Our People

The Life of a Priest

“It is not good for man to be alone”

By Most Rev. Julian Porteous
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
9/8/2007

A priest ordained thirty or forty years ago would remember what the life of a priest was like and how it has so radically changed to what it is today. I would like to focus particularly on the daily pattern of life of a priest as lived in the presbytery.

Presbytery life forty years ago

A typical presbytery would have a parish priest and one or more curates. There was a live-in housekeeper. Meals were at set times. One would come in for breakfast and the table was set. The housekeeper may even prepare some porridge or a hard boiled egg. Lunch was the main meal of the day and served at a set time, 12.30pm or 1.00pm. In the evenings around six o’clock the housekeeper would again have a table set and a lighter meal served. The priests ate together. The young curate learnt not to be late and risk the ire of the housekeeper! Sunday lunch was more formal; perhaps a roast dinner was the order of the day.

The priests ate in the dining room which had a homely feel. There was a feminine touch in evidence. There was a clean tablecloth. There were flowers in a vase. There were serviettes. The table was nicely set. Butter was in the butter container with its special knife. There was a simple ritual to the meal. Perhaps there was a small bell next to the parish priest to ring when the first course was completed.

Depending on the character of the parish priest there may be particular occasions when other priests would come for lunch. It may have been the friends of the parish priest, or perhaps the local priests after confessions for the high school students in preparation for First Friday.

The quality of the food was generally good. It may have been plain cooking because that is what the housekeeper knew, but the food was healthy and priests enjoyed a balanced diet.

The presence of the housekeeper meant that the door and phone were covered by her. Parishioners who bothered the priests at meal times may get short shrift from a protective housekeeper: “Father cannot be disturbed”.

Daily life was well ordered. There was Mass in the parish church at 6.30am or a little later. One priest was rostered for the nuns. The curate had his particular duties: State school catechetics, visitation, the communion round, the youth group, the altar servers training. Life had a predictable pattern. The parish priest had his set routine. The curate had a round of duties to be carried out.

Presbytery life today

All this may be a little nostalgic and perhaps idealised, but the priest’s life was structured and there was a pattern to presbytery life that provided a real support to the life of the priest.

How times have changed!

In almost all cases today the parish priest lives alone. Only a couple of major parishes have an assistant priest. If there is another priest living in the presbytery, he often has his own quarters, and where priests share the same house the priests lead individual lives.

It is rare these days to find that there is a live-in housekeeper. In many instances now there is a woman who comes in once or twice a week to clean, and perhaps prepare some meals which are then frozen. The house is kept clean, but the feminine touch is not there as much as before, because the woman who cleans does not live on the premises.

Meals are taken haphazardly. Breakfast is taken in the kitchen while the paper is read. Lunch is often now not the main meal, or if it is it is often eaten alone. The evening meal is had at all sorts of different times, according to what is happening. It is usually from the microwave, and again eaten alone in the kitchen, or more likely in front of the television.

The food eaten is often not the most healthy. The priest goes for convenience meals. Mealtimes have become simply functional, and are not social occasions.

A parish priest these days can’t really entertain, unless he has a particular gift for entertaining and loves to cook. The presbytery becomes cold and isolating. The priest slips into a bachelor existence. He does not take as much care of himself as he should. He gets used to being alone.

There is a secretary. She answers the phone and the door during the day. But from 5pm the priest must respond to all contact. There is the tyranny of the phone and door. There is no “first line of defence” so that the priest is protected from being harried by unnecessary intrusions – the key to the hall or that the toilet has no toilet rolls.

The daily routine is no longer as predictable as before. The priest is alone responsible for all the pastoral work of the parish. He may have a pastoral assistant who helps particularly with sacramental programmes (which used to be done in the school by the sisters). There are a band of faithful volunteers who carry out all sorts of key jobs in the parish, but there is no peer with whom to share the work and to discuss the day’s affairs. Only priests really know what it is like to be a priest.

And, there is the burden of administration which just seems to be getting more and more demanding.

