Live What You Preach

This sunday, the pastor of our church announced that he would be leaving our parish. His mother is very ill and his duties to the parish were interfering with his duty to her as her son to take care of her. He is leaving for a good reason, but that doesn't make the change any easier.

We have been a part of St Agnes parish since we moved here ten years or so ago. It is not the closest church to us, so technically we should be going to a different one, but we fell in love with the environment, the people...and the pastor. Since Fr. Cullen is not the only priest at our parish, I don't necessarily see him every week, but the lessons he teaches in his homilies are so simple and yet so true and appropriate to my own life that I often feel as if he is talking directly to me. He has a way of reaching people, of making them feel important and loved individually while always reminding us that we are a community and that we are all here to help each other. I have never met a priest who was so down-to-earth and humble who could still communicate to me so effectively on a spiritual level. Unlike the pastor of the Catholic Campus Center I attended in college, Fr. Cullen stays true to the teachings of the church without losing sight of the most important thing: the people.
At many of the other churches where I have attended mass, I've felt as if the rituals were too elaborate and the sermons too metaphorical and out of reach. Fr. Cullen always manages to bring the message behind the scriptures into focus, making it salient for us in our lives now rather than setting it on a pedastal so high no one can see it clearly enough to know how it applies at all. You can tell that he genuinely cares for every person in the parish. He is always thinking of others, acknowledging their efforts and appreciating them for the work they do around the church.

Some priests wear their faith like a badge of honor to be shoved in other's faces. They put it on their chest as a sign of their holiness, but don't ever prove it with their actions. Fr. Cullen lives his faith. He doesn't brag, and he doesn't force it down your throat. He demonstrates what he belives by how he lives, and he shares it with you in common speech, as if you are a long-time friend having a conversation around the dinner table. And, in essence that is what the church is supposed to be about; a group of friends meeting around a dinner table, sharing spiritual food to sustain them through another week.

A church shouldn't be about a priest, so Fr. Cullen's leaving shouldn't change our parish. Still, I can't imagine his replacement equaling Fr. Cullen's impact on my life. He will still be around town, and maybe I'll run into him occasionally. But until then he will be missed.