ON ONE YEAR OF PRIESTHOOD

Photo courtesy of the author.

One year ago this week, on the chilly afternoon of the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle on December 21st, 2019, I was ordained a priest in Christ’s holy Church. In the presence of gracious friends, old and new, I lay my heart, my work, the breadth of my life before God to be his and his alone forever. I found myself repeating a single, passionate prayer: thank you. Thank you for letting me love you like this. 

On the year’s coldest, darkest, bleakest night, Jesus drew me closest to himself.

If you ask a priest how they came to recognize their vocation, I imagine you might receive as many answers as there are priests. For some, the urgent rightness and delight springs up suddenly, a holy harvest of surprise. For others, there are years between those first hesitant daydreams and the moment one becomes aware of her own name ripening on the lips of Jesus. For each of us, there is the invitation and the assent. Within it all, there is hope. 

My own priesthood shuddered to life somewhere within my ribcage as the bones opened like wings the first time I held Christ’s Eucharistic Body in my own hands. I was nine. It was weird. And I knew I’d always, always be in love. 

And so, on December 21st, 2019, Advent hymns rang out through my graceful parish as I gave my life to Christ as his priest. I was overcome by the generosity of my colleagues, my family, my church, and my friends. As I lay prostrate on the floor before the bishop, I prayed that Jesus would align my heart, my will, even my body with the merciful promises of the Cross. A child in the congregation drew a picture of me repeating my vows, and the artist’s rendering of small, penciled tears streaming down my small, penciled face remains the most spiritually accurate record of the evening. After the Mass, a dear friend and mentor threw her arms around me in the parish hall and wept into my shoulder, “Almighty God has longed for this since the very beginning of time.” And in that minute, I knew for certain that he had. 

On January 8th, my thirty-second birthday, I wrote in my journal: “I have so many questions for this year ahead. Above all, I just pray that I stay close to Jesus. I love him so much. I am not sure I am good at any other part of being a priest.” 

On March 1st, I cantored Evensong for the first Sunday in Lent. At the final hymn, the switch of my microphone slipped from “mute” to live, and I bellowed the alto lines of  “Abide With Me” from the chancel straight up into the roof. This was the last time I sang in church before public worship was suspended. I had celebrated the Eucharist and placed the Body of Christ into upturned hands at the altar rail six times. My priesthood was freshly electric and extraordinary, and everything around me was falling down. 

Almighty God has longed for this since the very beginning of time. Did he long for precisely this?,  I wondered. Did he long for the empty churches, the dusty altar rails, the sanctuary lamps flickering into oily oblivion before each lonely tabernacle? Did he long for the panicked hours of uncertainty in those early pandemic days? The exhaustion, the terror, the feverish and irrational bickering? 

In the mornings, I sat at home, praying the day’s first Office over cold coffee and remembering hymns. 

I fear no foe with thee at hand to bless,
ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if thou abide with me.

My prayers have changed in the past ten months. I began April with litanies for perseverance and protection. In June, I filled the distance between my hands and the tabernacle with prayers for the graces of the Eucharist to bless those who were kept from Christ’s altars. In July, I buried the dead. In August, I gave thanks for the gifts of quiet sanctity.  In September, I was on my knees - not in the sanctuary, but in the dirt - screaming into the ground in grief. It was only much later when it occurred to me that the dirt is where life comes from.  

In this tenth month of heartbreak, I am praying for the humility and patience to persist in a hopeful priesthood. I don’t mean to speak of hope in our successes or failures, whether personal or ecclesial. I am praying for the advent of Hope himself. I am praying for the grace to trust in the prayer I repeated only one year ago: thank you for letting me love you like this. 

Because at its heart, that prayer was never in thanksgiving for some small vision of what I personally expected the priesthood to be. It was never offered to a God whose beauty I could perfectly know or contain. It was never given to a Savior whose mercies require my worthiness to receive them. That prayer was capaciousness, born of passion and peace. It was offered in thanksgiving for this re-making, this re-union, this rebirth. It soothed and strengthened my restless heart, and before long it was everywhere, full of everything - a benediction that took in the world and held it all before the Lord who calls it good.

I know I’m new at this. I am so laughably new at this. But I am so hopeful for God’s people and God’s Church. I cannot stop loving you, loving them, loving Him, loving absolutely every minute I can hold up some small light that points the way to the One who loves us.

What does it look like, this hopeful priesthood? It looks like Thomas, the apostle and friend of Christ who yearned so truly for the resurrection that only the Body of Jesus in his own hands could console him. It looks like John, crying out into barrenness and heralding the pure and inimitable Life to come. It looks like Mary, bold and alive, bearing Hope himself into a world of pain. It looks like us, persisting in the slow, ridiculous work of chipping away the detritus of our own expectations and turning in faith toward the promises of God. 

There are impossible days, and still each morning, I see his face. He has held my hands against his own resurrected, lively heart. I have so many questions for this year ahead. But I know with greater certainty each day that Almighty God has longed for us - for each one of us - since the very beginning of time.