Often when I hear the beautiful and stellar biography's of priests, bishops (e.g. the recently posted video of the life of the San Diego Bishop) and popes, with their apparently impeccable lives; I am greatly edified. But I have to say that my life has been very much the opposite, and I hope there are some who can relate.
By the mercy of God, my life has been a series of ups and downs, from the time of my infant baptism to the present: "troughs and peaks" as Screwtape would put it.
Fifth son of thirteen children in an Catholic immigrant refugee family, a rebellious youngster; in seventh grade I purposefully got myself kicked out of Catholic grade school in order to go to public schools, where I knew the girls were generally of looser morals. Spent my adolescence in unbridled pleasure-seeking and ended up in jail several times and in reformatory school twice for a total of about two years. A few of my friends died toward the end of that wayward time and some were going to hard drugs and I was getting scared so I went to a Trappist Monastery (tipped off by my very pious father) for a week of silence and monastic prayer and meditation which changed my life. I there recalled my childhood seemingly far fetched notion of being a priest and felt God calling me to it, so I said yes. It was the Advent after my eighteenth birthday and it changed my life. It was there that I began to live: made there the daily Mass and daily Rosary (and daily prayer) commitment which I have kept ever since. God saved me from death, that's the way I saw it. The priesthood saved me. I did not give anything up to become a priest. For me it was all gain: spiritual and corporeal gain. I was a dead man when God called me! I had no ambition. I had sucked all of what I thought were the sweet juices of life and found myself in the greatest want and living quite carelessly. God finally gave meaning to my aimless life.
Priestly "setbacks"
Setback 1: back to high school. Having already acquired the GED in Job Corps (for which I had dropped out of high school at 16, and gone to learn a trade in which I was later working when I went to the Monastery), and despite the seminarians at my home parish encouraging me to go directly to college and seminary to be a priest in eight years (at 26), I thought it would be cheating myself to go to college without ever having gone to high school; so I returned to high school, entering the second semester of sophomore year (never having seen the ninth grade!). Me and my 15 year old brother were in the same homeroom! He and I spent two and a half very joyful and formative and faithful years of full involvement in the life of the parish (daily Mass together, lectors, servers, etc.; I was the parish sacristan and had a very close relationship with the pastor who was my spiritual director and confessor for the duration), the high school (e.g. National Honor Society) and the neighborhood (paper boys, yard maintenance, rummage sales, etc.).
Setback 2: Diocese switch and year off. Upon completing high school I was sent by my home diocese to college seminary in another diocese (20 years old, about to turn 21) at an (unbeknownst to me) second rate Catholic University, and finished the program in three years in order to move to a stellar philosophy program in another University. There I began studies for the licentiate in philosophy (under the auspices of my home Bishop who had apparently only reluctantly acquiesced to that persistent request of mine for more philosophy) which I was to complete in '94; in the meantime having been released from the diocese and signing up with the diocese of my college seminary.
Following the recommendations of both my home diocese and my college spiritual director I remained a year after being released from the diocese working closely with a local parish in my hometown and living on my own (with my high school companion brother who was also back from finishing his first degree), working odd jobs to support ourselves and I with an eye on completing the thesis. Daily Mass, Rosary and prayer and spiritual direction throughout. A beautiful simple and devout life of great growth for both of us in this interim year.
Setback 3: Entry probation year. Finally signing up with the diocese of my college seminary, after some hesitant wavering on my part the previous year (I had applied the previous year and everyone was fast tracking my entry to the major seminary, but I was not at all clear what God wanted at that time so went back abruptly to spend the year off as recommended by the home diocese and my spiritual director), the new diocese now decided to require a pastoral year for my entry to seminary, working in a parish and with an additional outside job to pay my own expenses, which I did. The following year I entered the diocesan theologate.
Setback 4: Seminary switch. After half a year in that seminary, with the climate of doctrinal confusion and moral dissolution, I knew that that was no place to flourish. I did not want to be a priest according to the very superficial, and even bad, model presented there. So I went to my bishop and told him that in conscience I could not continue there for the reasons mentioned above and gave some examples, which he understood, and sent me to the best seminary in the nation: a very large national seminary with around 150 men from 36 different dioceses; from which I graduated three years later. Those were the best three years of my life! I would have gladly stayed there forever if that were possible. Fraternal, transparency, doctrinal candor with moral uprightness and sincere and unabashed piety, and all among a cross-section of normal American young men in the middle of the 90's! We had a saying which was a bit exaggerated: "If you liked the 50's you're gonna love the 90's!"
