiden name.

After six and a half years there I was called to serve in Inner City of Rochester at Immaculate Conception Church. It was 1960. For the first time in my life I came to know people of the Afro-American Community, just across the river from St. Boniface. It was an eye-opener as I came to see, hear and feel the effects of racial prejudice and discrimination on the lives of people of color. In 64 the first riot in our country occurred as a result of brutality by the Police on members of the Community. I had gone to Washington with people of the Commumity and heard Dr. Martin Luther King deliver his inspiring Dream Talk. He later described riots as the cry of the unheard. It was here that I came to appreciate the powerful, social teaching of our church which also has been largely unheard.

In 1973 Bishop Hogan sent me to Fairport to start a new, Vatican II parish. It was the time of vibrant, renewal movements like Cursillo which a significant number of parishioners attended and who then became avid lay leaders in the parish they chose to call Church of the Resurrection and it was truly a vibrant community.

In 1985 I was sent to St. Mary’s of the Lake which took in the Towns of Ontario, Walworth and Williamson. The parish had many Senior Citizens and I became involved with the Hispanic Community and there again saw prejudice and the fear that Immigration Agents put into our community as they appeared even near the Church on Sundays. I came to love the Latino culture and language, although I never really mastered the latter.
Finally, when I retired Fr. Kevin Murphy invited me to come to St. Joseph’s where I have been very happy living with Frs., Kevin & Jim, Hoan Ding, Michael Fowler, Michael Costik, Justin Miller, and Jeff Chichester and of course, my classmate Fr. Bill Amann, all of whom are great priests and really good men.

Today I give thanks to God for all the blessings of these 66 years of priesthood. I would very much love to see the Church of 2086, I am very hopeful about the future. I read a line yesterday written by Bishop Mark Seitz. It reads, that shores up that hope. ‘Every day at Mass, when I kneel before Jesus in the Eucharist, I’m reminded that he is alive and present. That Christianity is an event happening right now. The drama of salvation is something playing out every day. And we all have a role to play. Thanks be to God.’