"Protect. Provide. Preserve."

Mission Monday #2

I was honored to know a holy priest for a few years. He died in 2019. Don't misunderstand what I mean by "holy." He didn't levitate on waves of sanctity. He wasn't so "spiritual" that he only spoke in hallowed aphorisms. No, he was a prize-winning pugilist in the ring of life. He'd worn the cassock for 50 years, 48 or so of them as a Melkite Greek-Catholic, which is a tradition that might just blow up your ideas of what it means to be a Christian. Fr. Joseph had baptized, married and buried ("hatched, matched, and dispatched," as it were) generations of people, and he was there to roll with their punches every step of the way.

He became like a, well, father to me. In the best sense. He was good. He bridged the divide between theology and reality, which I didn’t even think was possible. 

One of the things I respected about him the most? His hands. They were powerful and inexplicably rough, although I never saw him chop wood or something like that. I once had the weird thought that if he were ever to come at me with a right hook, that meaty club could shut my lights out before I even hit the ground.

And I think he loved our little church men's group more than almost anything.