To Be A Priest

Several days ago, Curt Jester (Jeff Miller) blogged about vocations in
an entry called "Heed the Call". One of his readers posted the comment below and he (the commenter) gave me permission to post it here.

You might want to consider printing it out and sending it to your favorite (or even your not-so-favorite) priest.

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I think it is going to take more than appealing videos. We really need to resurrect the culture of the hero because that is exactly what priests are: heroes.

The primary job of the hero is to save people. This means saving
people from any danger from any source -- even if that means trying to save someone from themselves. The hero accomplishes this task through sacrifice. He will constantly cast aside any concern for his own well-being to do the right thing. Not the easy thing -- the RIGHT thing.

The main method of heroic sacrifice is: waiting. The hero must be constantly ready. He must wait for and wait on.

He waits for trouble. Much like your mother lion, Clark Kent, or policeman; the hero remains in a position of readiness so he may counter strike at any moment. The cool thing about being a priest is that his job is to counter strike evil itself. There are a lot of jobs in this world that involve taking on evil, but none so courageously direct than that of the priest. It is such a horrifically important burden. And that is exactly what makes it so darn cool.

The hero also waits on -- the poor, the afflicted, the victims of evil. What is the point of stopping bullets if you are not protecting those innocents who need your protection?

A lot of noise is made about the discipline of celibacy but the tomes of both pop culture and literature make it clear that when you marry the hero, you end the romance of adventure. Superman, Batman, Captain America and Spiderman are all unmarried (they try every now and then in comics but it totally kills the story), Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, and Aragorn are also all unmarried. This is not some logic of Catholicism imposed upon the story by force but the true nature of the universe shinning through the veil of fiction. Marriage is a different kind of adventure. The Priesthood is wild and free like a fire. But it is also focused and controlled like a lantern. Priests are a light unto the darkness.

To be a priest is to be a hero.

Amen.