Msgr. Golden credits parents, priests for helping him ‘step forward’
The weeks before Msgr. Patrick Golden’s priesthood ordination in May 1996 were damp and cold. But the day he was ordained, it was sunny and hot. As he lay prostrate on the floor of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Richmond, he remembers thinking: “It’s finally happened, that complete feeling of humility at what else might be coming.”
What was coming was 25 years of ministry in parishes across the Diocese of Richmond, 21 as a pastor at St. Mary, Suffolk; St. Jude, Radford; the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart; and now at Our Lady of Nazareth, Roanoke.
Msgr. Golden grew up in Lynchburg and belonged to Holy Cross Parish, where he began to find some mentors.
“I think I had feelings back in high school, pictured myself as what it would look like to be a priest,” he said. “One person who really touched me deeply was Father Joe Lehman. He just seemed to be a good picture of what a priest should be like and be.” As did the parish pastor, the late Father Anthony Warner.
After graduating from Radford University with a degree in political science, Msgr. Golden was back in Lynchburg and active in the parish — eucharistic adoration, the rosary, prayer groups.
“I was starting to do more and more things at the church, so it became something that felt natural,” he said. “When I was in that church at Holy Cross, I had just a great feeling of comfort.”
Msgr. Golden said he felt he had a vocation but put off talking to his pastor, Father Warner, until one Good Shepherd Sunday.
“In his sermon, he said those who felt called should step forward if you feel you have a vocation. I thought that was a pretty good message,” he said with a wry smile, “so I stepped forward.”
That fall, he began formation at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore.
His parents, Tom and Patricia, were also responsible for that first step to the priesthood, with their devotion to the faith that included a family pilgrimage to Medjugorje.
“They were just good, good, prayerful people,” he said. “Dad made sure we were at Mass no matter what — rain, snow, whatever. They were a model and example for our family.”
His pastoral year as a seminarian was spent at Holy Spirit, Virginia Beach, a year that helped him figure out that he wanted to focus on parish ministry. He missed Christmas with his family that year, celebrating with them later.
“But I fell in love with the congregation, and I realized then that I’d rather be with them at Christmas, follow up with the people of God,” he said.
Msgr. Golden said it took him a while to develop and appreciate the best approach to pastoral ministry. He likes a set schedule, to have a day pretty much all planned out.
“I had to surrender that because all of the sudden the week changes quickly,” he said. “You get a hospital call, or someone dies, so I had to have the patience to let go instead of getting all worked up over it. I learned to say a prayer to the Lord that ‘it’s in your hands, I can’t do it all on my own; you’ll have to help me get through this.’”
Those moments, he said, can be rewarding — like the time he was visiting a dying woman in a hospital.
“And as she was dying, you heard a bell ring through the hospital. That meant a baby was being born, so you see that transition — one is leaving as another is coming into the world,” he recalled. “At times you have doubts: ‘Am I in the right place? You want me to be here God?’ because sometimes there are certain days that you do question it. But belief in God? I’ve always felt that as very constant. I have never doubted that.”
Sometimes the demand for homilies at weddings and funerals and weekday Mass, in addition to Sundays, can be a challenge, he said. He enjoys working in anecdotes and humor into sermons and missed having an audience during the pandemic restrictions. (“I am literally preaching to the choir,” he noted during the Easter Vigil in April 2020.)
In the past six months, he has lost both parents, his mother dying in April.
At his ordination, as is the custom, he gave her the maniturgium, the cloth wrapped around his anointed hands, which symbolizes that he was now bound to the Church.
Patricia Golden kept it, and as is the tradition, it was placed in her coffin. That tradition also says she is supposed to give it to the Lord in heaven, to show she is the mother of a priest — a priest of 25 years with more to come.