VIRIDITAS: SOUL GREENING
I enjoy my calling as a priest. The greatest challenge of this assignment was that there was a school attached to the parish. Initially, I did not realize how much time I would be involved in the school. But I have come to enjoy my interaction with the children. The kids now know me and my associate Father Rex by sight as well as by name. Father Rex and I try to make every attempt to attend all their functions. We enjoy celebrating Mass with them twice a month and really get energized by their feedback as we try to incorporate age-appropriate props to increase their involvement rather than their looking around at the walls. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
I am still in the honeymoon stage as a newly ordained priest. Relatively new to the ministry, I tend to be overzealous. My family and parishioners tell me to take it easy and not to burn out, as I like to get things done. Thus, prayer is very important. Every day I pray my Office of Readings and the Liturgy of the Hours. It is important to have some time during the busy day to build on my relationship with God. If I don’t have a relationship with God, I might stop praying.
It is not enough to say, “I celebrated the Mass, so I don’t have to say my morning prayer.” Or “I went to anoint someone and we prayed.” At those times, you are not actually doing the prayer. Eventually without your knowing, you may lose focus of whose ministry you are doing. It is not my ministry, it is Jesus’ ministry. Thus, I need a relationship with Jesus to do his ministry.
Besides praying the Liturgy of the Hours, I like to pray the rosary. I also like to read. I have a set of different scriptural commentaries, including a subscription to Franciscan homiletics that I depend on in preparing my homilies. Sometimes there is a week where I try and try to put my reflections down and nothing happens, then all of a sudden, something happens and I am able to connect the theology with life experience and make it applicable to others.
Some people may view church with the same consumeristic expectation or approach as when going to a movie or a store to get a product. My role is to help them understand their faith, understand why we do what we do, why we sing, etc. Every single hymn, for example, has a theological point that when read (not only sung), might be picked up on. It is not only in the Word and in the Eucharist that Jesus is encountered, nor only in private prayer, but also through music and most especially, through our interactions with each other. If we open your eyes and keep our ears open, we leave ourselves open to experience Jesus. By reaching out to others, we bring God to them; we do Jesus’ ministry and make God present.
Father Anthony Rapozo is the pastor of his home parish of St. Catherine in Kapaa, Kauai, where he was baptized and went to school. He is three years ordained as a diocesan priest.