Daily Mass is now more often than not at 9am or there abouts. On one morning there is a school Mass. The priest is saying more Masses than in previous times because of funerals, monthly Mass in the nursing home and Nuptial Masses on Saturdays. The pattern of life becomes such that the priest gets up for breakfast and heads over for the Mass and then the day runs on with all sorts of demands. There is little structure or pattern. One causality of this is that prayer goes by the board.

The priest feels harassed and tired. There is too much required of him. His life has become a disordered rush of meeting various demands. He feels frustrated and isolated.

What is happening?

Perhaps this is a little too bleak a picture, and priests do manage better than depicted above, but elements of the above are true of the lives of many priests today.

Has the time come for us to stop and consider what is happening to our lives as priests? Is a certain malaise that is evident among priests due not just to the increasing demands of the work, but the difficulties that priests face today are exacerbated by a lack of pattern and structure to their lives? Has our way of life as priests become debilitating.

I would like to examine the question of what is an appropriate structure for the life of a priest. To do this I want firstly to consider some efforts in the eighth and ninth centuries to provide support for clerical life, and secondly to examine the way St Augustine sought to live his life as a bishop. By stepping back into history we can bring a perspective to our present reality.

An Ordo Canonicus

I would like to consider certain movements among clerics that emerged in the ninth century. It seems that at this time during the Carolingian renewal various efforts were being made to enable clerics to be supported by some degree of common spiritual life [1].

One example of this was a movement for deaneries to meet once a month and there to be included in their meeting a spiritual conference and a time of prayer. Another effort involved confraternities of priests being formed to provide material and spiritual support for clerics. Clearly it was understood that priests needed some form of fraternal support.

In 754 the bishop of Metz, St Chrodegang, drew up a rule for the clergy of his diocese, an ordo canonicus.  As well as providing guidance concerning liturgical life, the main purpose of this rule was to encourage a degree of common life among clerics. They were still to retain their own homes, but there was to be a common refectory. The saintly bishop was inspired by the Rule of St Benedict. He did want to encourage a more complete renunciation of personal property among his priests, but it was not mandatory in the diocese, and simply served as an ideal for his clergy.

Bishop Chrodegang understood that his priests needed the support of a fraternal life and saw the value of priests coming together for a common meal.

A council held at Aachen in 817 produced rule for clerics. It drew on the teaching of the fathers: St Gregory, St Isadore, St Augustine, St Jerome, among others. Clerics, in contrast to the monks, were not required to surrender private property nor live an austere life, but they were to have some degree of common life and live in such a way to be worthy of the sacred mysteries that they celebrated.

Rabanus Maurus, (c.776-856 Abbot of Fulda 822-42; archbishop of Mainz 847) wrote De clericorum institutione [2]. It was a detailed instruction for priests on how to conduct their life and ministry. 

We see in these efforts a concern to offer priests a form of priestly life that supported their native ideals – to be pastoral men.

St Augustine’s way of being bishop

In a homily given by St Augustine to explain to the people the way of life that he sought to live as bishop, he commented on his original purposes in coming to Hippo as bishop: “I, whom you see, by God’s grace, as your bishop – I came as a young man to this city, as many of you know. I was looking for a place to set up a monastery to live with my brethren”[3]. Augustine came to Hippo looking to the possibility of setting up common life.

After his conversion to the Catholic faith Augustine had formed a community life outside Milan among a group of his philosophy companions. The monastic ideals percolated among the Christians of this period. Augustine sought a way of embracing some of the monastic ideals within the context of his own situation as a philosopher. For Augustine personally there was a strong need for fraternal companionship. He needed the stimulation and consolation of living a common life with people of like mind and intellect!

The bishop, Valerius, preached about the needs of the church and the congregation thrust the newly arrived layman, Augustine, into priesthood and then into the episcopate. As Augustine describes in an extraordinarily frank sermon, “I was grabbed. I was made a priest….and from there I became your bishop”[4].

Augustine had established a community life in what has come to be called, the “monastery in the garden”. He invited his friends to join him in a common life – besides his two close companions, Evodius and Alypius, he attracted a number of other men to join him. He referred to himself and his companions as the servi dei.

