BOSTON -- Fifty years of priesthood have gone by quickly for Father Charles Higgins.

When he was ordained to the priesthood in 1975, walking down the aisle of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, he said to himself: "Lord, this is in your hands now, and I'll just be your servant."

Those words have stayed with him for the rest of his life.

"I'm very grateful and appreciative that the Lord called me to this life," he said. "And the most important thing that I've ever experienced is all the times of celebrating the Eucharist for the people of God. So really, it's about the Lord and what we can bring to the people by the Lord."

Father Higgins grew up in Medway. His family, his parish priests, and his education at Xaverian Brothers High School in Westwood all inspired his call to the priesthood. He currently serves as parochial vicar at St. Theresa Parish in West Roxbury but said that all of his assignments were "very unique, very different, very important."

"It was a privilege and an honor to be in each one of those parishes," he said.

He said the last 50 years have been fast but joyful.

"In the midst of some challenges, I've always been confident that the Lord's been with me through all of it," he said.

Father Higgins was one of 12 jubilarians whose 50 years of priesthood were honored with a Mass celebrated by Archbishop Richard G. Henning at Regina Cleri in Boston on June 2. The other jubilarians were Father Ronald Barker, Father Stephen Linehan, Father John Baldovin, Father James Bernauer, Father Thomas Feely, Discalced Carmelite Father Bonaventure Lussier, Father William Eagan, Father Patrick Mohr, and Paulist Fathers Michael McGarry, Thomas Ryan, and John Duffy.

In his homily, Archbishop Henning said the priests gathered before him were probably active and eager in their first few years of ministry and believed themselves to be "the protagonist of the story."

"We want young men to be filled with zeal and with the desire to do great things," he said. "This is a good thing in a young priest, but perhaps also a little deceiving of him, if he imagines that he is the savior or that he will truly change the world."

However, after the excitement of the first few years, a priest will discover that he is "just an unworthy servant who's doing his best to give himself to the Lord."

"Those are moments in our lives where the challenge is for us to say yes again in a new way, in a maybe more mature way, when we perhaps recognize that it's not just about what we do, but who we are, and maybe that intercessory side becomes more important than in the early days of our priesthood," the archbishop said.

"As we get a little older, maybe we understand the value of that," he said. "That, in some real sense, when we touch one life, when we convince one person of their dignity before God or give them that hope of the Gospel in the midst of their suffering, that one life is enough for the Lord."

He pointed out that each jubilarian's 50 years of ministry added up to 18,000 days, and that on every one of those days, they chose to show Christ to their people.

"It's so important to know we have our brothers interceding, not only for the people of God, but hopefully also for each other, for our brothers," he said. "Again, I give thanks and glory to God for the gift of priesthood, the gift of these men who have lived that priesthood faithfully for these 50 years."

After Mass, Archbishop Henning broke bread with the jubilarians and senior priests living at Regina Cleri.

"It's hard to believe," Father Linehan, a classmate of Father Higgins at St. John's Seminary, said about his 50 years of priesthood. "It's been a great, great gift."

Growing up in Cambridge, he and his family went to Mass every Sunday and every day during Lent. Those Lenten Masses partly inspired his call to the priesthood.

"God works in mysterious ways," he said. "I'm very grateful to my family, my brothers and sisters, my mother and father."

He spent half of his priesthood in the Archdiocese of Boston and the other half as a U.S. Navy chaplain, traveling the world in an aircraft carrier.

"It was very challenging at times, to bring that faith to other people, to witness to that," he said.

He was often in the middle of the ocean, but he was never alone.

"I never found it being lonely when you have 5,000 other people," he said. "It's like a city afloat. But I think that helping people in ministry was a great opportunity to help people to orient to the mission they were doing, and to keep their family in mind, and stay connected through the means of faith."