As I enter the parking lot of St. Helen’s Catholic Church, I notice the Cadillacs and Lincolns dispersed among the horizontal and vertical yellow lines. The early morning sun hits this scene and my attention is focused on the tall limestone church building. St. Helen’s is located on the outskirts of Georgetown, Texas about four blocks east of Southwestern University. The church sits facing southward on a three-acre campus, which includes a rectory, a devotional building, the church offices, and a children’s youth ministry building. The church is surrounded on one side by a nursing home and on the other sides by a large cornfield. There are few trees to obstruct the view from the church’s campus. The lack of tall vegetation allows a feeling of vastness to overcome me as my eyes capture both the infinite farmland and the confederate style president’s home located on the hill at Southwestern University. As I walk toward the tinted glass doors of the sanctuary, the church bell rings 8:30a.m. I am reminded that it has been almost a year since I have ventured into the doors of any church.

Although much time has passed, the Catholic tradition that is embedded within me returns. I dip my right finger into a small jar of holy water that stands directly next to the entrance of the church. With my wet finger I draw the sign of the cross on my forehead and walk to a pew located near the front of the church. The air feels cold as it collides against my damp forehead. When I arrive at the unoccupied bench I place my left hand on the side of the pew and kneel so that my left knee touches the green carpet beneath me. As I kneel I look up to the cross at the front of the church.

Unlike most Catholic Churches, the cross at St. Helen’s is not a crucifix, which means that this cross does not contain the image of the body of Christ. The front of the church is plain with a statue of Mary and the baby Jesus in one corner and a statue of Joseph in the other. After carefully analyzing the front of the church, I cross myself with my right hand in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As I enter the pew, I reach down to lower the cushioned kneeler. Once the kneeler is in place, I set my knees on the cushion. Rather than praying, I look around at the people sitting around me, many of whom are sixty or older. I wonder how it must feel for the couple in front of me to kneel as I examine the couple’s wrinkled skin and gray hair. There are some young mothers that sit with their children among the older churchgoers. I notice that there are no young men in the church. I make the sign of the cross thus ending what should have been my prayers.

Father Brian enters from the back of the church and tells the parishioners to rise and turn to page 154 in the missal. The missal is a booklet that is kept in the pews of every Catholic Church in the world. It contains the contents of every mass said over the course of the year. The congregation says lines that they read aloud from the missal as Father Brian approaches the altar. It is customary for weekday masses to be very simple. Since it is Wednesday morning, mass lasts only thirty minutes. Instead of singing with the choir we recite lines from the missal.

***

I am searching for a priest and I don’t quite know where to find him. I knock on the door of the devotional building where a man, who reminds me of the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, has just entered. I knock several times on the white door of the building and wait for a response. When the man finally opens the door, I say, "I am looking for a priest." "Oh yes, you can do that next door," is the man’s response. I walk to the building next door and notice that the sign in front says "rectory". The rectory is the priest’s home. I see two cars in the garage and figure that someone should be home. I go to the front door of the dull yellow brick home and ring the doorbell. No one comes to answer the door so I again ring the bell. It appears that no one is home. "What am I going to do? I needed to make a meeting with a priest," I think to myself as I stand solemnly in front of the unoccupied home. Beginning to worry, I walk around the other buildings on the church campus. The building next to the rectory has a sign in front of it that says "church office". "Oh," I think to myself, "I will able to make an appointment with a priest here."

I walk into the building, where I am greeted by a woman who wears a microphone headset and sits next to a computer. She is busy talking into the microphone when I walk in, so I sit in a seat next to her desk.

"May I help you?" she asks.

"Yes, I would like to make an appointment with a priest," I say.

"We are kind of short on priests right now but let me see what I can do," she says as she removes her head set and goes into the next room. "Is this for a wedding," she asks when she returns.

"Oh no," I respond, a bit flustered, "I just want to see a priest."

"Well, Father Brain might be able to see you. I’ll tell him you’re here," she says as she again leaves the room.

I sit down in the seat I had occupied previously and wait for the woman to return. Instead of the woman, however, a man dressed in black pants, a black shirt and a white collar enters.

"Hi, I’m father Brian, would you like to come to my office," he says with a big smile.

"Yea, that would be great," I say as I follow him to his office.

