As you may have noticed, I haven't posted for a while. Things in ministry are still going well and at the same time busy. Just a couple weeks ago we had our Carnival (festival) at St. Charles and as I mentioned before in my previous post, I was slinging ice cream with the youth group!
Last week, St. Charles saw the passing of a good friend and priest. Fr. James Conry died on July 13th after a recurring battle with cancer. Amidst the end of the Carnival and Fr. Conry's passing, things around the parish were quite busy, especially because we were down 2 staff members (Fr. Steve and Sr. Denise) who were with members of our youth group in Sydney, Australia for World Youth Day.
For the first time, amidst all the business I experienced what I had long expected and always knew what would be part of ministry and priesthood. I would be called on, and all in ministry are called on, to roll with the punches, to be people on the move - responding to the situations you encounter and being ready to take on whatever is coming down the pike.
For much of the past couple of weeks I felt as though I was pushing myself to be more, live more, and love more as each challenge, twist, and turn presented itself. I'm not going to lie, I was tired at the end of each day and at times I felt like I was just doing my best to keep up and was wondering when the barrage was going to stop, but in the end it was a good sense of being tired and a deepening of that loving relationship a priest is to have with his people. In new ways I really sensed what it means to lay down your life for others. In all of this I felt my life being poured out so that others may live. The lived experience of this is quite different from being told about it or educated on it.
I have always said, I wanted to become a priest partly because each day was a new adventure and you never know what will happen. Now I have had some experience in the adventure and what it feels like to live it to a certain degree and I look forward to a lifetime of more adventures to come.
Priesthood is an adventure, you never know what will happen from day to day and at the same time you rely upon God and God's presence which is the constant known, a thread if you will, holding all things together.
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