PRIESTS
PHOTOS COURTESY OF FATHER PADDY GILGER, S.J.
God rushes in
FATHER PADDY Gilger, S.J. receives blessings from fellow Jesuits during his ordination Mass.
BY FATHER PADDY GILGER, S.J.
Father Paddy Gilger, S.J., founding editor of thejesuitpost. org, studies social theor y at The New School for Social Research in New York. An award-winning author, Gilger is the contributing editor for culture at America magazine.
The best thing about being a priest is being 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 accounted 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
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