Father Brian is not exactly the older priest I had expected to meet. Father Brian is only twenty-seven. He is slender, five feet nine inches tall, has dark brown hair, and a nice smile. Since Father Brian is an attractive man, the first thing I found myself wondering was, why would this man want to be a priest?

"What can I do for you," he says as he points me to a seat.

"I have a rather odd request," I respond hesitantly.

"Excuse me?" Father Brian responds.

I restate in a slightly louder tone: "I said, I have a rather odd request. I would like to interview you for my Journalism class."

I look around at his office and notice that its walls are bare. A few pictures sit on the floor propped against the wall awaiting their final placement. Father Brian has only been at St. Helens for two weeks and was ordained to the Priesthood on Sunday June 15, 2001, only three weeks earlier. Father Brian cheerfully agrees to my request for an interview and tells me that he will be saying mass tomorrow at 8:30a.m.

***

As I walk to the front of the church to receive communion, I remember the meeting that Father Brian and I had the day before. I move forward as the lines of people in front of me slowly makes its way to the steps of the altar, where Father Brian stands. When I am finally stationed in front of Father Brian, with my hands cupped and ready to receive the body of Christ, I look up at him as he holds up a white wafer the size of a quarter.

"The body of Christ, Victoria," Father Brian says softly as he places Jesus’ body in my hands.

***

Father Brian wakes up every morning at around six o’clock. He lives in the rectory with Father Michael, the Senior Priest at St. Helen’s. Both Father Brian and Father Michael have separate wings in the large ranch style home. On the walls of Father Brian’s bed room hang pictures of his family, icons that he received during his ordination, pictures of Mary, and the cross of San Domaniano, which is hangs over his bed. Father Brian’s room is simple and clean. Many priests take the vow of poverty and as a diocesan priest we are not required to, but part of our spirituality is to live in the simplicity of life. We are not to be attached to the things of this world. Directly after Father Brian wakes, he kneels next to his bed and prays the brevary of psalms, just as thousands of other priests will do all over the world. After Father Brian puts on his black slacks, black button up shirt, black leather shoes, white collar, hewashes his face and brushes his teeth, and then he walks one hundred yards across the scorched prairie grass to the church sanctuary. Father Brian enters the church doors and observes Eucharistic adoration for an hour in the dimly lit church. I find that this is essential for my day. It roots my whole day in faith.

Father Brian’s days are never the same. Sometimes he simply does office work while other days he is called to give last rights, attend meetings, or prepare couples for their wedding. It is all God’s work and it can be very spontaneous. It is very exciting. The celebration of Mass is one thing that is constant in Father Brian’s days. I often work up to five o’clock doing different things, and then at night I have even more things. Father Brian usually meets Father Michael in the rectory for dinner, where they pray and eat together. After dinner Father Brian rarely has the evening to himself. He is usually required to attend a prayer or bible meeting. For instance, last night I had a special concerns committee, which was talking about the Hispanic life here at the parish. Father Brian’s days begin early in the morning and end late at night. The more the priest resembles someone who gives his life completely, the more he is going to be the complete priest. That means that the priest is more a priest the more he resembles the martyr. So it is really a lot more than saying mass on Sunday because that is only a small part of it. As father Brian explains his daily routine I wonder when and if he ever has any fun. I like to Run and Fish on my free day, which is on Monday since in can’t be on Sunday. Sometimes I go to the lake and for instance yesterday I spent the day at a friend’s house. I just have to get away because I find that if I stay around here I end up doing work.

***

Brian McMaster went to Texas A&M in order to major in finance after he graduated from high school in San Antonio. When Brian was in high school, although he was always very active in the church, he never thought that he would one day become a priest. Going to Texas A&M was difficult for Brian because all of his friends went to different universities. Since he had no friends, he began to get to know the guys that lived around him. I got involved in a dorm, which was a very rowdy dorm. They were really involved in building the bonfire and a lot of immoral activities such as drinking went with that. I thought if I am going to be cool, I have to associate with these people. So I tried that out and I went to a few parties and drank but I never really got out of control or anything because it really didn’t appeal to me. Attending yell practice before the Texas A&M football games was another extra curricular activity that Brian participated in. One of the traditions at A&M is to go to this yell practice before the games. The tradition is that, at a certain point before the game, they turn of the lights and you practice scoring with your date, because when the team scores, you score too. So you always want to get a date at yell practice so you don’t have to stand there alone. The fist semester my freshman year, I dated a lot and I guess that frustrated me because I couldn’t find a girl who had the same values that I did.

