A Tale of Redemption: Recovering Alcoholic Priest Says ‘Hold onto Jesus’ in Video Released After His Death

“Hold onto Jesus.”

Those were some of the last words that Fr. Ed Thompson, a priest and recovering alcoholic, said to a friend who documented his 92-year life story on video. It was a heartwarming tale of the Prodigal Son who came home, told just before his real home-going. Fr. Ed wasn’t the typical pious priest. He’d struggled with addiction for most of his adult life. But he knew one thing: Jesus Christ was the answer.

Fr. Ed was born eight minutes before his identical twin brother David. Before the boys were born, a doctor told their mother to abort them, because she would contract rheumatoid arthritis if she carried them to term. She refused. Fr. Ed said that when he and his brother were born, his mother took each of their tiny hands and made the sign of the cross over her newborn babies. He and his brother later looked back on that event as one that set their lives in motion.

A Testing and a Calling

Both boys entered the priesthood, David one year before Ed. Although he received his calling at age 11, he wasn’t “pious,” and continued to live a normal life — he dated girls, played sports and worked at Westinghouse. When he finally told his mother and father he wanted to be a Catholic priest, they discouraged him. His father accused him of trying to be like his brother. His mother said he needed to work to help support the family. Even the local priest agreed with his parents.

Later, though, he said, he realized they were testing him. “They wanted to make as sure as they could that I was doing it for the right reason,” he said.

After entering the seminary and then working as a Vocation Director for 12 years, in 1974 Fr. Ed was made a pastor in a Philadelphia church. “But I had a problem,” he said sadly. “It was a drinking problem. I was a real, live alcoholic.” He only lasted a year as a pastor there. “I was so sick and so ashamed that after a year I just left the parish.”

He went to Florida and got a job selling graves for a cemetery. Even though his mother urged his brother David to “bring him back,” David told her he would wait until Fr. Ed was ready. “Thanks be to God, my dear brother David never tried to call me, never tried to rescue me.” After about six months, he called his brother, who told him he’d immediately come to Florida.

“You know what he told me?” Fr. Ed said. “’Edward, you’re an alcoholic. And you’re a liar.’ Alcoholics when they’re drinking cannot tell the truth. They can’t survive telling the truth.” That’s when he joined Alcoholics Anonymous, and his brother arranged for him to stay in a rehabilitation house, where he lived for over a year. His job at the house was slopping the pigs. “So the Prodigal Son story was very much alive in my life,” Fr. Ed said wryly.

Fr. Ed was once again given the opportunity to practice as a priest when the bishop of Reno, Nevada, took him in. But once again he fell victim to his addiction. He celebrated the event by drinking scotch. It caught up with him about a year later, he said, and over his fifteen years as a priest in Nevada, Fr. Ed said he was sent to 3 six-month treatment centers for his alcoholism, after which he said the money ran out and the diocese told him, “We’re saying goodbye to you. You’ll have to make it on your own.”

At the Point of Desperation

Just at the point of desperation as he was kicked out of the parish and the treatment center, Fr. Ed had an experience that turned his life around. A woman was trying to reach him, and he decided to call the phone number even though he didn’t recognize the name.

It turned out to be someone he had helped 30 years prior. Jesus told her that he was in trouble and she was to help him, she said. He admitted he needed help and had nowhere to go and she invited him into her home in Florida, where he had four cats as roommates. “I was really afraid of cats,” he said. He worked for his room and board, cleaning up after the cats, cutting the grass and going to the grocery store. He was thankful for a place to stay.

Then ‘a miracle happened,’ Fr. Ed said.

He was given yet another opportunity to serve in a church, there in Florida. At first he was given only simple jobs like training altar servers or reading the Scriptures during worship. But then his bishop in Florida convinced the bishop of Reno to let him work as a priest once again.

“For the last 23 years, I’ve had the joy of being a parish priest here at St. Mary Magdalene parish,” he said. “It has been 23 years of the happiest times in my whole priesthood, my whole life. … I offer holy mass, hear confessions, teach the Scriptures, visit the sick, bury the dead. If I do those things, and do them well, I’ve had a wonderful priesthood.”

Fr. Ed’s last words on the video were intended to reach others, offer encouragement and hope and perhaps reveal the secret of what kept him going during the years he struggled.

“Whatever you do,” he said as he looked into the camera, “hold onto Jesus Christ … in the holy Communion. … He is there. He is our religion, He is our Church. … Hold onto Him. Believe in Him. Never let Him slip out of your life.” (For more from the author of “A Tale of Redemption: Recovering Alcoholic Priest Says ‘Hold onto Jesus’ in Video Released After His Death” please click HERE)

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