Spending your life

Most every Sunday evening a group of young people meet in the parish called the Dead Theologians Society. It is a group of high school students and a couple of college freshmen, headed up by yours truly, that meet for two hours for fun, food, and the saints.

It’s a delightful group of anywhere between six and twelve people and, though I am most always rather tired by the time Sunday evening rolls around, it is always a joy to be with them.

We usually meet in the “attic” of the parish center, which is not air conditioned. I went upstairs before the group arrived and made the executive decision not to hold our usual time for prayer and study of the life of a saint simply because it was hotter in the room than it was outside. Had we gone upstairs, we might not have come down. Sometimes prudence has to step in.

Instead, we spent a good hour and a half playing Uno, a game that I always enjoy, a game that true Uno aficionados will admit is among the most violent games known to man (if played properly). Sadly, we didn’t play that game quite right; nobody was injured and nobody was insulted, though there was a fair amount of friendly argumentation and contradiction.

Once we had our fill of Uno we went outside for a good game of Ultimate Frisbee. I’d forgotten what poor shape I’m in! Even so, it was remarked, “Father’s got skills!” To which I replied, “Skills, yes; a strong heart and lungs, no.” One of these days I’ll get in shape. Maybe.

After about half an hour of this we sat down and most of the group left, but a fair number stayed around for up to two hours simply chatting away, talking about nearly everything under the sun.

Toward the end of the conversation the topic shifted toward priests and vocations and parents’ responses to vocations and to the different personalities of priests, etc., etc., etc. It was a good conversation all in all and it makes me all the more aware of what we priests need to be doing if we hope to “recruit” vocations.

From a sociological standpoint, priests continually seem to be the happiest of people, even if the busiest. How is it then that so many people have the wrong impression that we are not happy, that we are lonely, bored and maybe even depressed?

I don’t have an easy answer for this question. Part of the answer certainly has to do with the fact that priests are not as involved in the lives of their parishioners as once they were, something that I regret. Part of the answer has to do with the fact that we priests do more than our fair share of complaining, which I also regret and of which I am becoming increasingly aware. Part of the answer has to do with a misperception of priesthood and the duties it entails, which probably comes from the fact that we priests don’t do a very good job describing our life to people (in no small part because one day can be so very different from the next). Part of the answer has to do with the risky association of happiness with a full, beaming smile all of the time; some people just don’t have a natural smile even though they are quite happy and content. Part of the answer has to do with the false assumption that spirituality and religion, this “Church stuff” isn’t satisfying and rewarding.

Am I happy? Yes. Am I content? For the most part. Am I tired? Yes, quite often. Am I satisfied? Yes. Am I happy that I am tired? Yes, because it reminds me of one of my favorite phrases used in the lives of the saints: he “spent himself for God.”

I’m not by any means trying to say that I am a saint, but I do think that if I find myself exhausted at the end of the day because I have been busy about the Lord’s work, then I must be on the right path and I am probably doing the work he asks of me. There is, of course, always the danger that I am not, but it’s not every day that you can simply sit down in a parking lot and have these sorts of conversations with high school students, much less adults; in fact, it’s probably less likely to ever happen with adults.

Am I happy to be a priest? Yes. Am I happy to be a tired and many times exhausted priest? Yes. At the end of my life do I want someone to say of me, “He spent his life for God”? Absolutely.

Now I have to find a way to convey this to the people and to let them know that this is part of what it means to say at the end of the day: “We are unprofitable servants. We have done only what we were obliged to do” (Luke 17:10). And this is always a cause for joy because the Master will say to his faithful servants: “Come, share your Master’s joy.”