Franciscan from St. Patrick celebrates 60 years of Priesthood
Father Francis O’Duignan was in Ireland visiting family and potential seminarians.
Meanwhile, one of his young parishioners was getting to know the Franciscan priests from Quincy, Illinois, who were filling in at the old St. Patrick Church in St. Patrick.
“What impressed me the most about them were their sandals and their habit,” recalled Franciscan Father James Wheeler, who grew up in St. Patrick in what is now the northeastern portion of the Jefferson City diocese.
“I had to make a big jump from sandals and habit to what it actually means to be a Franciscan!” said Fr. Wheeler, who was ordained to the Holy Priesthood 60 years ago this year.
He has spent much of his Priesthood across the river in Quincy, Illinois, and currently lives at Holy Cross Friary in that city.
“I’ve enjoyed all of it,” he said. “Some of it has been rough, but across the board, I’ve enjoyed myself immensely.”
Early in his Priesthood, he helped establish the Teens Encounter Christ and Cursillo communities of Catholic renewal in Quincy. Both continue to thrive, with Quincy recently hosting its 386th Cursillo Weekend.
“It’s a strong, wonderful group of people from Illinois, Iowa and Missouri,” he said.
Franciscans, an order founded by St. Francis of Assisi over 800 years ago, vow to live radical lives of communal ownership, preaching, prayer and service.
Although some but not all are ordained priests, they refer to each other as “friar,” which comes from the French word for “brother.”
Fr. Wheeler answered the call to Priesthood in January 1966, mere months after the closing of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which brought change and renewal to nearly every aspect of Church life.
The world also seemed to be changing at the speed of light.
“It was a wonderful, albeit confusing, time,” Fr. Wheeler recalled. “Part of the Mass was in Latin, part was in English when I was ordained.”
The Council Fathers were adamant about empowering all laypeople to use the gifts God gave them at Baptism to help carry out his mission in the Church.
“I’ve been so impressed with the spirituality of the laity,” said Fr. Wheeler.
Today, individual Franciscans have a much greater role in determining where they’re stationed and the kind of service they do.
“Back in the day,” Fr. Wheeler noted, “you had no idea what you’re going to do. The provincial told you.”
The Holy Spirit was always there, encouraging, strengthening, challenging.
“When the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary, he said, ‘Do not be afraid,’” Fr. Wheeler noted. “That’s what I would tell myself if I could go back to my Ordination Day. ‘You’re with God and he’s with you.’ And ‘I didn’t choose God, he chose me.’”
Farm raised
Fr. Wheeler was the oldest of six children who grew up on his family’s farm near where the Shrine of St. Patrick now stands in St. Patrick.
“We had 50 head of cattle for beef, 14 or 15 hogs,” he said. “Mom raised chickens. We had corn, soybeans, a pickle patch, and hay-making for the cows.”
Families did their own butchering and meat processing, and neighbors worked together to harvest wheat with shared equipment.
“I learned fencemaking and posthole digging,” Fr. Wheeler recalled. “My least favorite job was the haymaking.”
St. Patrick had a grade school and a high school back then.
“There were 75 students in the school when I graduated,” Fr. Wheeler recalled.
His father wanted him to stay and continue farming, but the future priest had his eye on teaching.
He majored in political science with a minor in history and education at Saint Louis University in St. Louis.
He then served for six months in the U.S. military, returning home at age 23.
“I had thought about being a priest in grade school,” he recalled. “I felt like I didn’t have a lot of time to mess around. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering.”
So, he began his Franciscan journey.
Looking back, it reminds him of Revelation 3:20, in which Jesus says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me.”
“Jesus had to keep knocking, because I didn’t respond until I was 23,” said Fr. Wheeler.
He was first sent to a Franciscan minor seminary in Westland, Illinois, to study Latin and Greek.
“A farm boy going up to Chicago — that was a really big adjustment,” he said.
From there, he entered the Franciscan novitiate in Teutopolis, Illinois, to study the Franciscan rules and spirituality.
He studied philosophy for three years in Cleveland, where he made his solemn profession to be a Franciscan forever.
His parents and youngest brother traveled to Cleveland for the profession.
“Afterward, we went out for supper,” he recalled. “And then I came back to my room and thought to myself, ‘What on earth did I just do today? I made solemn vows for life!’”
He returned to Teutopolis to complete his theology studies.
On Jan. 9, 1966, in St. Francis Church in Teutopolis, Bishop Willam A. O’Connor ordained him to the Holy Priesthood.
