A Long Week

Among the many Pope Francis stories told by commentators during the pope's recent pilgrimage to the United States, I liked this one.  Whenever the pope meets a bishop or priest, he looks at his shoes.  If the shoes are dirty, he knows that the cleric has been visiting parishioners and doing work.  If his shoes are shiny, well (ahem), the cleric has been spending a lot of time shining his shoes.

I have to say that my two associates and I had dirty shoes last week.  From Monday, September 21, through Monday, September 28, we did 13 funerals (with prior visits to  the funeral homes the night before), two weddings, two baptisms, five communion calls, two nursing home Masses, as well as the usual schedule of ten weekday and eight Sunday Masses for our four parishes in New Castle. Plus, that week Father Larry Adams celebrated a Mass at Serra Catholic High School in McKeesport, on the same day Pope Francis was canonizing Padre Junipero Serra in Washington, D.C.  Father Adams is an alumnus of Serra High.  Two local television stations showed clips of the Mass, and quotes from his sermon were in two Pittsburgh newspapers.  Phew!

We did have the help of visiting priests Fathers Jim Downs, Dave Bonnar and Joe McCaffrey, who each did one funeral Mass at the request of families who knew them.  

Most weeks, thank God, do not have such busy-ness or heavy weight of family sadness and loss.  But often the work (ministry) priests do is not seen by many parishioners in public areas.  I'm thinking of the times we priests meet:
+ with engaged couples who are preparing to receive the sacrament of matrimony;
+ with persons seeking annulments;
+ with families who ask us to anoint a loved one at home, in local nursing homes or Jameson Hospital;
+ with the women's guilds, or adult bible study, or the RCIA group;
+ with children in St. Vitus School or in our four CCD programs.

The three of us have participated in two day-long workshops over the summer conducted by the diocese just for us in pilot programs of pastoral governance.  In our case we join deacon administrator Deacon John Carran from the two parishes in Pulaski and Hillsville-Bessemer.  And as diocesan priests we are obligated to attend four vicariate meetings and two clergy conference each year.

We priests are certainly not the only ones in our town who work hard at their jobs.  It's just that sometimes parishioners don't see us in other venues outside of weekend Mass.  As my brother asked me in the first month after I was ordained, "Frank, I know what you do on Sunday.  What do you do the rest of the week?"

It's a question I ponder regularly.