I returned to Boston on Monday with just about a week to move into a new Jesuit community. For the past three years, I have lived at the Saint Peter Faber Jesuit Community but, now that I'm ordained and will continue to study at Boston College, it seemed fitting for me to move up toward the main campus. So, for the past few days, I've been moving books and clothes to my new community where I will live with four other Jesuits in a quiet residential neighborhood.
In addition to moving, I am also excited to have the opportunity to preside at a liturgy for this year's North American Irish Dancing Championships being held in Providence, RI. Readers will know of my many years of involvement with Irish music and dancing and I'm pretty pumped to have a chance to pray with my Irish dancing family who has accompanied and supported me for so many years.
As I prepare to move up to Mackinac Island for my pastoral summer, I cannot but give thanks for the my family. The gifts of love and laughter flow abundantly both in my nuclear family as well in its extended iterations, and I am inexpressibly grateful to how much they have done for me, especially these last few weeks.
I include this picture because I owe a great deal to Karl Kiser as a model of the type of priest I want to be. Kind, generous, hard-working, and profoundly holy, Karl has been a great friend and mentor over the years.
To be sure, if there is anything I've become acutely aware of these weeks, it's how unbelievably well-supported I have been these many years. There are some who would think the vocation to the priesthood to be a heroic and solitary affair, the process of a man singularly discerning how God is calling him to serve. Such a man must, of course, find the solitude in which to consider prayerfully his call. Yet one cannot discount and must not neglect the role of the family and community in mediating how God is calling us to serve.
As I prepare to move up to Mackinac Island for my pastoral summer, I cannot but give thanks for the my family. The gifts of love and laughter flow abundantly both in my nuclear family as well in its extended iterations, and I am inexpressibly grateful to how much they have done for me, especially these last few weeks.
At Christmas or maybe at my cousin's wedding this November I'll be able to get a full-family photograph. Until that time, these will have to do!
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| Being Vested by Father Karl Kiser, SJ |
I include this picture because I owe a great deal to Karl Kiser as a model of the type of priest I want to be. Kind, generous, hard-working, and profoundly holy, Karl has been a great friend and mentor over the years.
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