Brian’s first roommate was a member of the Marines who had dropped out of the corpes of cadets because he thought it was "for sissies." Brian and his roommate did not spend too much time together because their interests were so different. You could see the difference in the two men merely by looking into their room. On Brian’s side of the small room was a cross, a picture of Mary, a poster with all two hundred and sixty four popes, the Vatican flag and some small religious statues, while his roommate’s side had pictures of his Marine buddies and recruitment posters. Brian got a new roommate second semester who was Baptist, but by the end of the semester he had converted to Catholicism. Father Brian and this roommate talked a lot about the differences in the two faiths and his roommate discovered that much of what he had heard about the Catholic Church was not true.

"I’m sure it would be hard not to convert after looking at Brian’s posters all semester," I muse to myself as Father Brian and I talk about the convert.

When it was time to select a dorm Chaplain, Brian was the first and only person to be nominated. The guys on his hall had seen all of the religious paraphernalia in his room and figured that he was the best for the job. Father Brian does not talk very enthusiastically about being the dorm Chaplain. I became Chaplain of my dorm, which was really no big deal or responsibility. I tried to do a bible study in the dorm, not really knowing much about how to do bible study. The most memorable event during Father Brian’s term as Chaplin was when two Evangelicals came to his bible study from the Campus Crusade for Christ and started asking him about his faith. Not really knowing much about Evangelicals or the differences that they held from the Catholic Church, we started getting into a lively discussion about being saved, heaven, hell, purgatory, and the Virgin Mary. We were really discovering the differences between the two faiths and they had a lot of biblical ammunition that I could not really reciprocate with. They had a lot of questions that I couldn’t answer. So when they left I was really frustrated and I said, "You know, I never want this to happen again, that I can’t explain my faith." They kind of inspired me to start to study my faith. This is when Brian started going to daily mass, meeting with priests, and studying the catechism. And then I opened my eyes to the fact that God might be calling me to something that is set apart, something that is for his own choosing, something that is for his own work. When the vocation director, a kind of recruitment officer for the diocese, came to College Station, Brian wanted to meet with him, although he was still very unsure of his ability to commit fully to the priesthood. When I was in high school I would have cringed and never would have wanted to go speak to a vocation director. Now I was actually open and I said, "You know, I want to meet with him."

As Brian entered his sophomore year of college, he began to feel even more strongly about becoming a priest. He started telling his friends and family of his plans and even changed his major from finance to philosophy in order to enter seminary with the pre-theology credits that he would need. Although his parents were wary of allowing Brian to change his major from finance to philosophy, Brian assured them that he was serious about his commitment to the priesthood.

During Brian’s junior year he was more committed than ever to his faith when he met a girl who asked him to teach her to pray the rosary. She was beautiful - she still is. She has blonde hair and blue eyes. I wish I had a picture of her I could show you. We started praying the rosary every day and I thought, "I have made a decision to become a priest. I am not going to fall in love with anybody." It was like, what is going on? But you can’t stop your emotions; you can’t stop liking girls because you become a priest. So there was a time that we dated secretly because I had told so many people that I wanted to become a priest. Thanks be to God, she was a wonderful girl and she was very patient and prayed for me and my discernment.

Father Brian finally decided, without a doubt, that he was called to be a priest when he went to Italy. When he was in Assisi walking the very streets that St. Francis had walked generations before, he was annoyed with the modernity of the city. Finally, on the last day of his visit to the town of Assisi, he found the Church of St. Clair, which was isolated from the crowds of tourists. The walls of the church were covered in soot and it was very similar to how it must have looked when St. Frances was inside of it. So I knelt down and said the prayer of St. Francis in front of the cross of St. Domaniano that hung in the church and recognized fully that God wanted me to be a priest. Yes this is what I want to do. So that is why I have the cross of St. Domaniano above my bed.

