the names have been forgotten.
once you are known to be a
priest, you are treated differently.
Walk through an airport in clerical
dress: A stranger might pull you aside
and pour out a story of joy, grief, or
repentance; moments later you might
receive from another passerby a
glance of such unfathomable loathing
that it makes you miss a step. despite
the unpleasant aspects, the thing i
love about all this is that my meetings with other people are freighted
with possibility. The energy is there,
at some level, for almost anything to
happen. And, God willing, what happens might be full of grace.
You hear the stories
i love being a priest because i hear
about miracles. Many people think
miracles don’t happen, or are very
rare, but that is only because people
tend not to tell each other about their
miracles. But they’ll tell a priest.
i know a woman who was
comforted by an angel and a man
who was visited by the Blessed
Virgin Mary. And then there are
the conversion stories. i know a
fellow who when he was a graduate
student was teetering on the brink
of faith. one night, while walking
past the darkened shop windows
of a deserted city street, he offered
up a silent prayer: “God, if you are
there, and if you care, please give
me some kind of sign.” At that
moment a shabbily dressed man on
a bicycle came around the corner
riding in the opposite direction. As
he passed he looked the student in
the eye and said, “God loves you.”
Game, set, and match.
i’ve spoken to a Chinese physi-
cist who converted from atheism to
Christianity because ice floats. He
told me that every other liquid sinks
when it freezes. if water sank when
it froze, he assured me, the earth
would be entirely lifeless. We exist
because water behaves in this odd
way. That, he said, cannot be a co-
incidence, and so he believes in our
Creator.
You get to say
things others don’t
i hear stories like these because
people feel it’s oK to tell a priest
things they would find awkward
to say in public. Happily, there is a
corollary to this instinct: it’s oK for
a priest to say in public things that
would be awkward for other people
to say. As a priest i have a kind of
diplomatic immunity from the social
taboos against talking about God—
or anything else that really matters—
in polite company. When i speak
up i will at worst see an expression
on someone’s face that seems to say,
“oh well, what do you expect? He is,
after all, a priest.” i can speak badly,
or i can speak deftly, but at least i’m
free to have a go.
What i love most about this special priestly license is the freedom it
gives me to speak without irony. Almost invariably, when folks do speak
about God in public, they hedge their
remarks with protective ramparts of
irony. That way no one can be certain
that they really mean what they say,
and if push comes to shove they can
pass it all off as a joke.
i love not joking. i love being
able to speak about God simply and
freely from the heart. i love being a
priest because, years after the event,
people will come up to me and tell
me that something i said changed
VISION 2013