On being raised up as bishop, Augustine did not want to live alone in his new state. With all the demands upon him as bishop a fraternal environment was of vital importance to him. He found it refreshed his spirit. After the stresses of his role as bishop, the opportunity to be able to gather with the brethren around the meal table was of the utmost importance to him.

He moved from the “monastery” into the bishop’s house. Augustine insisted that his priests live with him in a monastic style of life: with poverty, celibacy and a rule of life. The ideal that he held before him was the description of the life of the early Church as depicted in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 4. The life, while strict, was built around a profound spirit of brotherly love. For Augustine this love was grounded in friendship. He would call a friend, “half of my soul”[5]. Table conversation was not to degenerate into gossip and he had inscribed on the table: “Whoever thinks he is able to nibble at the life of absent friends must know that he is unworthy of this table”[6]

Rule of St Augustine

The Church would inherit the “Rule of St Augustine”. It was initially written to guide a group of consecrated women in Hippo, but wonderfully captures his own spirit, and the desire he had for a form of common life as a cleric.

His Rule captures the spirit of the common life he longed to live: “The main purpose for you having come together is to live harmoniously in your house, intent upon God in oneness of mind and heart”[7].

Augustine was a bishop, with all the demands of the role bearing in upon him. He had a simple desire – to live in fraternal harmony with his brother clerics. And so it was in the bishop’s house in Hippo. It attracted an extraordinary group of men who would later become bishops in their own right across North Africa.

“It is not good for man to be alone”

Chapter 2 of the Book of Genesis tells us that as God settled man in the Garden of Eden, He said, “It is not good for man to be alone[8]”. There is a truth here. A man by himself is not a good thing. A priest by himself is not a good thing.

Given the circumstances of today how can the life of a priest be more effectively supported?

Most priests today will, in fact, be living alone. It is far from ideal, but modern circumstances require it. Positive steps need to be taken to provide a more effective human support for the priest.

St Benedict begins his Rule by describing four types of monks. The first kind, he says, “Cenobites, that is, the monastic, who live under a rule and an Abbot”. He then describes the second kind, “Anchorites, or Hermits”. These monks,”taught by long monastic practice and the help of many brethren”, are ready to live as solitaries.

St Benedict then goes on to speak of “a third and most vile class of monks”. These he calls Sarabaites, and they “have been tried by no rule under the hand of a master” In other words they are completely undisciplined. The final type of monk are the wanderers who “keep going their whole life long from one province to another, staying three or four days at a time in different cells as guests. Always roving and never settled.”[9]

St Benedict identified the danger of monks who are under no rule, no authority and no discipline. He understood that men who wish to devote their lives to God need a fraternal and disciplined life. Living alone is not the ideal for anyone seeking to be consecrated to God.

Celibacy: a call to fraternity

Celibacy is not a call to being alone. It is not intended to place a priest in a life of human isolation. Celibacy is a call to fraternity. It is worth noting that the Lord himself from the very first moments of his public ministry called men to join him as his companions. It was a master/discipleship relationship essentially, but it clearly set up a common fraternal life.

There is an important distinction that can be made between friendship and fraternity. Friends are chosen. Friendship is built on a certain natural chemistry of common background and interest. We have friends in the priesthood, often from our seminary days. This is good and human and healthy.

Fraternity, on the other hand, is not chosen, but rather it is given. It is those priests with whom we live and work. The attraction is not based in human compatibility, but rather is grounded in the brotherhood of the priesthood, and ultimately in the common spiritual brotherhood of the Christian life. We are brothers in the Lord.

Circumstances beyond ourselves give us these fraternal relationships. A priest is assigned to live in the presbytery with us. At the human level this may prove an easy and happy arrangement, or it may prove a challenging situation. Whatever the natural dimensions of the relationship we move to another level when we can simply say, “you are my brother”.

By the very nature of our lives we are called to fraternity with one another. This fraternity becomes, then, the basis and inspiration to the way in which we live as priests.

Presbytery life

Let us return to the question of presbytery life.

The priest needs a good human environment in which to live. A priest needs someone to look after the house. We men on the whole are not good at this.

