“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
— Psalm 34:18, NIV
I am beginning to believe that my calling is with the souls of the departed and the wounded.
Not necessarily with building a big visible community.
Not necessarily with forcing a congregation into existence.
Not necessarily with creating the thing I thought ministry was supposed to look like.
Maybe God does not want me to create community in the way I imagined. Maybe if community happens along the way, then fine. Maybe if people come, they come. Maybe if a small circle forms, that will be grace.
But maybe the work itself is quieter than that.
Maybe the work is prayer.
Maybe the work is the dead.
Maybe the work is the wounded.
Maybe the work is the ones left alone.
The ones dying alone.
The ones no one thinks to bless.
The ones whose names are fading from memory.
The ones who were hurt by the Church and still somehow long for God.
The ones who pass through this world unseen and then leave it without enough love gathered around them.
Lately, I have been feeling such sorrow.
Not dramatic sorrow.
Deep sorrow.
The kind that sits in the chest and makes you look at the world differently.
People being left alone breaks my heart.
People dying alone breaks my heart.
The wounded walking around like they are fine because nobody has time to notice them breaks my heart.
The dead being forgotten breaks my heart.
And maybe that heartbreak is not just pain.
Maybe it is direction.
Maybe sorrow is showing me where the ministry is.
The solitude I have been trying to create for myself is changing me. It gives me space to really see. To see the wounded. To see death. To see how much loneliness there is under the surface of ordinary life.
The more I work with the Sorrowful Mother, the more I feel her guiding me away from what I have been trying to force.
Not away from priesthood.
Not away from Christ.
Not away from ministry.
Away from forcing.
Away from trying to make ministry become something visible just so I do not feel like a failure.
Too late on that one, maybe.
I already know what failure feels like.
But maybe what I have been calling failure is not the whole truth.
Maybe it has taken this long because I was looking for the wrong shape.
It is amazing how long it can take to find the ministry you are actually called to.
Not the ministry that looks impressive.
Not the ministry that makes sense to other people.
Not the ministry that photographs well.
The real one.
The one that keeps returning no matter how many times you try to look somewhere else.
For me, it may be this:
Care for the departed.
Care for the wounded.
Prayer for souls.
Eucharist for those who are gone, those who grieve, those who are spiritually homeless, those who still ache for mercy.
Working quietly.
Talking to people as they come.
Not forcing that either.
Letting the work be what it is.
I still wish I had money to build what I see in my heart.
A chapel.
A place of prayer.
A place where the dead are remembered.
A place where the wounded can sit without being fixed too quickly.
A place where the Sorrowful Mother stands near the altar.
A place where queer people and grieving people and spiritually exiled people know they are safe.
But I do not have that money.
Not right now.
Maybe I never will.
And maybe, as much as that hurts, I am supposed to begin by myself.
Not because I am unwanted.
Not because I am being punished.
Not because my ministry is less real.
But because solitude may be part of the formation.
The Sorrowful Mother knows solitude.
She knows what it is to stand near death when everyone else has scattered.
She knows the holy work of staying.
Maybe she is teaching me that.
Stay.
Pray.
Remember.
Bless.
Do not force the crowd.
Do not despise the hidden altar.
Do not miss the ministry because it does not look like the one you thought you failed to build.
My understanding of love is changing too.
Romantic love is not something I feel anymore in the way people talk about it. Maybe I never really did. I have had relationships. I have had live-in boyfriends. I have been with people.
But I do not know that I have ever been in love like that.
And maybe that is another grief.
Or maybe it is simply another truth.
I do have love.
I love nature.
I love animals.
I love the wounded.
I love the dead.
I love most people, though some people I would very much like to place gently on an island and leave there for a while.
But the love I feel most strongly right now is not romantic.
It is care.
Care for the soul.
Care for the passing.
Care for the ones after death.
Care for those still carrying wounds.
Care for those whom the world forgets.
Care for those who need prayer when nobody else knows what to do.
Maybe that is love too.
Maybe it is a deeper love than the kind I kept thinking I was supposed to want.
I feel the love of the Lord.
I do.
But something in me still blocks it from flowing fully.
It is like the love comes near, but the cycle does not complete. It does not yet flow in and through and out of me the way I long for it to. Something catches. Something tightens. Something in me still braces.
