Just when you get used to having somebody around, he leaves. It seems to be the lot of the diocesan priest.
After his first year living with us here for what we expected to be a five-year course of study at Catholic University, Father Grisafi was looking like somebody we would be glad to have around. He was good company in the rectory, willing to help with anything around the parish, and was beginning to know parishioners well enough to be engaged in the life of the parish. He could always be counted on for a good linguistic observation, too, with all his Latin and Hebrew and Greek.
But then everything changed. You who were at Mass last weekend heard him announce that he will be leaving us at the end of this month to return to parish work in his own diocese of Rockville Centre. Many of you said, how could this be, as you were just getting used to having him around!
Well, he had been in conversation with his bishop for a while, and after a meeting last week in which they discussed what they had discerned, his bishop agreed to bring him back to the diocese and is currently arranging for a parish assignment there. He assures me it is not that he was tired of living with me! You may suspect Father Magro, who has been here only six week, was the “straw that broke the camel’s back;” but no, he assures us that is not it either. It surely was not the Good People of the Parish, whom he enjoyed greatly.
Sometimes a parish priest just gotta go be a parish priest. I understand. But it sure throws a wrench in my works! It is unlikely I will find another student priest to move in for the new semester, which begins in one week. I will poke around; send out feelers; welcome inquiries (hint hint – if you know anybody). Maybe somebody is already studying but has an unsatisfactory living arrangement. We shall see.
It will have an impact on you, as all duties will have to be divided between Fr. Magro and me. That will narrow the palette, so to speak, of the program here. It will be harder for us to plan travel, without someone to cover for us while we are away.
But foremost we will miss his company in the rectory! It is an odd thing how we parish priests do not simply work together, but live together, and when our work changes, so does our living arrangement. That means someone new in, and someone familiar out, every so often, and sometimes quite abruptly. It is almost as if you never know whom you will find at your breakfast table.
So, we are a bit destabilized here in the Holy House of Soubirous, but we shall push on. Keep us all in your prayers. Pray that we find a new resident, and that Father Grisafi find deep satisfaction in his new assignment.
Speaking of destabilization, I am gratified by your response to events within the Church, local and universal. I am confident I shall have further grist for this mill in future columns, but I am glad so many of you are willing and able to talk with me about it, venting your frustration (a mild word for it) and offering your concern for us. Heck, by the time you read this, we may have already had another wild week. Stay close to the Lord.
If you look to continue that conversation with me this weekend, I admit I will not be on the property. I will be in Birmingham, Alabama for my nephew’s Eagle Scout ceremony, and celebrating my father’s 80thbirthday. Call it a busman’s holiday, but I will be celebrating Sunday Mass at the parish in which I grew up, Our Lady of Sorrows in Homewood. It is only fitting; the Gospel for this Sunday is the basis for one of the few homilies I remember from my youth clearly to this day. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. (John 6:56) Thank God I have gotten used to having Himaround!
Monsignor Smith
