33. BEING A PRIEST

   I have noted elsewhere that being a priest is like being a parent.  Parents know that they are parents.  I can only hope that they do not suppose that they know how to parent each of their unique offspring through the course of their own journeys into the unknown.  In that vein, I could never doubt that I was a priest, but I had to learn the hard way that I would never know what my next involvement with a flawed individual like me would tap in me or what any interaction would ask of me.

    Now, when my lack of staying power limits my active involvements, I understand more fully why, for the Eucharistic celebration of the 25th anniversary of my ordination, I had to choose the Scriptural passage in which Jeremiah complained that God had duped him.  To dramatize the insight, I note that, when I am asked to witness an exchange of marriage vows, I insist on choosing the Gospel passage to be read.  That passage concludes with the words:  "This is my commandment:  Love one another as I have loved you."  This insistence allows me to point out that this call is addressed to everyone, but we have neither the opportunity nor the energy to be so involved with everyone who enters our lives.  By their vows, the couple say to one another:  "But with you, I vow to be faithful to a shared journey informed by my passionate longing to be involved with you in this way."

    From this perspective, God duped me by calling me to be involved in this way with everyone who entered my life, to the best of my abilities, though our encounters would not call for a commitment to remain passionately, vulnerably, respectfully and faithfully involved, for better or worse, as long as we shall live.

    To be so involved as a priest, therefore, I had to accept the fact that I would be involved with individuals in intensely personal ways, for a time.  To let them go on with lives apart from me and to make room for new encounters, I had to learn how to grieve in a way that allowed me to be fully present, without judgments or agendas, to the next wounded person who came to me in the hope that Jesus, the wounded Healer, might come to them through me, as he had with others who urged them to talk with me.

    I realize now that my hope that Jesus might come to wounded individuals though my involvement with them plunged me into a perpetual interplay between a grieving process and an upsurge of joy and gratitude that God had entrusted individuals whose vulnerability I shared to my care. 

    But my awareness of what was happening came by fits and starts.  To describe the process, I must begin with my gratitude to God for two women in my life who have been passionately, vulnerably, respectfully and faithfully involved with me for many, many years.  My beloved niece, Marie, is one of them.  As one who wants to process experience inwardly before expressing vulnerable self-revelations, I would not have wanted to go through life without such an involvement with a woman whose deep feelings lie close to the surface who loves me, warts and all, and wants her husband and children to share their journey to deepening intimacy with me.  She is still a mystery to me.  Nonetheless, though our conversations may be few and far between, we begin without judgments or agendas.

    On my journey through life, I have not had anyone, man or women, with whom to return again and again to tangled interactions in everyday life.  Once I realized how this absence called me to relive perpetually unfinished interactions with individuals who entered and departed from my life in personal conversations with Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, however, I realized that I would not have wanted to go through life without an intensely personal involvement with each of them comparable to my involvement with Marie.  And they are always there.