I’m Staying and Discerning God’s Will

Apr 7

April 7, 2024

Jesus Christ is Risen ~ Alleluia!

Throughout Western Washington this weekend, parishes and missions will be finding out who their priests will be on July 1st. That’s when all 163 parishes and missions of the Archdiocese of Seattle will fall under 60 pastors. This is part of the restructuring of the Archdiocese of Seattle called Partners in the Gospel, something the Archdiocese and I have been sharing copious amounts of information about with you for over a year now. On July 1st, Holy Redeemer Parish, St. Thomas Parish in Camas, and Our Lady, Star of Sea Mission in Stevenson, will all share one pastor – me. I don’t know yet how I will be structuring my focus and time between the three communities; that should become clearer in the next couple of months. Yet one thing is clear, you’ll have to share me with two other communities. So please continue to be patient with me. Our three communities will also share a vicar (assisting priest), who will help me and you in caring for your needs.

I want to thank those of you who prayed for and perhaps made sacrifices for this outcome. It is what I wanted, and I made personally historic sacrifices of prayer and penance for it too. For those of you who wanted to see a different pastor come here, please pray for me. Please pray for all priests and bishops. While it has always been, and always be, hard to be a good cleric, it is especially hard in this time to be one. With regards to priests, our numbers keep dropping while people’s expectations don’t, which makes pastoring multiple communities simultaneously especially challenging.

Since hearing of Partners and the general plan in June of 2022, I have wanted to stay put. Half of the canonical pastors in Western Washington are actually staying put on July 1st, albeit with much greater responsibilities. With that said, most assigned priests in Western Washington are moving at the end of June, some into retirement, some because they asked for a different assignment, some because they didn’t have a strong preference one way or the other, and others who didn’t want to move, but in the end will have to.

Which leads me to the topic of discerning God’s will. How do we discern God’s will in our lives?

There is the basic stuff we know for sure, such as becoming a practicing Catholic Christian, and beyond that, striving to be holy. But what about all those decisions big and little that we must make along the way? How can I know the mind of God in all of life’s many decisions? The short answer is, we can’t know for certain (barring a miracle which is super rare). Yet, God expects us to try, and is pleased when we do, and will make good come from whatever decision we make if it is united to Him.

God grants us free will, even to the point of damning ourselves. If God is truly infinitely loving, then He must let us decide to love Him and serve Him, or not, without coercion. As appalling as it is, He let a third of the angels of heaven decide against Him, casting them into hell. He lets us decide if we’ll be saints or monsters, and He lets us choose them too. God is so radical in His granting to us free will, that after our first pope, St. Peter, He stopped choosing our popes for us. He grants the cardinals total free will to choose the leader of Christ’s Church on earth. Usually, they have done a good job, sometimes not though.

Wanting to do God’s will and discerning what decisions to make along the way, comes down to three things, each of them with multiple considerations. In a nutshell, these three things can be boiled down to one’s abilities and disabilities:

1. Talent/Skills

2. Virtues/Vices

3. Availability

Assuming the thing under consideration is a spiritually and morally good thing, amongst different good or at least neutral options, then we proceed to these questions. Do I possess the talent or skills to do the thing? Do I have the virtues (faith, charity, courage, fortitude, wisdom, humility, etc.)? Do I have vices that would prevent me (addictions, laziness, cowardice, materialism, etc.)? Am I available? Do I possess the health (physical and mental), freedom (does another obligation prevent me from choosing this one), finances, etc. to choose this course of action?

On the big questions of life, it is also very important to seek the counsel of those who know you well and whom you trust – especially counsel from devout Catholics.

When all these things have been discerned, and they frequently take weeks, usually months, to discern, then one is ready to make a decision. Despite all that discernment, the course of action might still be very difficult to make, especially if it is a moral one or based on one’s faith in God.

Circling back to me and my discernment to stay on here and Archbishop Etienne’s discernment to keep me here:

When I was first ordained, I thought that moving pastors around every six or twelve years was a good thing. Six or twelve because those are the Archdiocese of Seattle’s terms for pastor. I thought new blood was almost always a good thing. I used to be miffed when I saw a pastor stay on for more than a dozen years. Within a few years of being a pastor my mind changed 100%. I now believe strongly that both pastors and parishes need stability for the good of both. Of course there are exceptions, but those should be the exception not the rule.

From the 1st Century to the 20th Century, from the time the 12 Apostles starting ordaining men to be pastors in the 30s AD until the 1980s, pastors were appointed to serve a parish until they couldn’t do it anymore (weakness or death). Just as popes, bishops, and abbots are installed for life (or retirement at age 75 for bishops), so too were pastors installed in parishes until death, retirement, or an inability to fulfill their responsibilities. For the first twenty and a half centuries of Christianity, pastors could request a transfer to another parish, or a bishop could ask them to take another assignment for good reason, but the basic premise was lifelong stability – a spiritual father to his spiritual family. And ideally fathers don’t come and go. It’s not good for families, and generally speaking, it isn’t for parishes either. That all changed when the code of canon law was revised in 1983. Now pastors can be term-limited depending on what their diocesan policy is.

For this reason and others, using the above-mentioned criteria for discerning God’s will, I discerned that Our Lord would support me if I were to appeal to Archbishop Etienne to have me stay. That’s not to say it was God’s will per se, but that I couldn’t see a reason why it couldn’t be, and I knew He’d support me whether I stayed here or left. What I did know is that I’d live in regret if I didn’t try, and living in regret is literally what the state of Purgatory is all about.

For all the pain the last six months has been for me, especially the last three, I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to try to discern God’s will in my life and act on it. Whether we get what we think is best or not, the fact that we try to do what we think is most pleasing to God, based upon our ability, is itself pleasing to Him; especially when it involves sacrifice and does us and others an eternity of good.

I am grateful to God, to Archbishop Etienne, and to you for my being able to stay on here. Ad Multos Annos (to many years). I love you.

May the Risen Christ Bless You,