With the very brief exception of Fr. Jim Lee while he searched for a place to live, I am the first priest to live on campus since Fr. John Madigan in the mid-1980s. While the original rectory is now entirely offices and meeting spaces, the “new” priest house on Ellis St., across the parking lot, is a lovely place, with exactly the right set up and space for a solitary pastor.
Beyond the fact that it is the desire of the Church (cf. Canon 533) and something being strongly emphasized by our current Archbishop, living on campus is supremely important to me personally. I have lived and worked at parishes where the priests live far enough away that they have to drive into the church and offices, and it always felt too much like driving into an office job to me. The last thing I ever want is for my priesthood to feel like a job. Priesthood is a relationship with the People of God, and much of that relationship is connection and availability. By living on campus, I feel far more connected to parish life and to our community, and it is much easier to be available to the things happening at our church. I end up identifying with the parish on a much deeper level.
The downside with this deep identification, of course, is that when things get difficult at the parish (and they are difficult right now, for a lot of different reasons), that difficulty is hard to escape. It is easy to fall into a cycle of working tirelessly, going home to sleep, and waking up thinking about all the things that still need to get done at the parish – with no change of scenery or pace to interrupt the cycle. My lay friends tell me that this can happen to them sometimes, too, if they bring too much work home and are not careful to preserve a proper work/life balance. I definitely felt myself falling into this cycle in August and September.
Which all leads to the fact that I have been so thankful for the different vacations I have been on in the last two weeks (with one left to go next week). Reconnecting with my family and college friends has been a lovely reminder that, even though my priesthood and my role at Assumption are core to who I am, I also have an identity that is larger than just my work here. I lived an entire life before I was a priest, with friends and stories and experiences from before I was “Fr. Moore.” These all pointed me to priesthood, but my priesthood was simply the final result of a much larger personal journey, and it has been super helpful to reconnect to that journey.
And really, this is how it ought to be. For all of us, priests included, our primary identity is as baptized children of God, and our expressions of that identity, in a religious vocation, in marriage, in our different careers, merely build upon our baptism. Remembering our larger life journey reminds us that, before anything else, we are called to live as baptized Christians. It has been really good to remember my foundational Christianity, which has only served to strengthen the priesthood built upon it.
P.S. – Speaking of my college, the Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, graduated Olin only 4 years before me. I am so proud of her!
Fr. Moore 