that several hundred good men have
my back. i love the way we honor
each other’s fathers and mothers and
families. i love that Holy Cross hos-
pitality is legendary. i love that Holy
Cross men seem to know instinctive-
ly that you do not have to stand on
your dignity in order to have dignity.
We spend the greater part of our time
together talking about sports or the
next movie we want to see, but we
are having those conversations with
men who have given their lives over
to service of Christ and his church
with unqualified generosity. They
have known success, and had their
share of failures, but they are still
here, and they are still Christ’s men.
i love spending time with men
who are very different than me in the
ways the world cares about but with
whom i am in deep agreement on the
things that really matter. i love the high
regard we have for good, hard work. i
love to sing the Salve Regina with my
Holy Cross brothers. i love the way you
often discover, after knowing someone
for a long time, that they have a pro-
found devotion to the Blessed Virgin
Mary. i’ve found over the years that
this turns out to be true of most of
the best of us. i love the transforma-
tion that seems to come over some-
one you think you know well, and
perhaps have taken for granted, when
you have the privilege of seeing him
minister to God’s people, particularly
in a moment of tragedy or great joy.
i love the stories about the old
days and the great and colorful men
who did so much to make us who
we are but who now sleep in Christ.
i love that we remember our beloved
dead in prayer by name on the an-
niversary of their deaths. i love that
100 years after i’m gone someone
will be mentioning my name aloud
in prayer. i love being able to visit
the community cemetery where i will
one day be buried myself. i love being able to work in places where we
have been so long that the lifeblood
of our community is in the bricks.
i love to visit a Holy Cross community and its members somewhere
in the world for the first time and
feel instantly at home. i love the way
that members of Holy Cross parishes
and schools and universities feel
about their priests. i love to visit our
seminary and meet young people
who remind me of Holy Cross men
who have gone before, almost as if
there were some kind of spiritually
transmitted Holy Cross genetic code.
And those are some of the rea-
sons i love being a priest. =
Excerpted with permission from
Portland magazine.
VISION 2013
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