We have news from our old friend, Fr. Nick
Zientarski. This week he reported for
duty as Pastor at Saint Christopher Church in Baldwin, New York. Since leaving our rectory here, where he was
in residence for five years while pursuing his doctorate in sacramental
theology, he has been assigned to seminary work as Dean, first at Huntington,
then at Saint Joseph Seminary, Dunwoodie, where the Archdiocese of New York and
the Dioceses of Brooklyn and Rockville Centre send their candidates for
priesthood. This is his first pastorate,
and his first time living in a parish rectory since moving out of here. He is excited.
How pleased he is to be moving in to a place he has
never lived before, in a parish full of people he doesn’t know. And, judging by the sign, they are at least
as excited to be receiving him. The previous pastor there was quite good, and
well liked, so it’s not as if they are excited to be delivered from some burden
or other difficulty. It is unlikely that
they know Fr. Nick; he has been working outside the diocese for most of the
past eleven years. So you have a pastor
who is convinced he is going to love these people he has never met, and a
parish full of people who are convinced that they are going to love this
pastor, whom they have never met. Odd,
isn’t it?
This scenario is playing out all over America now, as
dioceses and parishes move through the customary time of reassignments. It happens all over the Church around the
world, too, though not necessarily at this point on the calendar. Parishes receive new priests, and priests
receive new parishes, and most of the time there is eager anticipation and
generous welcome.
Why should parishioners expect to love someone they
have never met, and what makes a priest think he will be able to love so many
people with whom he has no prior connection?
All I can liken it to is the other relationship universally love is assumed
to blossom deeply and immediately where no prior acquaintance, nor mutual
selection has taken place: parents and children. They do not choose one another, but everybody
expects love to be the initial and lasting response. And so it is.
The Church gives us our family, and arranges
“marriages” between pastor and parish that bear fruit in life and love. Prior acquaintance, tests for interpersonal
compatibility, and convincing courtship are omitted from the formation of these
relationships, but the expectation is that they will be good and holy and life
giving. And so they are.
Father Nick, our good friend, is entering a new
chapter in the love story between him and the Church. But he has not forgotten us, who long ago
welcomed him with similar excitement and without any knowledge of what about him
there would be to love. He has sent us
more than a postcard; he is sending a person, in fact, a priest. In August we will welcome a new Fr. Jason
Grisafi, also a priest of Rockville Centre like Fr. Nick, to be in residence
here while studying Sacred Scripture at Catholic University. Because Fr. Grisafi is ordained only a few
years, Fr. Nick was also his Dean while he was a seminarian, and has played
“matchmaker” by arranging for him to be part of our rectory and parish
life.
He has never set foot on the property, and in fact he
and I have never met, but we are confident that this will bear great
fruit. We should be excited.
Monsignor Smith
