Father Christian Lépine joked that he had never imagined entering the priesthood as a child, but did dream about becoming a saint. He and Father Thomas Dowd will be ordained bishops in the Archdiocese of Monreal Sept. 10. Photo Courtesy of www.diocesemontreal.org.Father Christian Lépine never envisioned becoming a bishop
By Deborah Gyapong
Canadian Catholic News

OTTAWA (CCN)--Montreal auxiliary Bishop-elect Christian Lépine never envisioned becoming a bishop, or even a priest, though his “life as a child was a life in faith.”

Growing up in 1950s Quebec, when the whole province was steeped in the Catholic faith, Father Lépine recalls kneeling at the age of five with his French-Canadian family every evening and reciting the Rosary “like all of Quebec.” He recalls reading the lives of the saints when he was age eight. “I was not thinking so much of being a priest, but I was thinking about being a saint,” he joked.

The oldest of four brothers and one sister, Father Lépine remained certain he would marry. When he was 15, he decided fidelity to the woman he would marry “begins now.”

“All those years I was faithful to my wife to be even without knowing her,” he said, speaking of marriage as a “deep ideal” in his heart.

He thought about pursuing a career in the world. After attending the Royal Military College in Saint-Jean, he pursued an engineering degree at the École Polytechnique in Montreal. After a year working at an engineering firm, he returned to school to study economics and politics.

When he was 25 years old during the Christmas season in 1976, Father Lépine sat in his favorite rocking chair at home, wondering what he was searching for and not finding.

Then the thought of becoming a priest came to him. “What am I thinking about?”

He decided to wait for a couple of months to see if the desire remained strong. He then went on a trip to Africa for a couple of months.

During Easter week, the desire to offer his life as a priest “came back with so much divine love” that he was “overwhelmed by the love of God.”

“At the same time, I was realistic enough to know, there were many sufferings in peoples’ lives,” he said. After discovering the love of God, he felt “people have to know that, I can’t keep it to myself, it’s too incredible, too important.”

He asked God about his desire for marriage, but did not receive an answer. So he remembers praying,

“I don’t know what you’re doing, but you know what you are doing. What you are doing is what’s best for me and the other people. So yes, I’ll do it.”

“I never looked back,” he said. “When God called me to be a priest, He is the one who put that desire in my soul.”

He consecrated his life to announcing to the world the love of God. “Whatever the difficulties, we all need the love of God. We cannot do without it.”

That Holy Week in 1977, God also gave him a “great thirst for prayer” and he resolved to commit himself to a life of prayer.

"It wouldn’t always be easy to take the time to pray,” he said. “It would be the fight of my life to be a man of prayer, but if I can do that, the rest will come along.”

Prayer remains his first priority.

“My first combat is to be faithful to a life of prayer,” he said. “The rest, comes along, as it goes, it’s the grace of Christ. It gave me an internal freedom.”

When he encountered challenges, crises or situations that saddened him, he would use them as a motivation to pray and to “get near the saints.”

“When many discourses are happening at the same time, Truth is important,” he said. “I told myself, if I want to be assured, there were at least two things: the Magisterium of the Church, a fountain of truth, also the lives of the saints. Saints are truth and love together.”

“For me, it’s not a battle against the world; it is a battle against myself, to be transformed by the love of God,” he said.

When Father Lépine received a phone call from the Apostolic Nuncio in early July, asking him to come to Ottawa, he did not speculate about what the meeting was going to be about. The Nuncio told him of the Pope’s decision and asked if he would consider his call.

“Other than saying ‘yes,’ I’m not sure I realized quite yet is what is implies,” he said. What has helped him understand is through the reactions of other people, their prayers, smiles and congratulations.

Father Lépine has seen his life 20 years in the priesthood as a “blank cheque,” an opportunity to serve through prayers, celibacy and obedience to his archbishop, Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte.

He said he feels a bit like the Centurion who told Jesus he was not worthy, but through faith, “I’ll be there to answer call every step of the way.”

As a priest, Father Lépine taught theology and philosophy at the Grand Seminary Montreal, where he loved being exposed to the minds of young people searching for God, and could remain near to the teachings of the Magisterium and the Doctors of the Church. The Bible has always been “nourishment” for him, and he said he has learned so much through teaching.

Since 2006, he has served the parishes of Notre-Dame-des-Champs and Purification-de-la-Bienheureuse-Vierge-Marie as pastor.

He and Montreal’s other Bishop-Elect Thomas Dowd will be ordained to the episcopacy on Sept. 10 at Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral in Montreal.

Father Lépine looks forward to serving his archbishop wherever he is assigned.