Friends
Peace be with you.
A little over a week ago, I attended some special training for first responder chaplains. I learned a lot at the class and there was a lot of good information. The training took place at Prairie City Christian Church in Prairie City, Iowa, which is located about a half hour East of Des Moines. I found out that the event was sponsored by the local ministerial association and they were also the only people who attended aside from myself. I was the only one wearing a Roman Collar that day. Before things got started, a couple of the pastors were talking about whether their congregation had a ritual they used to ordain new ministers and the response came that they used questions based on John Calvin’s small catechism. That sort of clued me in to something that I probably wouldn’t have thought about 20 years earlier: that these ministers are probably not really fond of Roman Catholicism and that I needed to emphasize that I’m not the enemy. The first way I did that was, during introductions, I introduced myself simply as “Dennis Miller, pastor of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Cedar Rapids and one of the chaplains for the Cedar Rapids Police and Fire Departments”. I knew that, if I emphasized my title of Father, rather than being a source of comfort, it would look haughty and could start off the day with division. They also asked us to tell why we wanted to be a chaplain and I shared how I was inspired by the life of Fr. Mychal Judge, the priest who gave his life serving the dying in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. I called him Fr. Mychal even though I called myself Dennis. As I think about that moment, that small choice to try to make this group of non-catholic ministers feel comfortable with my presence, I know that 20 years earlier, I would have called myself Fr. Dennis or Fr. Miller and let them deal with it.
There’s a side of me that sees a tension between the first reading and Gospel. In the first reading, the prophet Malachi is furious at the priests of his time because of their lack of leadership. It sounds to me like Malichi wants strong and decisive leadership on the part of the priests. In the Gospel, Jesus calls his disciples to humility, to listen to the Pharisees but not act like them. They should avoid titles and places of honor and nice clothes. They should be humble. A commentary I read said “(Humility) is not having a low opinion of yourself or beating yourself up. In fact, excessive self-hatred is really a form of pride, not humility; it is making too much of yourself, taking yourself too seriously. Humility is self forgetfulness…like weaned children.” The word humility is related to the word humor. Being able to laugh at oneself is pretty important at remembering that we are fallible servants of a perfect God. But, it seems to me that this can be at odds with the type of leadership that the Lord is calling the priests to have in the prophet Malachi.
I know part of it is situational. The people of Malachi’s time had just returned from the Babylonian exile but were falling back into some of the practices that had caused them to be exiled in the first place. Malachi is trying to get them to start putting God at the center of their lives by starting temple worship again and living the laws they had been neglecting. He needs the priests to enforce the laws and not to be shirking their duties by showing favoritism. Jesus is less concerned with Temple worship because he knows its time is limited and that his death on the cross will be the fulfillment of the sacrifices and laws the Pharisees are supposed to be living out in his time but apparently aren’t. But, his call to humble leadership seems to be at odds with the strong leadership called by Malachi.
It’s not just priests that feel this tension. How often do we choose a political leader because they make us laugh or because we can imagine having a beer with them not because we think they’re going to be the best at their job? How many parents become more like friends to their kids because they worry that, if they are too mean, too much of a disciplinarian, or too confrontational with their children, the kids will be afraid to tell them if they get in trouble or will rebel more to spite them than anything else? How many teachers lose control of their classrooms because they worry that, if they are too tough on their kids, too challenging for them, the kids will complain to their parents and the parents will call and complain and get them fired? This is the rub of leadership: we all want leaders who will do things the way we want them done, who will be nice and humble and humorous with us while being strict and confrontational with those with whom we don’t agree.
Still, it is possible to be humble and decisive: to take hard stances on issues while retaining a sense of humility. It’s possible to be kind and decisive to children for parents and teachers, for instance, and not get lost in trying to be their friends. I think of Archbishop Jackels with this. He was incredibly humble, making sure he helped clear plates at priest funerals and other luncheons and we’ve come to learn that he was in a great deal of physical pain in the last few years of his ministry but he never complained about it or used it as an excuse to get out of things he didn’t want to do. Nonetheless, I know some people were frustrated at his strong liturgical mandates during the covid pandemic and how he limited the use of the Extraordinary Form of Mass and forbid celebrating Mass Ad Orientem, meaning that the priest would have his back to the people. His concern was not wanting to further divide the people or parishes of the Archdiocese into liturgical camps or allow a priest to define a parish by his own spirituality. He felt he had to be strong in this to keep us united as one, holy, Catholic, apostolic church and he was criticized by people and media for it.
In the end, I think I was right to introduce myself simply as Dennis Miller to that group of pastors, in order to make sure we didn’t get lost in divisions and tensions surrounding titles, though I continue to worry that I betrayed priests like Fr. Judge who gave his life serving the New York Fire fighters who lovingly called him “Fr. Mychal”. That’s sometimes the challenge of being a parent or a teacher or a priest. We pray and we listen to the voice of God and we make tough decisions that can be unpopular. And our children scream that it’s not fair or keep asking us to rethink things even after a decision is made. As long as we have made the decision in prayer and humility and not for selfish reasons or even to appease the powerful or most vocal, but because we genuinely think it is the best decision, we have to trust that God will do great things with it.
