Called to be welcoming as a priest

Back in April, Pope Francis issued a document on the family entitled “Amoris Laetitia,” Latin for “The Joy of Love”.  The New York Times, which had an advanced copy of the document, saw it as a call “for the Roman Catholic Church to be more welcoming and less judgmental.”  

One of my personal goals always as a pastor is to create a welcoming environment in our parish for all.  Being an extreme introvert, this is not alway an easy task for me.  But I see this as one of the main messages Pope Francis has again and again stressed in his writings.  

Rev James Martin, SJ, a Catholic author whom I greatly admire, calles Amoris Laetitia a “quietly revolutionary document”.   He says that divorced and remarried Catholics and anyone who feels they have been unwelcome in the church should see a new message in this document. The message is: Welcome.

No matter what, as a priest, I am called to be welcoming.  I tried to be welcoming when I was a lay missionary.  I try to do this today as a priest.  

I want to end by saying this.  So many of us in the modern world lead very stressed, busy lives.  As I look at my schedule these past two weeks, which included the fourth of July long weekend, I had 24 different liturgies during that time period and wrote 19 different homilies during those 14 days.  I had a funeral, numerous baptisms, a wedding, a Quinceañera, a fourth of July mass, a mass for the presentation of a three year old (which is a tradition with Catholic families in Mexico) all in that two week time period, in addition to the daily and weekend masses.  As a priest, as someone who tries to do the best he can in the midst of a very hectic schedule, I rely on the patience and graciousness of my parishioners and to those to whom I minister.  Usually I encounter such patience and graciousness, and for that I am eternally grateful.   I love being a priest, but I just hope that people are kind and patient and understanding, knowing that we are human beings too, with human weaknesses and human faults.