Three years

 As of tomorrow, July 1, 2025, I begin my fourth year at St. Cletus in LaGrange, IL.  In the 24th year of my priestly ministry, I can barely fathom the person I've grown into.  I guess taking on being configured to Jesus Christ has a real effect.  

In 2001, as well as the 5 years prior to that, I could have never seen my life ever having with lost my best friend, Charles Watkins, to a cancer 24 years after we became friends.  Yet, as much as I couldn't see it, it happened.  Three years after he died, I can still see his face in his hospital bed for the last time he looked at me with his loving eyes.  It's an image I truly don't want to forget, but it is very difficult.

Still, I have a new support system.  I hardly every hear from my friend in the Evansville, Indiana diocese.  My classmate who has been a rock in the past is much busier these days.  It seems like we just have different priorities.  Along with Charles, those three men got me through the most difficult and rewarding thing I had ever accomplished -- ordination.  For weeks prior to that great day, I was so unsure of myself -- not that I'm a lot better about that now.  I still wonder why me, but then, something always comes up to help me say why not me.  Why shouldn't it be me at this time in history?  In all seriousness, it's still one of the things I know I need to come to grips with while I am on sabbatical beginning in January 2026.

I also would not have ever seen myself in any sort of teaching role.  And while I know that preaching IS teaching, teaching in a more "classroom" atmosphere was not on my radar in 2001, that I assure you.  But things develop and suddenly, about a year or so ago, I began to be comfortable in teaching baptism preparation classes for parents and godparents.  I really began to take a liking to it after several baptisms here at St. Cletus.  At my previous three assignments, I didn't have as many opportunities.  At St. George in Tinley Park (my first assignment), our parish was blessed with 5 deacons and most of the time, they did the baptisms.  Once in a great while, I would be assigned, but for the most part, the priests did things that deacons didn't have the faculties to perform -- i.e. Reconciliation and Anointing (of course, consecrating at Mass too).

The assignment at Holy Name Cathedral also had two deacons that were very much involved in celebrating baptisms and we had someone who would prepare parents and godparents.  St. Lawrence O'Toole also was blessed with deacons and a baptism prep team.  In other words, my teaching the sacrament was not needed until I came to St. Cletus.  Once I began to hear compliments and gratitude from the parents and godparents after the sessions, I began to develop my style.

A week from tomorrow, July 8th, I will have the first of six adult faith formation sessions on the sacraments.  I know there are seven sacraments, but I have six months to teach.  Therefore, I will be combining the last session with Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick.  They are very closely related in ritual.  So that makes perfect sense to me.  Others seem excited about it too.  I know I am excited to see where it all goes and what kind of crowd comes out for them.  The sessions are once a month, not six straight weeks.  I like the once per month not only for my own sanity, but also so that people can digest what they hear after each session too.

And THEN yesterday, in the Rome at Vatican City, the newly appointed metropolitan archbishops around the country received their palliums, the symbolic cloth of their office as metropolitans, from Pope Leo XIV.  What is very cool for me is that while I was not there (and I don't really WANT to go there either), is that I personally know 4 of the 8 men who received them.  Archbishop Jeff Grob was appointed a few months ago to take on the see in Milwaukee, WI.  Jeff is very capable and compassionate.  He is a people bishop, not distant.  Archbishop Bob Casey was appointed to Cincinnati, OH.  Bob and I were in the same graduating class from our secondary education school.  He was ordained 7 years before me to the priesthood.  Another very skilled man.  Archbishop Mike McGovern was appointed to Omaha, NE.  Mike was ordained in 1994 with Bob Casey.  They truly had a tremendous class of men (4 ordained bishops from them).  Mike also did his pastoral internship in 1992 at my home parish and that was where we got to know him.  It was Mike that invited me and my mother to attend his priestly ordination, not Bob or another who was being assigned to us.  I was changed by that day.

And then there is Archbishop Bob McElroy, the new metropolitan of Washington DC.  This Bob didn't come from Chicago.  He came to Chicago a couple of times during my pastorate at St. Lawrence O'Toole.  The first time was while he was a bishop of San Francisco, CA.  It was a very sad occasion as Bob's sister, Patty, was a parishioner of mine who died while I was away on vacation.  Of course, I know Bob would have been there whether or not I was in town.  I actually did not meet him on that visit.  However, as life would have it, Patty's son, who had been a student from our school and decided not to be confirmed in his 8th grade year, came to want to receive the sacrament 2 or 3 years after Patty died.  For that, Bishop McElroy came to the Easter Vigil that year and was on the altar with me.  He confirmed that class of neophytes, not just his nephew.  Bob was also asked just months later to be a keynote speaker at our priest convocation where our paths crossed again.  After he was moved to the Diocese of San Diego, CA, he was named a member of the College of Cardinals.  He was one of the reasons I chose to go to San Diego this coming January.  But life turned again and he is now the Archbishop in DC.  Totally cool.