PRIESTS FATHER PADDY GILGER, S.J. gives a kiss to his goddaughter and niece, Hayden Bauer.
God rushes in by Father Paddy Gilger, S.J.
Father Paddy Gilger, S.J. is a Jesuit priest and assistant pastor at St. John’s Parish at Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, where he teaches philosophy and sociology. He is the editor of and contributor to The Jesuit Post (Orbis Books), a collection of essays by young Jesuits about faith, God, and culture.
The best thing about being a priest is to be there for moments when “hearts are suddenly wide open and the God who has always longed for such an opening rushes in.”
I
HAD SUNG SCORES of Lakota prayer songs in sweat lodges across the Pine Ridge reservation and talked about Jesus in halls packed with people. I had walked down dusty roads at sunset behind schoolchildren and nuns holding black plastic rosaries and said hundreds of Hail Marys. I had listened for hours as faith was shared, sat in dozens of desks in graduate classrooms, read thousands of pages about God. But I had never before performed the last rites—which accounts for my nerves as I stood before the door of a dying woman’s home and raised my hand to knock. When I did, the door opened quickly and her daughter’s welcome was smooth and warm. I sat in my clerical suit at the kitchen table—my green Pastoral Care of
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