I have been considering a vocation to the priesthood, and I wonder what a priest’s life is really like.

Thank you,  

Ben Tinkin

Perhaps I am not the man to ask. I now live the life of the scholar and ascetic, having been appointed spiritual director of the Franciscan convent of the Holy Conflagration. I live a peaceful life here on the shores of Lake Weni-widi-wiki. However I was for many years the pastor of St. Dymphna’s Parish in the diocese of Grand Faloon, Minnesota. Still, I only know about the life of the parish priest. Religious orders are an impenetrable mystery, as far as I’m concerned. I always tell my readers to take everything I say with a grain of salt. That pertains especially to this topic. If you don’t read the whole letter, it will seem that I am simply whining. That’s not my purpose. The priesthood is a wonderful life and I would do it all over again, were I young. In particular, the people of St. Dymphna’s are wonderful, a real family. They have been so good to me and I’ve really learned to love them. Jesus said, “Peace I give you, My peace I leave you. Not as the world gives peace do I give My peace to you.” (John 14:27) Allow me to paraphrase: “The priesthood is wonderful; not as the world is wonderful.”  I think sometimes people compare it to other jobs and other lives. This is a big mistake. It is not a job. It is a life and, I would say, a romance.

There is only one overriding reason to be a priest: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is everything. If you want to preach, become a deacon. If you want help people, become a social worker, or better still a plumber or electrician or computer repairman. They really help people. All I can do is say Mass, hear Confessions and Anoint the Sick. There is nothing  I do that other people can’t, except these three things.  The priesthood is primarily about saying Mass, hearing Confession and  Anointing the Sick.  Bishops confirm and ordain, Deacons Baptize and witness Marriages. Of the seven Sacraments only three are specially connected with the priesthood. Most people don’t understand the priesthood at all and most of what I do in a 24 hour period has nothing intrinsically to do with the priesthood.

I want to tell you what the day to day life of the priest is like in our times. It may  sound pretty discouraging, but as I said, I wouldn’t exchange the priesthood for anything at all. Certainly, if I had it to do over, there are things I would change, but having been ordained to the service of the altar is not among them. It has been an inestimable privilege to have offered the Mass for 34 years. There is nothing better that I can do to help this sad world, and I pray that God has sanctified me a little by allowing me to offer sacrifice at His altar.

This week was a little unusual. I got a day off. It was the first one in three or four weeks. It isn’t that life in a rectory is an assembly line. It’s more like being a soldier at war. There are times of boredom and times of absolutely exhausting work. Every time I hear a phone, I cringe. People just don’t call the clergy to tell them things are just fine. Very little in the priesthood is unimportant. Earlier in the week I had two funerals. Sometimes I suspect that I’ve seen more corpses than an assassin. I always thought that funerals would get easier as I went along. It’s quite the opposite. For me, they have gotten more difficult. One of the funerals was particularly sad. The fellow was healthy one month, and dead the next. He was a pillar of the church and I will really miss him. Still, I much prefer funerals to most weddings. At a funeral, the guest of honor is better behaved. As a priest you participate in lots of weddings, baptisms and funerals. These are the most important events in people’s lives. They happen a limited number of times over the course of a person’s life, but in the life of a priest they happen a few times a week. On the same day you have a wedding and a funeral, along with the morning Mass and the Saturday evening Mass and chances are you’ve heard a few confessions that afternoon, most of which are “Bless me, Father... I got mad at my wife,” but then someone comes in and says, “Father, I haven’t been to confession for a long time. I did something really terrible, and I need to tell someone....”  You listen and you forgive and you can never, never, never tell anyone about what you’ve just heard, no matter how badly it shakes you. I always try to hear confessions in a confessional behind a heavy screen now that I’m old. Sometimes I’m just worn out by the pain people suffer and the pain they cause.  

Weddings! Let me tell you about weddings. I have a classmate who really enjoys doing weddings. He is a better priest than I am.  A wedding is a bride’s special day. For you it may be just one of five or six ceremonial things you have to do that day. It is really hard for me to get into the right frame of mind when some young woman whom I have never seen in my life arrives with her wedding planner to inform you that they’ll be using the church next month. After all, her grandfather donated one of the stained glass windows. This sort of thing has really happened to me. I remember one young bride who wouldn’t vacate the church as the 5pm Mass was about to begin. She wasn’t done with the photographer. She said, “This is why people are leaving the Catholic Church.” I so wanted to say, “but you haven’t been in a Catholic Church since your First Communion.” I didn’t say anything. I just asked her to hurry up a little. I could go on quite a while about drunken grooms and obnoxious best men. I even once dealt with a bride I suspected of being a little pickled before the ceremony.

Worse than the wedding is the wedding reception. You are with a large group of someone else’s friends and family. They usually seat you with the religious relatives from Nebraska who try to be pleasant by shouting over the mind numbing music that  blasts out of twenty foot high speakers.  This huge crowd of people is clearly trying to numb the pain in their ears by getting drunk. It is rarely wise to join them. Perhaps a glass of wine with dinner, but if you actually go to the bar and get a drink, every reprobate at the party will say to his angry wife, “see it’s alright! The priest is drinking...” They seem to think that if you have a light beer, it’s okay for them to get roaring drunk and plow into a crowd of school children with their car. At these joyous events, dance at your own risk. Every camera will be flashing and you will end up in lots of photo albums in none too flattering a pose. It’s best to say the blessing, join the toast and then find the back door. After all, you have to work in the morning.

Humor aside, I have found that there is a lot of aloneness in the priesthood. You have no children of your own, the events that would bind you to your own relatives are on the weekends, and well, you work on the weekends. If the family is getting together at Uncle Fred’s farm in Iowa for the 4th of July weekend, you can’t really join them. Holiday weekends are prime time for weddings and baptisms and Sunday is just out of the question. You get four weekends a year off. That’s it, and they aren’t Christmas, New Years or Easter, You’re busy on the big holidays and if you can make it home to the family feast after your Christmas or Easter Masses are finished, you usually fall into the nearest Lazy-Boy and you’re down for the count. Going to other people’s grand festivals only remind you that you are increasingly isolated as the years go by. People will always invite you over. “What are you doing for Christmas dinner? If ,as happens as you get older, the answer is “nothing” then you end up trying to make small talk with people who are essentially strangers. Or you become the entertainment. Or someone says “Father, can I talk to you in private?” Or my favorite, “You want to know what’s wrong with the Church?”

To be continued……..  click here for Part 2