Family

Those of you who have been following this blog know that I celebrated my Twentieth Anniversary as a priest this past June 26 just before concluding the Camino de Santiago de Compostela.  In those twenty years I can’t honestly say that I had longings for a family of my own.  Yet recently, the past two months or so, it’s all that I have been thinking about.

At first I thought it was all the various families I saw traveling while on my own journey.  Do I want a family like that?  I was able to spy some magic moments between parents and children; brothers and sisters.  I experienced many couples living out their golden years traveling together towards the sunset of their lives.  Was I longing for that?  The chance to live out my years in that manner I’m sure would be precious.  That must be part of the family life that I am yearning for!

After a few weeks and some reflection I realized what I was missing and longing for was not “A family” but “MY family.”  In the midst of some magical moments during this sabbatical period, it’s “MY family” that I have been missing the past two months.  Not so much Maureen and brothers, though they are certainly part of it.   No, “MY family” is the people of Incarnation.  That’s whom I have been missing the past two months.

I firmly believe God has called me to tend to His People.  For the last four years I have been spoiled to have His People at Incarnation as my own.   They are “My Family!”  I have missed watching the eyes of our little ones in the religious education program and school sparkle in wonderment of their expanding world.  Or our teenagers grow by inches and depth as they mature eager to challenge our world.  “MY family" is one of the most diverse in all the diocese yet united in the Person of Jesus.  I see them on Sundays and when they bury a parent or baptize a child.

In “MY family” I find the challenge to be a better person and priest as they share with me their own life’s struggles.  And I am lacking without “MY” family.  And so as rich as my sabbatical has been I can’t wait to be with “MY family” again.   They are the family I miss.  They are the family I long for.  I really just can’t wait.