It is very difficult to have a fulltime live-in housekeeper, but a daily (Monday to Friday) part-time housekeeper is a possibility, indeed a necessity. The priest needs to have a properly cooked meal each day. The presbytery needs proper care and cleaning. The dining room table needs to become the place for meals. There should be flowers on the table, a clean tablecloth, and a butter dish!. Food needs to be bought and the larder stocked.

Meals need to be taken in the dining room and not in the kitchen. A housekeeper could set the table for the evening meal and have something ready to be heated or taken from the fridge.

A priest should be in a position to offer hospitality, at least during the day, and particularly for his fellow priests. A housekeeper would enable this to be possible. The presbytery needs to be a home for the priest.

As well as a part-time housekeeper, each presbytery should have the services of a secretary, Monday to Friday. A secretary can take the pressure off having to answer the door and phone, at least during office hours. The secretary can assume many basic tasks associated with the running of the parish and free the priest to concentrate on his specific pastoral work. This is now largely the case in most parishes, but it is a service that is needed five days a week to provide some relief for the priest.

Thus, each parish needs two key people to support the priest: a housekeeper and a secretary. Each priest can then structure his life in a more human way.

Fraternal life

But more is needed than just these two services.

We need to change our way of thinking: priests need to take the view that fraternal life among the clergy is the norm, and living alone is the exception. While circumstances force many priests to live alone, it should not be accepted as inevitable and the preferred practice.

Fraternal life should be sought. Wherever it is possible priests should live with other priests. This fraternal life should not just be the functional sharing of a house, but a genuine effort to build a brotherly relationship and some degree of common life should be sought.

This common life can be build initially around the table. Meals should be taken together. Priests sharing a house together should give priority to certain if not all daily meals during the week being eaten together.

Presbyteries should once again become places of hospitality. Opportunities will be taken to welcome other priests.

A Common, Regular Life

A further step can be taken. The priests can introduce a simple rule of life. It may include particular times to pray the Divine Office together. It could be a good practice to provide daily Morning Prayer in the Church led by a priest. In doing this the priest is provided with a liturgical setting for the saying of the Office and a simple discipline – he needs to be there to lead the Office! This has the simple effect of setting up a pattern to the day.

Pastoral demands must not so dominate the life of a priest that the he is not be able to have some structure, a rule of life, that brings a degree of humanity and spirituality to his life.

The ideal starting point for this is the cathedral. It can become the model for the diocese. The bishop with his cathedral priests could commit themselves to develop a simple common, regular life. The common life would centre on their fraternal relationships, expressed through “table fellowship”. The regular life is expressed through the developing of a simple rule of life for daily prayer, praying the Morning Prayer of the Office together, for instance.

Priests living a rule of life

St Augustine expressed his struggles and his hopes in these words, “I came to be bishop, and I found it necessary that a bishop should show unwearying kindness to all who called upon him or were passing his way, and if a bishop did not so act he would be called inhuman. But if this custom had been tolerated in a monastery it would have been out of place. And this was why I wished to have with me in this my Episcopal house a community of priests. This then is how we live” [10].

How true is it for all of us as priests. There is no question that the demands on us are great. We need a better way of life than we have at present to enable us to be the priests we desire to be. We cannot just go on in a stoic determination to be good priests, when the circumstances of our life are militating against us. 

It is not easy to surrender our independence. Being alone is attractive in many ways, and at times easier, but we will pay a price for this aloneness. It is not good for man to be alone!

As priests we need each other. We need some form of common, regular life in order to foster the humanity and spirituality we need in order to be the priests we desire to be.

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[1] See Leclercq, Vandenbroucke, Bouyer, A History of Christian Spirituality, Vol. II, The Sprituality of the Middle Ages, pp. 72-75.

[2] See PL 107, 293-420.

[3] Sermon 355,2.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Confessions IV, vi, ii.

[6] See Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, p. 200.

[7] Rule, n. 2.

[8] Gen. 2, 18.

[9]  Rule of St Benedict, Chapter 1. Translated by Rev. Boniface Verheyen, OSB (1949)

[10] Sermon 355