My Sacerdotal Anniversary – 10 years makes a good start

If this weekly blog of mine does continue with any consistent regularity into the future, every year, around 20 June, I plan to pen some reflections on the priesthood, in particular my priesthood, as it marks my sacerdotal anniversary. This year, I celebrate a mini milestone – it’s my tenth year as an ordained Roman Catholic priest.

Has it been happy? That’s a tough question. After all, happiness is relative. But someone said about money - that money is relative – the more money, the more relatives. That’s my feeble attempt at wry humour, in case you missed it.

But on a more serious note, we can generally agree that happiness is indeed relative. Happiness is fleeting, and it is also dependent upon so many different factors in different people that it becomes problematic when we gauge anything by the value of happiness. Most apparent of all is the fact that happiness is a feeling. You can’t measure feelings. And if there’s one thing about feelings that we simply must understand is that love is not and cannot be about feelings. The moment we allow our feelings to direct when we love, how we love, and whom we love, we easily become self-centered and selfish people.

I shall borrow once more from the erudite Fr Ronald Rolheiser who said recently that what matters most in life is not happiness but meaning. If our lives have been meaningful, if they have contributed to the meaning of the lives of others, if they have added meaning to the world and to the hard tasks in life like suffering, discomfort and misadventure, then our lives would have mattered much more than if they simply made us happy. Happiness is something that can be bought. You can, for a price of an admission ticket, go to some theme park and experience the ‘happiest place on earth’, but the ‘most meaningful place on earth’ has yet to be used as a marketing ploy because that would be literally choosing the narrow gate that to many remains the least preferred choice.

In my years as a priest, notably a ‘young’ priest as compared to my confreres who are wizened way beyond my years, a question that is often asked is why did I become a priest. I have always viewed that as somewhat of a trick question because it means that it has a one-off answer, and that it is in the past. I have noticed that any answer that I give indicates the struggles that I have been going through at those particular times that the question was posed. Bringing these to my spiritual director for reflection and direction, I realize that the motives for becoming a priest have a somewhat evolving texture, much like the ways that identifying the motives for becoming a seminarian had a similar evolving weave.

So for the present, I shall settle with ‘meaning’. Being a priest has not only added meaning to my life, but I do hope that it has also brought meaning to the lives of the many whom I have encountered, touched and hopefully, healed and motivated in these last ten years of active ministry. Happiness just doesn’t cut it, because not even Jesus was happy all the time in his ministry. I’m willing to wager that hanging on the cross hoisted above Calvary on that first Good Friday could not have been a very happy moment in Jesus’ life. In fact, his use of the Greek ‘makarios’ in Matthew’s Beatitudes has been translated into “happy are the …” has us standing on our heads to see how Jesus defines happiness.

No, it has not been happy all the time for me either as a priest these ten years past, but having said that I don’t think that any one of my friends, parishioners, former classmates and schoolmates can ever say that their choice of vocation in life has been one that has been happy at every single moment of their lives. If so, then the tapestry of their lives would be more like a flat sheet made up of one single shade.

But if our lives are indeed a picturesque tapestry on which not just we, but God the master weaver as well adjusts the warps and wefts of the loom of life, then the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows, successes and failures, the times of sickness and health, plenty and poverty, all add to the depth of meaning and beauty beyond adequate description.

Some of my brother priests are Golden Jubilarians this year, and have celebrated 50 years of their priesthood. In the shadow of their milestone, my ten years looks more like a kidney stone. I salute their commitment and courage, and their quest for holiness. But perhaps 10 years is a good beginning to look at things anew, and where possible, add more meaning to a world that is constantly searching for it, albeit in often the wrong places.