What it’s like to be a priest: reflections from a recently ordained
by Damien Gilroy
In this article, Damien Gilroy, who was ordained in Toronto in the spring of 2022 reflects on his first years as a priest in Australia.
It’s so nice to be asked to contribute something to this blog for friends of the Seminary and to have an opportunity to reflect about the hugeness of the past eighteen months since being ordained in Toronto.
Entrance to the Church in Adelaide
Upon return to Australia from Canada in June 2022 I went directly to work for 4 months within the established community in Melbourne. There, it was helpful to have three Priest colleagues, including our current Lenker. It was great to work in a beautiful church with a full program and an active congregation. Then, in November 2022, came the great event of my Induction into the Church and the beginning of my work as a congregational priest in the community of Adelaide, South Australia. I still feel the glowing emanation of that occasion. It was a moment of grace and blessing that has carried me throughout the first year, especially as its first anniversary was approaching last Fall.
The Chapel of the Community in Adelaide
I suppose that one thing I could say in general about this new work of my life is that it’s very BIG! From the first steps, even the first thoughts and inklings about approaching the Seminary, and even more as I actually made practical moves to attend it, not to mention each hour of those precious days at the Seminary itself - there was a great and growing sense of fullness and profundity, that somehow the depths and dimensions of the cosmos were being plumbed. Now as a working priest this sensation carries on unremittingly. The process of consecrating through the sacraments always has a humbling sense of grandeur, of magnitude and meaning, always molding and extending the heart’s scope just a little further each time.
This came to me in a particular way in the time since my sending, working as the priest in my current community, with my first experience of an unexpected death and the need to take up all the steps involved with preparing the funeral. In the week between the death and the funeral itself there were numerous practical arrangements that needed attention, meetings with family, friends and our grieving community. The part I had not quite anticipated, that exercised the heart in an unexpected way, was a feeling of a closeness in spirit to the deceased. I had not thought that I would feel her closeness and her guidance as we walked through that week together. Then came the bringing of everything and everyone together in the incredibly receptive hour of the funeral; the distilled picture of her life through the eulogy and the words of the service that so aptly farewelled and carried her into the light and loving embrace of the beings of the Spiritual world. Somehow, the funeral encapsulates and celebrates one cosmic breath.
Community Space in Adelaide
In summary, if anyone were to ask, “What’s it like, this new work you are doing as a priest?” The simple reply that resounds out of my whole being is, “It feels big!, it feels very BIG!”
Our author:
Damien Gilroy is a priest in Australia. Before his ordination, he was a Waldorf Class teacher for over 30 years. He and his wife, Meredith, live in Willunga near Adelaide, South Australia.