Dear Friends:

I spent this past Sunday evening with a group of priest (and former priest) friends with whom I've been gathering for dinner for more than 25 years now, once per month for fraternity, fellowship, and not much more than that.  We eat and drink and laugh and tell stories of pastoral life, both past and present.  The eldest among the gathering is now more than 90 years old, and I guess I'm among the younger ones there.  These are some of the wisest and most seasoned pastors I know, and I count it a real blessing to be with them.  Because of the pandemic, this was the first time we'd been physically together in the same space in well over a year.  What a sweet reunion it was.

I'm always aware when I am with them that almost nothing about our lives in ministry has played out as we had first expected it to.  For all of us there has been unanticipated joy as well as sudden, surprising sorrow and suffering.  Perhaps we are not so unlike anyone else in that way, but I don't often get to hear the stories of others in such gatherings of friends.  It is a real blessing to be among people who have remained true to their call, even when that has meant a need to change careers in mid-stream or to embrace responsibilities that they never would have wanted.  I'm sure that any married person or parent can speak of the same sort of experience.

One of the topics of discussion during this meal was the upcoming gathering (this week) of the archdiocesan clergy at our Presbyteral Assembly in Winona.  The focus will be on cultivating happiness as priests, and how we are doing at that task.  One of the guys around the table wondered out loud where we got the idea that to be about Christian discipleship is necessarily to be "happy."  I think a lot depends upon what that word, happy, exactly means.

Happiness can be (mis) understood as a kind of giddiness, or an emotional serenity that is really not much to be found in the witness of Jesus or in the Bible in general.  Sometimes the Beatitudes from Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount" in the gospel of Matthew are translated so as to substitute the words "Blessed are those..." with "Happy are those..."  That's very misleading, at least in American English.  To be blessed/happy is not nearly the same thing as to be content.  Rather, to be "happy" is to be at peace in knowing that you are engaged in the right course of life and for the right reasons.  It may sometimes occasion an emotion of euphoria, but just as often it may bring about disappointment or discouragement, or even anger and bewilderment.  "Happiness" is not some superficial, temporary condition of our feelings.  It is instead to be convinced that we are doing that which we must do because of our Christian responsibility.  

Jesus himself seems to have enjoyed moments of real pleasure among those whom He loved in this world, but I don't think it would be accurate to describe His life as "happy," particularly in the way that it ended.  I hope that we get the same message in Winona this week during our priests' gathering.

Fr. Mike

                                                                     

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