"I am often asked, especially by young people, why I became a priest. Maybe some of you would like to ask the same question. Let me try briefly to reply. I must begin by saying that it is impossible to explain entirely. For it remains a mystery, even to myself. How does one explain the ways of God? Yet, I know that, at a certain point in my life, I became convinced that Christ was saying to me what he had said to thousands before me: "Come, follow me!" There was a clear sense that what I heard in my heart was no human voice, nor was it just an idea of my own. Christ was calling me to serve him as a priest.

"And you can probably tell that I am deeply grateful to God for my vocation to the priesthood. Nothing means more to me or gives me greater joy than to celebrate Mass each day and to serve God's people in the Church. That has been true ever since the day of my ordination as a priest. Nothing has ever changed this, not even becoming Pope." (Los Angeles, USA, September 14, 1987)

Cardinal O'Connor on the Vow of Chastity

“The great gift of chastity, of celibacy, of vowed virginity, is a liberation, freeing you from looking merely at the externals; freeing you from the mere physical attractions or emotional attractions that you might experience; freeing you to see another person as made in the image and likeness of God; freeing you to love because in everyone, in every man, every woman, in every child, in every unborn infant, in every cancer-ridden patient in the hospital, in the most handsome man, in the most beautiful woman, your heart reaches out in love because always what you see is the image of God. The vow of chastity, of virginity, of celibacy is not intended simply to be a restrictive vow, but a truly liberating vow.