Marion

True confessions: I am not one of those priests who went into the ordained ministry to join a "helping profession." I know this is sacrilege, but it also happens to be true.

I felt called to the priesthood for many of the same reasons I had previously felt called to be a lawyer and/or go into politics: because I felt that the gospel is about changing the world. As the Chair of the Commission on Ministry for five years now, I realize I am in a bit of a unique category here. I meet so many people who feel called to be much "nicer" than I am, and they are.

This is by way of saying that when I began my ordained life, visiting the elderly, especially those living in Nursing Homes, felt to me more of a "job" than a calling. It felt like something a good pastor should do; not something that I got terribly excited about.

I am not sure when all of that changed for me exactly, but sometime in the past few years it most definitely has. It is my practice to carve out the week after Christmas and Easter to visit the eldest members of my parish, members who cannot be with us for our highest holy days. I take along a gift bag put together by members of the parish and I celebrate Holy Communion with them.

Somewhere along the line this stopped feeling like a burden and became one of the greatest "perks" of my vocation. Today I drove to Beverly, Mass--on the northshore--about an hour and a half or so from Holden. There I had the incredible gift of being able to sit and chat with a 96 year-old woman named Marion whom it is impossible not to love. She is an extraordinary person who once sang in the choir and never missed church in her life. Even today, you walk into her room and it is filled with signs of the parish she still feels connected with more than six years after she has moved away from Holden. There are newsletters, bulletins, photos, crosses, sermons from St. Francis Church littering the room.

Marion was, at her peak, about 4 feet 10 inches and is now about 4 feet 5 inches. She is the only person who ever asked my wife if she could reach something in the grocery store that she could not; my wife is barely five foot zero! We sat and visited and talked. We shared Holy Communion. She was my last visit this week, a week that included so many other extraordinary saints as well.

I think that what has changed for me is that she isn't just some old lady. She is this amazing person who is wise and kind and still "with it." When my kids were little, she was the "gum lady." She came to church every week with sugar-free gum for any child she saw. I don't know how that started or why; I just know that kids loved to see her. And these days so do I...

Marion told me today that it is frustrating sometimes to sit with a bunch of "old people" (I think she is the second oldest person in the community where she lives!) because she tells them something and then an instant later they forget and she can either tell them again or just let it drop. She says this with no malice; it is simply a description of her daily life.

Here is the thing: I get paid to go visit people like this! I get a chance to sit and listen and enjoy the company of people who have lived the span of a century. Who knew this would be part of the great joy I find in the work God has given me to do? It's not just a job, it truly is an adventure--and an incredible gift.