Maybe I am scared to let go fully.
Maybe it is the era I grew up in.
Maybe it is the wounds from being gay in a world and a Church that taught me to protect myself.
Maybe it is being jaded by parts of the gay community.
Maybe it is being furious with mainstream Christians.
Maybe it is watching the Lord be defamed over and over again.
Made to look like a cruel Father.
A hateful Father.
A God who excludes, condemns, withholds, and punishes.
That is not the Christ I know.
That is not the Jesus who moved toward the wounded.
That is not the Jesus who broke bread with the unwanted.
That is not the Jesus whose Mother stood beside the dying.
But human beings have taken the Word, the prophets, the inner rooms of holy tradition, and decided who gets what.
They have removed, edited, argued, canonized, excluded, interpreted, controlled, and weaponized.
They have said some books count and others do not.
They have said some people may come to the table and others must stay away.
They have said some bodies are blessed and others are disordered.
They have taken the love, light, and beauty of Christ and locked it up behind systems of power.
Men deciding who gets grace.
Men deciding who gets sacrament.
Men deciding who gets mercy.
Men deciding who gets to belong.
Churches withholding the sacrament because someone is gay.
Or divorced.
Or in some state of sin as defined by the institution.
Churches reducing the Mother of God to a name, or removing her from the living heart of prayer.
Churches turning Scripture into a weapon.
Churches turning Christ into a means of control.
And I worry about these things.
I take them on.
I carry them until they become heavy in my body.
And maybe that is part of what the Sorrowful Mother is trying to teach me:
These things matter.
But they are not all mine to carry.
I can grieve them.
I can name them.
I can stand against them.
I can create a different kind of space.
I can refuse to use Christ as a weapon.
I can offer prayer for the dead and shelter for the wounded.
But I cannot carry the entire broken Church in my chest.
I cannot carry every wounded soul by force.
I cannot fix every corruption, every cruelty, every theological theft, every lie told in Jesus’ name.
I am not Christ.
I am His priest.
That is enough.
Or it has to become enough.
Maybe my work is not to build the whole house.
Maybe my work is to keep one candle lit.
Maybe my work is not to gather a crowd.
Maybe my work is to pray where no one else is praying.
Maybe my work is not to prove myself successful.
Maybe my work is to remain faithful to the dead, the wounded, the forgotten, and the Sorrowful Mother’s quiet instruction.
Maybe the ministry is already forming.
Not loudly.
Not publicly.
Not with a building or money or a full calendar.
But in the ache.
In the sorrow.
In the prayer.
In the names of the departed.
In the Eucharist I may offer.
In the soul-care that happens one person at a time.
In the hidden altar.
In the willingness to stop forcing what God is not asking me to force.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
— Matthew 5:4, NIV
Maybe mourning is not only sadness.
Maybe mourning is also a calling.
Maybe some priests are called to joy.
Some to teaching.
Some to prophecy.
Some to administration.
Some to community building.
Some to sacramental presence.
And maybe some of us are called to sorrow.
Not despair.
Sorrow.
Holy sorrow.
The kind that refuses to let the dead be forgotten.
The kind that sees the wounded before they speak.
The kind that stands near the Cross because someone has to stay.
The kind that prays when there is nothing left to fix.
The kind that says:
May they rest in peace.
May they be received by mercy.
May Christ remember what the world forgot.
May the wounded be gathered.
May the lonely not be alone at the end.
May the Sorrowful Mother stand near every soul who has no one.
Maybe that is where I belong.
Beside her.
Near the veil.
At the edge of death and mercy.
At the altar of grief.
Not forcing a ministry into existence so I can stop feeling like a failure.
But receiving the ministry that has been trying to reveal itself all along.
Care for the departed.
Care for the wounded.
Prayer for souls.
Eucharist for the forgotten.
A hidden priesthood under the mantle of the Sorrowful Mother.
I do not have it all figured out.
I still feel blocked.
I still feel fear.
I still feel the ache of wanting love to move through me more freely.
But I think I am beginning to understand.
Maybe the door is not opening into the ministry I imagined.
Maybe it is opening into the ministry I was made for.
And maybe, at last, I am learning to stop pushing on the wrong door long enough to hear the one Christ is actually opening.