Looking forward

I am glad I began this series of posts with the story of Jason, he didn’t turn up for Mass today. Nor, more importantly did She.  I still hope he might connect that Tuesday or Thursday we are open. I am sad that we can’t do 24/7…we managed it in one the two churches in the last parish . But that was because I lived next door.  

And there was the famous incident of Romeo and Juliet sleeping under the altar…but that’s a story for another day… I was in that parish for eighteen years and after sixteen years  or more a couple of people did begin to articulate “It’s great that we can keep the Church open!”  But I wonder if it’s open now.






 

I didn’t mean to project a false humility about my encounter with the broken J.  But worry that I may have done that.
I think ( after a long time) as a pastor that I still don’t have much of a clue.
This series of posts is about the last two months of my full-time ministry as a parish priest.
It is not that I am going to stop being a priest. I am one of those who think that ordination ontologically changed me and I will be ‘a priest for ever’ [Hebrews 7:17 ” For it is declared: "You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.””]
This may be a romantic idea , but it works for me in my understanding that the call to priesthood is a universal charge on my whole being.
I am inclined to think that I cannot divorce myself from my priesthood. There is is a lot of psychoanalysis, no doubt, that could transpire. But so what it works for me!
I don’t want to be divorced from my priesthood, and I don’t think my priesthood is rejecting me.
So, this is quite an important reflection for me, because in two months I will celebrate a Eucharist as a parish priest, knowing that this will be the last time I will celebrate as a parish priest…and this after nearly forty years.
It’s taken a little while to work this through, but I am pretty sure that I am not defined by being a parish priest.
I may be defined by being a priest, but as close as I have been to parish life,  I can move away from it.
The curiosity of this is that I will have a bit of a break ( maybe six months) and then I will pickup locus work here and there .
I don’t quite know what locum work will be like. I know a lot of people in the Diocese and have a fairly good feel for how local parishes work, so I can do this.
I think I will do it gladly and with joy. I will pander to my own need to preach…and to be appreciated for being able to do this relatively well.
I think that ‘preaching’ is one of my charismatic gifts. And can act out of that model.

I wonder if you have questions about all this. And would be glad to respond.
Leave them littered around..either on the blog or on Facebook. And I will see what I can do