Farewell OLOG

When I get back to Rome in September, or even over the next few weeks here in Mobile, I know that I will be asked repeatedly:  "How was your summer?"

Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, Wetumpka, AL
- lots of room for expansion! 

It's a real shame that in those many moments I won't have the opportunity to communicate fully what my summer was like.  I won't be able to express just how important and good this summer has been for me (not to mention that I haven't realized that myself yet).  I'll be limited to just saying, "Oh, it was excellent.  I worked with the youth, and I served Mass, and I did some teaching, and I visited people, and brought the Eucharist to people, etc."  I don't mean to down play those things of themselves.  They are all good things, but experience has taught me that they are so good it makes me want to cry just thinking about them.  That's what I think get's lost in the telling.

When I tell people that I did a lot of work with the Lifeteen group, images of Praise and Worship or maybe this or that game might come to mind, but they won't be privileged to see the things that I'm remembering.  I was amazed to see hundreds of teens adoring the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament at Camp Covecrest, but I was totally floored to see the faithfulness and persistence of just a handful of teens who came week after week to the parish to do the same thing.

When I tell people that I taught a scripture course, they might picture me teaching in a room full of people, each with their Bibles open, but they won't see what I saw.  I appreciate John Chrysostom, but to watch eyes widen and jaws drop as I read his explanation of the water and blood flowing from the side of Christ in the 4th Gospel:  that's how I know he is a Father of the Church, and a much better teacher than I.

When I tell people that I visited the elderly and homebound this summer, they might have a vague picture of that, but they won't see what I see in my mind.  They won't see Ed's smiling face, with his great sense of humor.  They won't hear the quivering voice of Mary, an Alzheimer's patient, as she tries in vain to remember who I am or what she's doing there in the first place.  And, they won't see her cheer up a little bit as she recognizes the Hail Mary, even though she can't remember most of the words.  Clara's voice won't come to mind for them either:  Clara is completely deaf, though she's sharp as a tack.  I'm pretty sure that her faith in the Eucharist is ten times my own.  What a privilege it has been to bring the Body of the Lord to her and to so many others (not just this summer).

Only I will remember those things as I lived them.  I said that was a shame above, but really it's not.  It's not a shame because everyone is given special gifts and blessings from God.  Everyone is part of God's plan.  Everyone is given chance after chance to serve him and to be shocked and awed by the wonders he will not fail to work when we just say yes.

Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the parish

It's funny, as I'm writing this, the Ben Folds song "The Luckiest" is playing on iTunes--more than appropriate.  I'm not going to be naïve:  priesthood is not going to be all roses.  There will be plenty of thorns, but God has deigned to grace me with gift and privilege of serving his People in a very special way.  "I know that I am the luckiest."

unrelated photograph:

Emerging from a cave in the hills around Lago Maggiore
(in an Avengers t-shirt)