by Father Rafael Perez
I have spent all my nine years of priesthood ministering in gentrified neighborhoods. Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and now Park Slope have been the focus of my parish ministry since my ordination in 2015.
Like many sections of Brooklyn, these neighborhoods are best described as being post-Christian and home to adults from all parts of the United States and even the world. While in some respects there still exists the remnants of what was once a solidly Catholic culture in these neighborhoods, the current culture of these gentrified areas is now heavily colored by the values and tastes of the new arrivals who are commonly described as “nones” (that is, affiliating with no specific organized religion).
To be quite honest, I admit that as a new priest, I was initially very judgmental of “those” people. After all, in many cases they did not even know what a Roman collar was, and what’s more, they did not nod to me and greet me as “father” (Can you imagine? What nerve!).
But I was actually afraid of them. I took in their piercings, tattoos, obscure fashion sense, and aloofness and internalized it as a rejection of me and of what I stood for as a newly ordained “native-born” priest.
Amid the tensions that characterize early priesthood, I soon realized that I would have to make a decision: Would I long for the days of yesteryear when there was an omnipresent Catholic culture and, in doing so, nurse resentments about the state of reality before me, or would I surrender my self-preoccupation and allow the hidden presence of Christ’s kingdom (burgeoning forth just beneath the surface of apparent pretension and high-priced coffee) to catch me off guard and reveal its shoots all around and within me?
Thankfully, I chose the latter, and I gradually learned what I believe all priests must learn over and over again: Jesus must be the one who teaches us how to serve the kingdom. He must form us into “midwives” of the kingdom in the “here and now” wherever and whenever we have been called to serve.
In my assignments, this concretely looks like simple, intentional interactions with people that God brings daily into my path: striking up conversations with the baristas in the manifold coffee shops that surrounded me (which have also fueled many a celebration of the sacraments), smiling and joking with people who live on my block, inquiring about dog breeds on streets and interesting playlists in bookstores, exercising in gyms, and eating in local joints.
And when the doorbell is rung, and the sacraments are sought after, being a plain old human first and foremost to those who many times are as scared of me as I was (initially) of them. In these moments, discovering a common humanity becomes mutually disarming. Openings to share some seeds of the Word emerge in ways that surprise and delight both me and them.
With dwindling numbers of parishioners in many places and an uncertain future looming on the horizon for us all, as a pastor, I daily feel the force of anxiety prodding me to identify the next “best” evangelization program. But whenever I go to this place, I can feel the peace of God’s spirit quickly leave me.
That is because when I am in this place, I focus on appearances and not Christ.
As Mother Teresa was fond of saying, we live in a time when the individual encounter is the primary locus for sharing the good news and where Jesus is waiting for us in ever-new distressing disguises to give himself to us and receive us in others. I never thought I would say this nine years ago, but I am consistently humbled by how God uses the most unlikely of humans and circumstances to reveal his presence and generate a deepening of my humanity and my priesthood.
With a desire that I cannot always understand or put into words, I continue to ask God (inspired by the words of Teilhard de Chardin) to help me become a spiritual being who is more and more willing to have human experiences with my fellows that allow me to discover with them the eternal waiting for us all behind the veil of the temporal.
Father Rafael Perez is the pastor of Holy Family-St. Thomas Aquinas parish in Park Slope.