Editor's Note: This post has been published in two parts. The first part was published on Wednesday, October 1, and can be read here.
I cannot remember a time when I considered doing something else other than ministry. In some ways, you could say that the Church is in my blood. My great grandparents helped to construct the church building in which we worship and I am the fourth generation of my family to minister in some form or another.
I cannot remember a time when I considered doing something else other than ministry. In some ways, you could say that the Church is in my blood. My great grandparents helped to construct the church building in which we worship and I am the fourth generation of my family to minister in some form or another.
Throughout my life, I have striven to be a consummate minister. If you name a ministry in the Church, I have done it. Whether my ministry was direct (such as liturgical, pastoral, or catechetical) or indirect (such as financial, logistical, or preparatory), I poured into it my entire being and I was very good at it.
Even my approach to life was ministerial in nature. My favorite moments with friends were one-on-one conversations with great vulnerability and intimacy. Emulating those who had so expertly ministered to me, I have had more than one conversation occur in chapel and end with me putting my arm around them, telling them that all would be well, and pledging to support them in whatever they were going through. It was these moments that I cherished most; it was these moments that I felt I was at my best.
By the time I graduated college, I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do with the rest of my life: to become a priest. When I looked at my strengths, my gifts, and my talents, I didn’t just think that I would be good for it; I thought that I was forged for ministry and a life in community. I could think of nothing else I would be suited for or want to do. There was a vast flock that needed shepherds – and I wanted to answer that need.
So, in mid-February of 2013, I travelled from Wexford, Ireland, to Notre Dame to complete my formal interviews to join the Congregation of Holy Cross as a seminarian. Over the course of the preceding year, I had been living in Wexford as a member of the House of Brigid, a lay community of recent college graduates who ministered together in a parochial setting. It was during my time there that I completed the application before journeying to my final interviews.
The month after my interviews was one of my best in Ireland. We were almost ready for the parish’s first-ever Passion Play, our other ministries were going fantastically, and I felt like part of the community at Clonard. On St. Patrick’s Day we spent the day celebrating and later I joined a local “trad group” (or traditional Irish music band) from the parish for an evening of great music and many laughs. To quote Jack Dawson, I was “on top of the world.”
Upon waking the next morning, I went to my desk inside my bedroom and checked my email. Inside was a message from the vocations director of Holy Cross. It was the response to my application to seminary.
“I am writing because I have heard back from the Provincial regarding your application. His answer is ‘no, not yet’.”
Over the course of the email, he would explain that the committee felt that I had great potential for a vocation as a priest of Holy Cross, that they were impressed with what I had done so far, and that, with regards to my past, I was currently doing everything I needed to. Nevertheless, they felt it was necessary to give me more time to continue working on my relationship with my family before moving on to begin the work of seminary.
To put it into context, my relationship with my family had always been a complicated one. Throughout the course of growing up, it had left me feeling both wounded and angry. While that relationship had improved somewhat by the end of college, it still wasn’t what you might call healthy or life-giving. In my mind, my relationship with my family was a source of weakness and vulnerability, and it was something that I pushed out of my mind and avoided discussing. After all, if I felt weak, how could I be a rock and source of strength for others?
After re-reading the email, and then re-reading it again, I gave my computer a nod, shut it, and proceeded about my daily routine as normal. With only a week left until the parish’s Passion Play, and two weeks until Easter, there was a great amount of work that my community needed to get done, and, admittedly, it was a lot of work with which I could distract myself. It would take until after Easter, a half-month later, for me to tell my housemates about the committee’s decision.
Now, I told myself I wasn’t telling them because of the work, but the truth was I didn’t tell them because of my pride. I desired neither sympathy nor compassion, only to analyze the situation and figure out the next step. In truth, acknowledging it to them would have meant acknowledging it to myself, something that I wasn’t ready to do until I had the next step figured out.
Over the course of those weeks and beyond, I kept asking myself where I had failed. Had the interviews gone poorly? Was my application not good enough? Was there something different in the past I could have done that would have enabled me to join? Had I prayed and discerned incorrectly? To each of these questions, the answer was no; the email said as much.
Having found nothing different that I could have done that would have changed their answer, I began to think that the fault was with my very self and that even with all my strengths, gifts, and talents, I still wasn’t good enough. Even though the email affirmed everything I had done thus far, and it asked me to continue in what I was doing, it still burned of failure. I began to see myself as defected, wounded, and broken. All the strength I thought I had seemed to evaporate, and in my weakness I did not know how to minister to those around me. How could I give something I didn’t have for myself?
(Editor's Reminder: The continuation of this post was published on Thursday, October 2 and can be found here.)
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