Reflecting on his long journey in priestly ministry, Fr Karmel Borg says, ‘It was a great gift from God to me; I didn’t want to retire.’
Fr Karmel was born in Malta, one of 12 kids, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1960. Since then, he has supported the needs of God’s people in many parishes across the Archdiocese, including St Peter Chanel in Deer Park, in Melbourne’s west, where he served for 36 years.
He vividly remembers when—newly ordained and newly appointed as an assistant priest at St Brigid’s Parish in Mordialloc—he opened the door of a confessional for the first time and ‘nearly had a stroke’.
‘I was trembling all over,’ Fr Karmel remembers. ‘When I opened the door, I was shaking.’ Seeing how nervous he was, the parishioners kept comforting him and reassuring him that he was doing a great job.
We don’t do the work; God does the work.
The parish priest at St Brigid’s was a ‘fiery Irish man’. Sensing Fr Karmel’s fear of ministering the sacraments, he decided to throw him in the deep end, leaving the new priest by himself one day at the parish and asking him to answer the phone while he was away. An elderly parishioner called and asked for the Anointing of the Sick. Fr Karmel went to her promptly but once again found himself ‘trembling’.
‘As I was anointing her,’ he remembers, ‘I was shaking, and my thumb went all over her eyes and nose.’ He later learnt that the parishioner—an Irish lady in her 80s—was known to request the sacrament with some regularity. Nevertheless, the stress of that visit caused Fr Karmel to lose his appetite for several days.
Wanting to congratulate Fr Karmel on doing a great job, the parish priest took him out for dinner at a nearby restaurant. Noting that Fr Karmel was only picking at his food, the parish priest said, ‘What the hell is wrong with you? You’re going to die on me.’
Fr Karmel confessed that he was ‘afraid of not doing things properly’. To this, the parish priest replied, ‘Listen, son, what we do we’re not really doing. We don’t do the work; God does the work.’ This important lesson had a lasting impact on Fr Karmel and on his priestly ministry.
Months later, Fr Karmel was appointed to St Bernard’s in Geelong. When he phoned the parish priest to introduce himself, the first question the priest asked him was: ‘Can you drive a bus?’ To which Fr Karmel replied, ‘I can’t even drive a bike.’
He soon discovered that he would need a bus licence to help transport the parish children to and from school, many of whom had no other way of getting there. He also found out there was no room for him at the presbytery and that he would need to find other accommodation.
Feeling isolated and alone in a new place, Fr Karmel didn’t know what to do. ‘I thought, “I left Malta to be a missionary. I did all my studies. I meant well everywhere I went. Now I’m isolated. Nobody wants me.’ Just when he was about to give up hope, another priest at the parish offered to teach him how to drive the bus.
Can a father retire? A priest can’t retire. As a priest, everyone is my child.
When he arrived at St Peter Chanel, it was facing great difficulties. For more than 20 years, it had been a subsidiary parish, consisting of just a school and two steel ‘Nissan’ huts, one for the church and one for the nuns. Many of the parishioners, mostly migrants, struggled financially and couldn’t give much to the parish.
Fr Karmel recalls the mother superior telling the Archdiocese that she couldn’t, in good conscience, allow the nuns to continue working there. ‘They were practically dying because they had nothing to eat,’ Fr Karmel says. So he worked tirelessly to build the parish and support the community.
With the first major financial contribution the parish received, Fr Karmel hired a bulldozer and levelled the land behind the toilet area, where it was common to find snakes.
The priesthood takes hold of you completely. You really know that it’s not you at work but the Holy Spirit in you.
Despite the challenges, he has no regrets. He served the community at St Peter Chanel for 36 years, helping to bring the mission of Christ to life.
‘It was a great gift from God to me’, he says. ‘I didn’t want to retire. Can a father retire? A priest can’t retire. As a priest, everyone is my child.
‘A lot of people need to be loved. They walk through life, and they seem to never have had the good fortune to find someone who feels they are worthwhile. They call us “Father”. A father looks after his kids.’
For Fr Karmel, following Christ means that ‘the priesthood takes hold of you completely. You really know that it’s not you at work but the Holy Spirit in you.
‘The natural consequence, of course, is to drink from the cup of salvation because you want to be one with Jesus,’ Fr Karmel says, recalling the encounter St Peter had with Christ as he was fleeing from Rome.
‘St Peter asked Jesus, “Quo vadis?—Where are you going?” Jesus replied: “Vade mecum—Come with me.” God is operating where the difficulties are,’ Fr Karmel says.
In his retirement, Fr Karmel continues to follow Jesus’ call to ‘come with me’. He asks the people of God to ‘Pray for me, that I will make it up to the Big Boss and, when I do get to heaven, that all of you will come with me, too.’
