Fr Frankie Mulgrew: ‘God wants us to have joy’

Have you ever doubted the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist? At some point in our lives, many of us have asked the question: ‘Jesus, is it really you?’

It’s certainly a question Fr Frankie Mulgrew, Chaplain at the Mission House in Argyll, Scotland, has asked himself. He had been practising the faith for three years when he attended a retreat and, during Mass, had the opportunity to receive Holy Communion. Longing to know if it was really Jesus, he remembers praying, ‘Show me, because I’m completely open.’

‘When I received Holy Communion,’ Fr Frankie explains, it felt like someone was ‘reaching into your chest, pulling out your heart, opening your heart, placing lots and lots of lit candles into your heart and then closing your heart once it’s full of all this fire.’

Fr Frankie’s father had modelled God the Father’s love, he says, so he knew what it was like to be loved. But this was a deeper experience of love. ‘It was coming from deep inside of me, and going out.’

God had worked miracles in Fr Frankie’s life before, healing and freeing him from an unbearable burden. ‘I spent a long time starved of peace—peace that only God can give,’ Fr Frankie remembers. Through receiving the sacraments, he was restored to the supernatural kind of peace that St Paul refers to when he says in his letter to the Romans that the kingdom of God is ‘righteousness, peace and joy’ (12:17–18).

It’s not a question of if but when God will forgive us, Fr Frankie says, recalling Jesus’ revelations to St Faustina: ‘Sooner would heaven and earth turn into nothing than would my mercy not embrace a trusting soul (Diary, §1777).’

In light of this boundless mercy, Fr Frankie suggests we should look forward to Confession with the same eagerness and expectation with which we look forward to Communion. After all, the same God who bent down to wash the feet of the disciples is the same God we meet in Confession, he points out.

‘Just before the crucifixion, Jesus bends down and washes his disciples’ feet, knowing most of them are going to run away and not be anywhere near his cross,’ Fr Frankie says. ‘And then he gets to Judas, who he knows is going to sell him down the river, and he bends down and washes his feet … That is the God of miracles that you meet in Confession.’

When Fr Frankie sensed that Jesus was calling him to be a priest, he said to Mary: ‘If your son wants me to be a priest, then send me a sign.’ Not content with this, he added: ‘And the sign will be a statue of you.’ He thought Mary was getting a good deal. ‘I give up my whole, entire life for her son, and all she has to produce is one small statue.’

As it turned out, Mary sent Fr Frankie not one but three statues of herself, and was quite creative in the way she delivered the third. While on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, Fr Frankie was telling the story of this ‘deal’ to a woman he’d met. She said, ‘That’s Our Lady for you,’ handing him the third statue.

‘What do you mean?’ Fr Frankie asked.

‘She’s not once, she’s not twice but three times a lady—little Lionel Richie reference there,’ she joked.

At the time, Fr Frankie was working as a full-time stand-up comedian, and things were really happening for him in show business. He had landed one of the best pantomimes in the country and was getting offers to appear on children’s television. But Jesus had already found a way into his heart.

‘You realise that you can take away people’s problems, worries and troubles for a night,’ Fr Frankie remembers thinking to himself, ‘but as a priest, you can take away their problems, worries and troubles, potentially, for the rest of their lives … God wants us to have joy.’

The joy that Fr Frankie refers to—and that inspired him to pursue the priesthood—is a supernatural joy, the kind of joy Jesus speaks of when he teaches his disciples about abiding in the Father’s love: ‘These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full’ (John 15:11).

During his 11 years as a priest, Fr Frankie has witnessed many instances of this kind of joy. On one occasion, he recalls meeting a man at a hospital where he served as a chaplain.

The man, who suffered from a terminal illness, had two sisters, who were parishioners at Fr Frankie’s parish. After some hesitation, the sisters agreed to take Fr Frankie to see their brother, who was a lapsed Catholic and ‘a little angry towards the Church’. It took some good banter and a few prayers to the Holy Spirit to break the ice, Fr Frankie says, but eventually, the man agreed to go to Confession, receive the Anointing of the Sick and a final blessing.

While he was praying for him, Fr Frankie received an image of the man climbing up a mountain and going on a ‘great adventure’ with God. He then saw him in a forest, with a butterfly net, catching butterflies. As he shared these images with the family, the man looked like he was deep in thought. The man’s daughter broke the silence, explaining, ‘That was his hobby: he climbed mountains. And when I was a child, he used to take me butterfly-catching.’

‘God spoke to him intimately,’ Fr Frankie says. ‘He was saying to this man, “I see you. I really, really see you.”’

Reflecting on the difference between physical healing and spiritual healing, Fr Frankie says, ‘The greatest miracle of all is a spiritual miracle: … a heart falling in love with God more and more and more.’

Fr Frankie’s advice to those who long for this kind of intimacy with God is ‘Go to Mary.’

‘She knows how to make a great disciple out of you,’ he says. ‘Mary was in the Upper Room with the apostles … She helped the apostles see Jesus as the Messiah at the wedding feast at Cana …She was at the foot of the cross.’

‘Our faith grows in praise,’ Fr Frankie says. Mary praised God in all circumstances. Her life was a continual, joyful Magnificat, Fr Frankie says, inviting us, like Mary, to proclaim the greatness of the Lord and to rejoice in God our Saviour.