JOURNAL OF AN ALIEN STREET PRIEST
“You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek,” are powerfuol words when they are pronounced at your ordination, and they are the words that will be engraved on my gravestone. For these are not simply words to me, but words that sum up the very essence of who I am, the way in which I live my life, and the what shapes its very meaning and purpose.
Recently I was returning late at night from the hospital and a drunken young lady screamed at me, “All priests are from the devil;”, and two friends recently were making some pedophile jokes as well, and I lost my temper, jokes to them, jokes to most people, but those jokes hit me right where I live, what gives my life its very sustenance. For you see the priesthood is not simply a job, or a role to me–it is that for which I have studied many years, have fought life and death battles with the institutional church and individuals, over sexuality, and what the tasks to which I am called. It is a mystical calling that radiates from my very being.
That calling for me is for now best expressed in the thousands of people we feed each month, and in each meal that I prepare I believe we are serving the Eucharist–the broken body, the shed blood–to bring life to many, in the 500 or so with whom I talk and listen to each month giving them socks, a snack, and harm reduction supplies, and most importantly, pastoral care, in the hospital calls, the memorial services, and the weddings–all to the broken body of Christ.. It is expressed in the anti-death penatly demonstratons each week in which I represent the executed Christ, who hangs upon his cross and in the public liturgies, where Christ is lifted up.
For me priesthood is seeking to be the presence of Jesus to people, it is my daily life, and it is my call to encourage those who are in sorrow and pain and to afflict the comfortable. For me being a priest is a calling to invite others to become the living body of Christ to those they come in contact with. Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!
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