Road to renewal
Fr. Wheeler spent most of the six decades that followed ministering to high school and college students and seminarians.
Much of that time was devoted to Catholic campus ministry.
“I thank God for the work I got to do with young people in college,” he said. “I really enjoyed it. And also Cursillo. That’s been one of the highlights of my life.”
He was serving at Quincy University when parishioners asked him to help get Teens Encounter Christ (TEC) established there.
He brought a TEC team from Cleveland to staff the first weekend. Many more weekends followed.
Parents asked him to help bring Cursillo, primarily to form adults to serve on TEC teams.
Through talks, reflection, worship and fellowship, Cursillo helps people see how faith can be lived with greater purpose and joy for themselves and their families, and in other environments.
Cursillo in Quincy recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.
Mighty fortress
One of Fr. Wheeler’s most fulfilling ministries was serving as a chaplain at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois.
Although Lutheran-affiliated, the college had many Catholic students.
Fr. Wheeler and the Lutheran chaplain set about ministering to all of them together.
“We worked really well together,” the priest recalled. “We did a lot of good work together.”
He led retreats for Catholics, Lutherans and people with no faith affiliation at a nearby Dominican motherhouse.
“That was beautiful,” he said. “Everyone loved it.”
He once helped arrange for a Jewish student to prepare a Seder Meal at Passover for her friends.
“I got a letter from her mother,” Fr. Wheeler recalled. “She said, ‘Thank you so much. She wanted to do that so badly. You helped her along.’”
On another occasion, he had just finished offering Mass in the chapel when a despondent student arrived to pray. Seeing the priest there, he turned away.
Fr. Wheeler called out to him, listened to him and encouraged him to call his mother right away.
The student’s mother wrote to Fr. Wheeler: “You’re exactly where you need to be, helping students.”
One of the priest’s most difficult times as a priest came while he was stationed in Quincy, when two students were killed in a car crash.
“I still remember this one mother saying, ‘Why did this happen to my son?’” he recalled, trembling. “Those are the ones you always remember.”
An important key to ministry, Fr. Wheeler noted, is to be present and to offer that ministry without imposing it.
“Like the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick — some people say they don’t want it,” he said. “I never force it on them. They always have a choice.”
Stole on fire
Fr. Wheeler has witnessed numerous weddings over the past 60 years.
One couple came up to him in a restaurant recently and asked if they remembered him and if he remembered what happened at their wedding.
“They told me that my stole caught on fire from the Paschal Candle!” he recounted. “It was 50 years ago. I didn’t remember it.”
A man recently walked up to him in Walmart and asked for some money to pay for a new tire for his car.
Fr. Wheeler, who was wearing street clothes, visited with the man, thanked him for his military service, encouraged him to continue being a good husband and father, and gave him the money he needed.
When the man found out Fr. Wheeler was a priest, he told him he had gone to a Catholic high school.
“I’m broken, you’re broken, we’re all broken,” the priest told him. “Even Jesus fell three times and needed someone to help him get back up. He needed someone to help him carry his cross.
“May Jesus heal you in your brokenness, and may your presence heal me of my brokenness,” said Fr. Wheeler. “May God fill you with peace and fidelity for the rest of your life.”
“Good people”
Several Scripture passages resonate with Fr. Wheeler as he looks back at six decades of Priesthood.
There’s Jesus telling of the Good Shepherd who leave the other 99 sheep to go and find the lost one. (Matthew 18:10)
“When artists depict that, they show Jesus carrying the lost sheep on his shoulders back to the group,” the priest said. “That’s what he does for all of us when we go to Confession and get right with God.”
He thinks back to Genesis, when God creates humans in his own image and likeness.
“Whoever we are, wherever we are, whatever nationality we are, we are all created in the image and likeness of God,” he said. “I always try to remember that.”
He calls to mind Jesus washing his Apostles’ feet at the Last Supper, and of him telling them, “It was not you who chose me but I who chose you and appointed you to provide fruit that will last.” (John 15:16) Fr. Wheeler asks for prayers for him to continue to be aware of his calling, and for every time he celebrates Mass, “to look with awe at the wonderful thing that happens every time — Christ being made fully present in the Blessed Sacrament.”
He also requests prayers for pardon for his failures, “for anyone I have failed to minister to who came to me.”
He noted that everyone, including priests, experiences brokenness and need healing.
That’s why clergy and laypeople must minister to each other.
“You have a spirituality and you have a holiness that we priests need to hear from you,” he said. “And we also have some that we want to share with you.”
He added: “Wherever you go, there are always good people. That’s what I’ve experienced for all these years.”