"How did she accept your decision to become a priest," I asked Father Brian. Well it was one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do in my life. I came back and it still took me two weeks to sit down with her and tell her that I had made that decision. She took it very well. I guess for her it was a moment of truth. She cried a lot but at the same time she didn’t have any anger about it and that was probably because she had been praying so much. I think we both just wanted to find out what God’s will is. So after that, we distanced ourselves from each other, for her sake, but now we are very good friends. I am the Godfather of her second child and it is very good to see her move on. At that point in her life she probably thought, "I am never going to meet anybody like that again." Well, you know I am not that great, but I was worried about that for her. She did meet a nice guy and got married. From that point on I have been celibate. It (dating her) was probably the most difficult time of my life. I felt like I was cheating on Christ.

After graduating from Texas A&M, Father Brian entered seminary and studied graduate level theology at The Pontifical College Josephina in Columbus, Ohio. The pontifical college is especially prestigious because all of the faculty have to be appointed though the pope’s representative in the United States. At the seminary there are not just students from the United States. Student from places such as Uganda, Burma, Latvia, and Communist China also attend the seminary. It is remarkable when you think of the crosses that we as priests go through, since our culture is not receptive to the priesthood. However, it’s nothing when you think about these guys from China. These students were members of the underground church. There are two churches in China: there is the government run church and then there is the underground church, which pledges allegiance to the Pope. If they were to be discovered ministering, they could be killed. They could be martyred. Here you are studying with them, and you see their conviction and the generous way that they want to give. It makes your commitment seem much easier.

Since his ordination last month, Father Brian has quietly started his life as a priest. I found my self, the very first week (at St. Helens), with a woman who tried to commit suicide because she felt that she had lost everything. She is twenty years-old and has two children. She just felt like she was at the end of her strength. I spoke to her for an hour and a half and now she is getting things turned around. I walk into these things and think, "Oh, what could I possible say?" But I do it and afterwards I wonder how I did it. Before when I would think of the things that I might be told in the confessional I would think, "Oh, how would I handle that?" Yet I am able to do it somehow. It is really through Christ that it happens. After Father Brian says this I look out the window of his office across the hot field toward the church. The bell tower rings eleven o’clock.

The decision to write about a priest came to me while I was eating dinner with my boyfriend and my parents. I told my mother about the assignment. She was rather disappointed when I told her that I was sure that I wanted to write about a priest. "Why, that sounds so boring," was my mother’s response. "I don’t know why mom, I just think that it is something I need to do," I replied. Catholicism has been a part of my life that comes in forceful waves. Every once in a while, I have this urge to reanalyze my faith. This time the wave came in the shape of a paper. I went to St. Helen’s to make an appointment with a priest and met Father Brian. I was especially excited about interviewing Father Brian because he is only twenty-seven. In order to see father Brian at work, I attended a weekday mass that he performed. I use my experience at mass to set the scene of the paper. Father Brian and I had two meetings. The first meeting was an hour long. At this meeting we discussed everything from contraception to the ordination of women. I was a bit discouraged with the meeting because I feet that he was only telling me about the church’s stance. At that point, I still didn’t really know Father Brian. At the end of the meeting I gave father Brian a copy of my profile paper from class. I told Father Brian that if he liked, he should read the paper to get a better idea of how I want to write about him. When I came in for our next meeting Father Brian really opened himself to me. He told me about his dorm situation and other personal events in his life. At the end of the meeting Father Brain said, "Wouldn’t you like to know about my love life?" When he said this I was relieved. I had been scared to ask him that question because I did not want Father Brian to be uncomfortable during our interview. When I sat down to write the paper, I sorted through all twenty pages of our transcribed interview and used only the narrative sections. Father Brian told me that whenever you do an interview with the media you know you always have to answer questions about the controversial issues such as celibacy, abortion, contraception, and women ordination. "I bet that gets old," I conjectured. "Yea, it really does," Father Brian responded. So at that point I made a conscious decision to make this paper about something else, hopefully something more.

Sources Consulted

Bozarth-Campbell, Alla. 1978. Woman Priest: a personal odyssey. New York: Paulist Press.

Hastings, Adrian. 1991. Modern Catholicism: Vatican II and After. London: Oxford University Press.

Knight, James W. and Joan C. Callahen. 1989. Preventing Birth: Contemporary

Methods and Related Moral Controversies. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Thomas, Gordon. 1986. Desire and Denial: Celibacy and the Church. Boston: Brown Little.