After their ordinations May 9, Father Randall Musselman blesses his two daughters, Karina and Kelly, as Father Luis Largaespada and Father Emmanuel Bastien (in background) confer blessings on others.
Posted on 06/01/2009 10:49:56 AM PDT by NYer
MIAMI | Two men became “Father Grampa” and a third answered an “accidental” call to priesthood May 9, proving that God’s will is ultimately accomplished according to his time schedule, not man’s.
Prior to ordaining the archdiocese’s newest priests – Father Emmanuel Bastien, 68, Father Luis Largaespada, 30, and Father Randall Musselman, 58 – Archbishop John C. Favalora reflected on the words Jesus said to the apostles on their own ordination night: “Anything you ask me in my name, I will do.”
The archbishop told the new priests to rely on those words to help them throughout their priestly ministry.
“The Gospel gives you holy assurance from the Lord himself that you will lack nothing you need to be a holy priest, to be a faithful priest, to be a good servant priest,” even when faced with temptations, trials, obstacles or lack of worldly success and popularity, Archbishop Favalora said.
But those inevitable trials seemed far away during the joyous ordination ceremony and the reception that followed, as the new priests gave their first blessings to friends and family members.
“This is the happiest day of my life,” said Father Bastien, adding that age is not a factor when it comes to serving the Lord. “I have never been so honored and so happy.”
Those who know him repeated the refrain, “He always wanted this.”
The 68-year-old widower and great-grandfather was born in Haiti and is affectionately described by his family as a man who cares for everyone. As a teenager, he wanted to enter a religious order and become a brother. But his mother had just died – at age 39 – and his father objected.
In obedience to his father, he gave up his dream and attended a technical school. He met Claudette and married her at age 26. Six years and three children later, he moved to New York, with his wife and children eventually joining him. In 1989, their children grown, he and his wife moved to south Florida and bought a restaurant that they managed together.
That’s when Father Bastien began to think about becoming a permanent deacon, but his wife became ill and the idea was put on hold. A few years after her death, in 2005, he was ordained a permanent deacon and assigned to St. James Parish in North Miami.
Still, the call to priesthood remained. While doing prison ministry, he noticed that sometimes it was difficult to find a priest who could go hear confessions or celebrate Mass.
That’s when he decided to put his philosophy into action: “If you see something is missing in the Church and you can find no one to do it, it is your calling.”
And that’s how, at 66, Father Bastien entered the seminary where, despite his age and the concerns of his children, he got on quite well with men less than half his age.
“He always tries to help people whenever they are down and he always tells us there is nothing to fear. I am happy that he is a priest so he can share his love with everybody,” said his nephew Shaun Douglas Bastien.
“My Uncle Emmanuel was my ‘everything’,” said another nephew, 24-year-old Marcel Alcide. “I lived with him for five years and he helped me stay out of trouble. To see someone work so hard to achieve goals motivated me,” added Alcide, a University of Miami graduate who will be entering Rutgers University’s School of Medicine this fall.
Father Largaespada, born in Nicaragua, was the grandson among grandfathers at this year’s ordination.
“I never saw myself as a priest,” he admitted. “It popped out as an accident,” an excuse to avoid going out with a girl who was interested in him.
As God would have it, the girl’s mother worked in a retreat house and arranged for the young man to meet with a priest there to discuss his vocation. That’s when he began to seriously consider a priesthood that he once viewed as “something probably very high and I saw myself as not qualified for it.”
Now, he said, “It is a joy to be called to the priesthood,” adding, “We are nothing without the Lord.”
His sister, Perla Largaespada, said she was ecstatic.
“No words can describe how happy I am for him,” she said, admitting that she feels more like a mother to him than a sister. Because their parents live in Nicaragua, she helped raise her little brother here in Miami. Although she admits being reluctant at first to share her brother with the Church, she is now thrilled and happy to share him with God’s people.
“Everybody is very excited for him,” said Hanley Tejada, a parishioner at St. Catherine of Siena in Kendall, where Father Largaespada served as a deacon this past year. “He is loved by everyone at St. Catherine and we are happy because we share in his joy, but we are sad because we are losing him.”
Father Musselman’s date with the priesthood also began long ago, even if he did not know it. Born in Indiana, he was raised a Baptist and studied at a Baptist seminary.
“I said, ‘Yeah, I know God’s calling me to something. It’s just that I can’t see the fullness of it yet.’ But definitely the Baptist church didn’t work for me,” he said.
It was not until many years later, having moved to south Florida to work for biomedical testing instruments manufacturer Beckman-Coulter, and having met and married his wife Teresa, a native of Cuba, that Catholicism became an option. When they went to have their marriage convalidated in the Catholic Church, the priest asked if he was interested in converting and handed him the late Bishop Fulton Sheen’s book, “Life in Christ.”
Just to humor him, “I took the book and took it home and threw it up on my bookshelf,” Father Musselman said. “It sat there for seven years. Then I one day found the book and read it and decided that that was really my belief.”
He walked into All Saints Church in Sunrise and told the pastor at that time, Father Anthony Mulderry, that he wanted to become a Catholic. Father Mulderry also suggested he read “Life in Christ,” to which Father Musselman replied, “I read that.”
So he went through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults and began feeling again the call to ministry. “I thought, what can I do in the Catholic Church?” When a friend told him about the permanent deaconate, “I said, well maybe that’s for me.’”
He was ordained a deacon in 1994 and served at All Saints for many years. In 2005, his wife died.
“I really had no call to the priesthood that I could see,” Father Musselman recalled, until a priest friend, Father Juan Torres, asked him about it while on their way back from a baseball game.
“No, no, absolutely not. I don’t even want to hear it,” was Father Musselman’s reply. “It was about a year later that I realized that God was definitely calling me.”
“I am so happy he is able to find something to fill what the death of our mother left behind,” said his daughter Karina Musselman, 30. “I am looking forward to seeing what he does and I hope he can give people what they are looking for.”
His other daughter, Kelly Musselman, 28, said her tears began falling during the laying on of hands, the moment when the bishop calls down the Holy Spirit and a man actually becomes a priest.
“I was so happy watching him finally achieve what he has been working toward for so long,” she said.
“I am looking forward to serving God’s people in a more intimate way” than as a deacon, Father Musselman said. “Bringing the sacraments to them and bringing them to the sacraments as needed, as they need that in their lives. We all need God’s presence and this is a perfect way to do that.”
Praise be to God!
What an awesome story!!
A beautiful and uplifting contrast to the Fr. Cutie situation....
God bless these wonderful men!
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