City Boy
I had just arrived in the parish at Our Lady of the Lake in Mound, Mn. I was ordained two weeks earlier and this was my first assignment as a priest. My second day on the job my pastor Fr. Dudley says “Get on old clothes and your workboots. You’ll be needing them.” I’m thinking, “Why?” I’d soon find out.
A short time later Fr. Dudley and I are in his 63 Cevy heading down a gravel road towards a farmhouse just over the hill. We pull up to the barn. I hear chickens in the coop.
A grizzled guy in bib overalls is there to meet us. “This is Fr. Bob. He’s new to the parish. He’s never really been on a farm before, so I thought you could give him a taste of life in the country.”
The grizzled guy smiles at Fr. Dudley and says, “Oh, we can do that alright.” That made me nervous. What’s he got in mind? “Great” says Fr. Dudley, ‘ll be back in a bit”. As Fr. Duley’s car pulls out of the driveway and up the gravel road, part of me wants to be in that car.
The grizzled guy walks me to the barn. Inside I’m hit with strong animal smells that I’m not used to. Good for the synesis, right? The grizzled guy points to a big pile and throws me a shovel. “Start digging and I’ll be back when its time” He leaves me standing there with shovel in hand.
I’ve never shoveled manure before but if what I was shoveling wasn’t manure it came pretty darn close to smelling like it. Within minutes sweat is rolling off me. Flies are swarming around my head. The more I swat at them the more they pester me. I’ thinking. “If I’m going to sweat. I’d rather be playing tennis.”
A few hours later I hear a car pulling up on the gravel road. It’s Fr. Dudley. Thank God! ‘How it’d go?” “Great!” that was a lie. My t-shirt in now drenched with sweat and my boots are caked with mud. As we’re leaving the grizzled farmer looks at Fr. Dudley and says, “For a city boy he did alright.” That was more than I heard him say all day.
Pope Francis once said that if we priests are to be shepherds of souls we need to smell like sheep. When I came home that day, I wasn’t exactly smelling like a sheep. But if the manure on your boots counts, I was smelling of something pretty darn close to it.
In Luke 10 the Gospel passage for today Jesus sends his disciples out on a mission. As his modern-day disciples we’re also sent out on a mission. If we respond to the call, it could take us anywhere.
We might find ourselves in situations where we have no experience, where we feel badly out of place and are doing things that don’t seem all that important. Like I felt that day shoveling out a barn with flies swarming around my head. But with time we come to realize that we’re not in charge. it’s God who is.
What seemingly unimportant work does your life have you doing these days? You know what I’m talking about, the thing you do that seems repetitive or even pointless. Think about it. If done with love, it becomes a noble work.
It’s a work that’s part of the mission we’re sent out on. It’s the great commission -proclaiming the Kingdom of God at hand. It can happen even in work that is sometimes as messy as cleaning the manure off our boots.