“For dust you are and to dust you will return.”
— Genesis 3:19, NIV
In contemplation comes wisdom.
And in that wisdom, I think I have found my truth.
As a priest.
As a child of God.
As someone who has walked through this dark night and kept asking where the road was, only to realize that maybe the road had been under my feet longer than I understood.
My heart and my mind are being drawn to the same conclusion:
I am called to care for the souls preparing to depart, and for the souls who have already departed.
That feels comfortable.
It feels right.
It feels like a door opening in a place I did not expect.
And when I think about it, it causes great emotion in me. Not fear. Not dread. Something deeper. Recognition, maybe. A kind of holy ache. A sense that this work has always been near me, even before I had language for it.
Even as a child, I was concerned with death.
Not in a morbid way, though maybe others would have called it that.
I was drawn to it. Curious about it. Aware of it. At one point, I even wanted to be a mortician. I think now that I was already sensing something about care, reverence, passage, and the sacred dignity of the body after life has left it.
Death has never felt like nothing to me.
It has always felt like a threshold.
A veil.
A holy seriousness.
A place where people need tenderness, prayer, and respect.
Even now, I have an automatic short prayer that rises in me when I enter a hospital. I pray for the dead. I pray for those who are dying. I pray for those who have been in accidents and need mercy. I pray for bodies in pain and souls in transition.
It happens almost before I think.
The prayer rises because something in me already knows where to turn.
Maybe that is calling.
Not always thunder.
Sometimes calling is the prayer your soul makes before your mind has time to organize itself.
I love graveyards.
I love caring for them.
I love walking among the stones, paying respect to wonderful souls and to the body’s final resting place. There is peace there for me. Honesty. Humility. Silence without performance.
A graveyard tells the truth.
We are mortal.
We are loved.
We are remembered imperfectly.
We return.
And God is not absent from that returning.
The body matters.
I believe that deeply.
The body is not trash after the soul departs. The body is not an empty shell to be disregarded or handled without reverence. The body is God’s creation too.
Scripture speaks of God knitting us together.
That image matters to me.
We are not mass-produced.
We are formed.
Woven.
Knit.
Held together by mystery, flesh, breath, memory, bone, blood, and divine intention.
The soul is holy.
Yes.
But so is the body.
The hands that touched.
The mouth that laughed.
The feet that walked through this hard world.
The heart that beat through joy and grief.
The eyes that saw beauty.
The body that carried illness, work, pleasure, pain, age, fear, hope, and love.
We should not disregard bodies.
We should not treat them with disrespect.
They are not mistakes.
They are not embarrassments.
They are not unspiritual.
The body is one of God’s actual creations.
And even in death, the body continues to belong to the circle of creation.
From dust to dust.
Literally.
The departed return to the earth. What once lived becomes part of life again. Soil is enriched. Plants rise. Trees grow. Small creatures are fed. The body, in its own quiet way, continues giving.
There is a strange beauty in that.
A humility.
A full-circle mercy.
Life begins again.
Not in a way that erases grief.
Not in a way that makes death easy.
But in a way that reminds me creation is not wasteful.
God wastes nothing.
The body returns.
The soul is commended to mercy.
The earth receives what was formed from it.
And prayer stands at the threshold, saying:
May they rest in peace.
May light and mercy receive them.
May Christ gather what the world could not keep.
Maybe this is the direction I am being led.
Care for the dying.
Care for the dead.
Care for the grieving.
Care for bodies.
Care for souls.
Care for resting places.
Care for the ones forgotten by others but not forgotten by God.
I do not yet know exactly how this ministry will take shape.
I do not know what it will look like practically.
I do not know how it will combine with the Order and the work of my brothers in Christ.
But I can feel the footing returning.
I am beginning to stand again.
Not in the old way.
Not as the priest I imagined myself becoming when this all began.
But perhaps as the priest Christ has been forming through sorrow, silence, and the mantle of the Sorrowful Mother.
Through her, I am finding my way back to Christ.
Through her sorrow, I am learning my own.
Through her steadiness at the Cross, I am learning how to stand near death without running from it.
Through her love for the wounded body of her Son, I am learning again that bodies matter.
Through her silence, I am learning that not every ministry begins with noise.
Some begin at the grave.
Some begin at the bedside.
Some begin in a hospital hallway.
Some begin with a whispered prayer after an accident.
Some begin by tending a forgotten cemetery.
Some begin by remembering the dead when nobody else speaks their names.
Mentally, I am feeling more stable in the regard of my calling and vocation.
That does not mean everything is solved.
It does not mean the dark night is gone.
It does not mean I have no questions.
But something is progressing.
And it is progressing in leaps and bounds.
At the same time, I know each part must be contemplated carefully. I need to make sure Christ and I are on the same page. I need to listen. I need to discern. I need to avoid forcing this into a shape too quickly just because I am excited to finally see something.
But I do see something.
A path.
A ministry.
A holy sorrow.
A place where my heart, my mind, my priesthood, and my love for the Sorrowful Mother meet.
I think I have been trying so hard to build a community that I missed the community already calling to me:
the dying,
the dead,
the grieving,
the forgotten,
the wounded,
the souls at the veil,
the bodies returning to earth,
the names still needing prayer.
Maybe this is where I belong.
At the threshold.
At the grave.
At the bedside.
At the altar.
At the edge of death and mercy.
Not as one who has all the answers.
But as a priest willing to stay.
To pray.
To bless.
To remember.
To commend.
To care.
And maybe that is enough of a beginning.
Maybe this is the door that has been opening all along.