Death of a Priest

He was when I saw him so very angry and sad.  In some ways he seemed an almost pathetic person.  He was a friend, a very good one.  He had problems and for the moment it seemed the problems might be winning.  Yet, with all that was wrong, an awful lot was so very right.  He was good and holy, concerned with the present moment and the future both of God and of people.  He could be hurt, and he was, but that is part of love.  Some will be saying he died as a young man, and maybe even a wasted man or a wasted priest.  Some will say he was, or could have been, a scandal, an embarrassment, a man somehow unfaithful to his calling.  But some will always say or think such things, and they would speak ill even of the Lord (in fact, I believe some of their predecessors did).

He is dead now.  He was at one time a drunk and apparently he died all alone.  It was not the least of his problems, but problems are not always there to be overcome and some of them have no resolution.  For all that hurt, he was more a priest than many of us there.  His life and from the beginning, I think, his ministry were marked by moments of failure and frustration.  But that, looking back, should have been no surprise; and I wonder why or how the rest of us avoided or denied those issues that occasion resistance and bring on failure or cause frustration to those who will confront them.

His ideas of what should have been, his determination to make God a reality in a Church and community that seemed so indifferent, had to provide rejection.  Had he not known it could end badly he would have been a fool, and that was not the case.  Had he not hoped what surrounded and hurt him would change he would not have been himself.  Like Jesus, his life required rejection.  There was no room for accommodation; and it might have seemed self-defeating, if not destructive, but sometimes there is no alternative.

He was in some ways weak, or just too human.  His sins, if that is what some want to call them, would not stay hidden.  It is over now.  He is dead.  I hope he will be missed and mourned, that maybe even those who would (and they will) say he was wrong might learn that sometimes priesthood is most itself in sorrow.  That security and ease were not in the contract we made with God.  That there is pain in believing and that faith is sometimes a source of anger unto death.