Pastoral Placements
Continuing a series of articles written by students for the priesthood from our diocese describing their Pastoral Placement.
The Ministry of Presence
Every summer, seminarians of the diocese are offered the opportunity, and indeed the privilege, to spend a month or so on a pastoral placement. This generally entails shadowing one of the priests of the diocese as he actively works in ministry, helping out from time to time when and where appropriate, and learning, in the process, as much as one can about the priestly vocation. Needless to say, this is a vital part of the discernment process. It provides a seminarian with:
- a brief glimpse of what life is really like for a parish priest these days; and
- a good chance to pray about and reflect on the question of whether or not this is really the vocation God is calling him to.
This summer my placement was with Fr. Gordon Ryan in the parishes of St. Joseph’s and Holy Family in Sunderland, where I received a very warm welcome from literally everyone I met. In fact, I am most grateful for the fact that everyone continued to treat me extremely well even after they got to know me a little bit, and even after I explained to them, in the course of a reflection during one of the Eucharistic services, that the difference between St. James and Judas Iscariot was that Newcastle United did not name their football ground after Judas Iscariot!
On a more serious note, St. Joseph’s is situated very close to the Royal Hospital in Sunderland, so I had the opportunity to get to know the chaplaincy team and to accompany Fr. Gordon on a number of visits to the sick.
Some of the people I met were in the last stages of life, and passed away during my placement. In fact, sadly, my time in Sunderland coincided with quite a few deaths in the two parishes.
Indeed, although I was fortunate to be able to experience many facets of parish life while I was there, I think my most lasting impressions of the placement will be of how much I learned, and how much I was humbled by, spending a lot of time with people who were facing death and with people who were trying to come to terms with the loss of someone they loved. One learns very quickly that there is little that one can actually say to good effect in these situations.
I think I knew this intuitively in any case, but I was still overwhelmed by my sense of powerlessness in the face of what these people were going through. People of faith, even many people who do not really practise their faith, do not want or need to hear homilies at these times. What they want and need, really, is for someone to be there, and I think it is no overstatement to say, to be there as a representative of Christ and the Church. And they want that person to simply be with them, to hear whatever they may have to say, and to affirm them in the hope they already have, the hope that the Christian faith holds for all of us in our times of trial. Fr. Gordon had an expression which sums this up for me: ‘the ministry of presence’.
It occurs to me that this ministry applies to so much of what priests do, not only when people are having a hard time, but also when they have something to celebrate, such as a love that they want to commit their life to, or a new life that they have helped to bring into the world. The specific things that we say and do in these situations may be important in themselves, but on a deeper level, what is really important is simply the fact that we are there at important times in people’s lives letting Christ work through us to bring the Gospel to fruition in them.
In his famous parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus said, “When I was sick, you visited me.” One might add, ‘When I lost the one I loved, you were there for me.’ or ‘When I was full of joy you celebrated with me.’ Of course, one does not need to be a priest to do this to some extent, and it is a universal Christian calling. But a priest is given the opportunity, which not many other people have, to devote his life to it.
Moreover, and this is crucial, a priest is a person who has the privilege of being invited into people’s lives at important times in a way that I don’t think anyone else would be. When I reflect on the ways that people who do not really know me at all have invited me into their lives over the last few years, even though I am still merely training to be a priest, I always feel deeply privileged and deeply humbled. And when I reflect on the invitation that Christ has given me to devote my life to this work, these feelings are multiplied to the point where I feel downright unworthy. But I do want to continue to answer these invitations, as much as I can, and I hope that others who read this might want to do the same. I can’t imagine a better way for one to enrich one’s self or the world.