Setback 5: Extra Diaconal probation year. Upon the completion of seminary, my bishop, following the recommendation of the seminary faculty (where he had quite a bit of indirect input) decided I should spend a year as a deacon in full time parish ministry. This decision was based in part on the fact that as a deacon I wore my clerics throughout a Priestly Summer Institute where practically no one else did during those five weeks, with close to a thousand priests coming through there to participate. (For I had, as did not a few of my seminary comrades [none of whom were there in my diocese], decided that once in sacris I would always publicly wear the clerical attire which I had an canonical obligation to habitually wear and was privileged to wear!) The bishop actually told me that the extra year was also punishment for having abandoned the diocesan seminary. There might have been another personal reason on the part of the bishop, for he had a particular weird fetish (quite well known in later years among the clergy and of which even the Vatican would be apprised) which I never even noticed in those years of my pre-clerical naiveté and so never even so much as acknowledged, which I cannot explicitly mention here. Praised be Jesus Christ!
Setback 6: Perpetual parochial vicar. Having been a priest in the diocese for over sixteen years so far there appears to be no immediate plan to make me pastor, so I got permission from the bishop to go to Rome to work on the doctorate and have just completed the first of the three required years to complete the program. Meanwhile I am back in an urban parish (the type of environment where I have spent the vast majority of my priestly years thus far).
One of the benefits of being a long-time parochial vicar is that the priest can be moved without canonical cause, so one can get a wide range of experience under the authority of others and see a variety of styles of leadership. The great difficulty is that one should travel light and one should be quite detached from people and place. You have to give everything and be ready for it all to be taken away! It's a great practice for death! (i.e. great opportunity for mortification). Praised be Jesus Christ!
In this final setback there have been a series of minor setbacks which have weighed very heavy upon me, but I will not bore you with all the details (e.g. occasionally sent for psychological evaluations and recommendation for counselling--the modern "inquisition"--as a way to intimidate me to become like everyone else: the counselors almost invariably agreeing that the diocese itself was the chief cause of my problem, not me!). Only to say that the greater the suffering the greater the glory. I have seen it countless times. The trials are always heavier and the victories are always more glorious. It is the C.S. Lewis "Law of Undulation:" troughs and peaks, always ever greater depths and ever greater heights, as promised by the Lord! Till the final trial of death and the supernal glory of eternal glory!
I purposefully make an effort to keep my priestly bar quite low (because I consider it all a great gift). I want to be a faithful Christian first of all and above all: loyal to the law of God and of sincere piety and sincere charity; fulfilling my priestly duty of fidelity to the books of the Church and to my promise of zeal for serving the world in generously dispensing the Holy Mysteries of the Sacraments and being a priest of prayer in celibate chastity. As long as I can wear my cassock and say holy Mass I deem this a very glorious life: the reward, the only reward, is the privilege to be the minister of God, as a Christian and, what is most unthinkable, as a priest of Jesus Christ.
I am a failure in the eyes of the clerical world. A repeated failure! Every time I meet a priest or a laymen who is involved in Church affairs they ask "are you the pastor?" Why should I care? That is exactly the issue. My concern, in my best moments, is looking God in the face. I have to be real before my maker, not much else matters! I have to know Jesus Christ and stick with Him, stick close to Him and to others in Him. That's all! That's everything. And, what men esteem (even supposedly holy men), would that I should despise it in comparison to where the Lord leads me in good faith! I take Pope Emeritus Benedict as my model, especially in his baffling retirement, and Pope Francis' life of troughs and peaks (e.g. he was exiled to the hinterlands of Argentina before Pope John Paul II raised him to the episcopacy). May those who are failures in the estimation of the world take courage, Christ died that we might know how to die so as to live, ever without killing, but always giving life in our dying, by the grace of God! If you are overlooked because you are loyal to Christ, you will save your soul! and a few other souls too, hopefully.
That's my story. Hope it helps to inspire a few people to holiness relying on the absolutely necessary mercy of God in Christ. Everything is mercy!
N.B. The Conversions of Saint Augustine!