I am helping a parishioner pour a concrete driveway. He points to the wooden form at the edge of the dugout pad. “I paid eight bucks for that 8-foot 2x4.” He shakes his head, “Last year, the same size board cost two bucks..."
An emaciated child from the other side of the world stares through the camera lens, over the ocean, across the desert, and from the cardboard to my soul: half-naked, hand extended, hollowed eyes pleading for charity...
I envy pilots, bronc riders and quarter-backs. Their jobs require grit and fortitude and they earn the respect they receive. Some professions, by their nature, elicit admiration and high regard. These days, priesthood is not one of them...
I have often heard fathers speak about—or at least try to articulate—the experience of seeing their child’s face for the first time. Some shake their heads in gratitude, while some look down to hide their tears, but almost all will say, in effect, that they never thought they could love anyone so much...
A short story by Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried,” centers on items that soldiers in Viet Nam stuffed into their pockets while on patrol: Bibles, cigarettes, tooth picks, letters from home. Sometimes, something as simple as a pack of Planters Peanuts helped those grunts remember where they came from and who they were...
The morning drive to my mission church is treacherous. The snow-packed road points a narrow path up a steep hill. I chide myself for not cancelling Mass. Nevertheless, my truck crunches ice beneath its wheels like a dog gnawing a bone...
The cold wind swirls snowflakes, freshly fallen in their incalculable number and uniqueness. No two the same, though they are billions. And yet, they form a single mass of beauty...
As a priest, celibacy is nothing less than a lifelong Search and Rescue mission. With no family at home, there is nothing to hold me back. So, I give my all...
The priesthood is equally entertaining as it is intense. Your people are amazed, for example, to discover you in ordinary places, as if they had discovered a fish swimming in the desert sand...
I gas up my truck on weekends. That’s because I carry a Toot-N-Totum card that awards ten cents off a gallon on Sundays, which is twice the weekday discount. Filling up on the Lord’s Day also re-enforces the fact that truck stops are holy places, at least according to St. Catherine of Siena...
The pager of the hospital chaplain buzzes on the glass tabletop of his desk, rattling the pennies that lay beside it. He picks it up and squints at the screen. “Code Blue in the surgical waiting room. We need to go.” He stands and throws on his blue sports coat, then tugs on the bottom hem, “Follow me.”
“It’s a rental, but that don’t matter. Kate likes the location and I’m good at fixing things up.” His name is Josh, but I call him Joe. He works construction, takes pride in pulling his weight and goes the extra mile for his friends...
It is two days before Christmas, and the excitement and anticipation of what is to come in the following days is evident in the parish office: lights are strung about the tree in the corner, reflecting their soft light off of the glassy red ornaments; tins of candy line the reception desk; Christmas cards form a pile of their own among the mess of papers on my desk. The phone rings. It is a call from the mortuary down the street....
During my first year of priesthood, I would keep the livestream of St. Francis' tomb pulled-up on my desktop. (you can find it on the webpage of the Basilica in Assisi). The live video of his real grave all the way in Assisi would be full screen whenever I left the office: pixelated vigil candles flickering in the dark. Waiting...
The jag in the road once had a name: Claremont. A few houses, a gas station, a wood-frame church. Thirty miles west, a once-upon-time Northfield boasted a high school, storefronts and a cotton gin. Today, straight-line winds yell cheers across the rotted floor of the Northfield gym. At Claremont, bull snakes coil like rubber hoses in the service bay of the old Texaco...
I enter the elevator, push a button, a bell dings and the doors split open. I step out into the smell of hand sanitizer and plastic. The nurse sitting at the desk looks at me. I walk over. "I am the priest here to visit the patient in Room 488"...
Winter came on fast this year, flattening electric poles and toppling cell phone towers. I was on retreat in a remote cabin with no heat or electricity...
The way the cottonwoods sang in the summer breeze, the sound of the dead grass crunching beneath bare feet, the color of the sand as it blew off into the distance. Mr. Allen, now blind, recalls it all with astounding detail...
