Two Years a Priest

A Reflection on Desire, Loss, and Becoming

Two years ago today, I was ordained a priest.

I remember the day vividly. I woke up early to iron my alb, then nibbled at an anxious breakfast with some friends at the retreat center where we were staying. We gathered in the chapel to pray before carpooling to the cathedral. Once there, as we were getting vested and ready for Mass, other priests and seminarians came forward with words of encouragement and prayer.

Then the Mass began.

I remember it all as a blur: the solemn beauty of the liturgy, the weight of hands upon my head, the sweet smell of chrism on my hands. Tears running down my face during the Gloria. The sense of being surrounded by love on every side as I lay face-first on the marble floor, the whole Church singing the Litany of Saints, as if all of Heaven and Earth were united in prayer for me.

I stood still as my deacon’s stole was lifted from my shoulders and I was vested, for the first time, with the chasuble as a priest. I stumbled through the words of institution for the first time as I took my place beside the bishop at the altar. At last, I processed out into the cathedral courtyard, where the other new priests and I were greeted with hugs, back-slaps, words of congratulation, and endless requests for blessings.

I felt joy. I felt relief. I had made it.

Nine years of seminary formation had all been leading to that day. Now, people I loved were calling me “Father” for the first time. I could give the blessings I had longed to give. I celebrated the sacraments I had waited so long to perform. I rejoiced with my friends and classmates from seminary and looked forward to joining them at their own first Masses in the weeks ahead.

And yet, as I think back to those first days of my priesthood, the joy was already tinged with something else, something which began to reveal itself more clearly as the afterglow of my ordination faded.

I remember the moment when a dear friend told me that from then on, I would no longer be his brother. I was now his father in Christ. He meant it as a sign of reverence and respect for my priesthood, but it landed heavy in my heart. I could no longer simply be myself, even with my closest friends. Instead, I would be “Father.”

After the joyful chaos of that first weekend, another friend and I retreated to the woods for a few days to decompress. We stayed in a cabin, went hiking, played in the river. At night we lay on the grass, staring at the stars. It felt good to be with him, to just be myself again and not have to perform.

Or… almost. Even there, I was still performing, in the quiet way I’d performed for years. Because beneath our easy camaraderie was a steady, low-grade anxiety I had come to know as intimately as my own heartbeat, driven by the one incessant question: What if he finds out I’m gay?

And I remember another quiet, unsettling question rising within me, one I could barely allow myself to ask, as I celebrated private Masses there with him each morning: Is this… it?

After so many years of formation, so many “dry Masses” practicing the rubrics until they felt like second nature, I expected something… more. I thought it would feel different when I did it for real: to speak the words that made God come down from Heaven, to hold the Body of Christ in my own consecrated hands. Instead, the liturgy felt much the same. Familiar. Beautiful... And strangely flat.

I wrestled with that feeling during those first weeks as a priest. I believed in the Eucharist, I believed in the Mass, and I trusted that the sacrament was real, regardless of what I felt. (If there’s one thing fundamentalist Catholicism teaches you, after all, it’s how to ignore your own feelings.) But why was I feeling this way every time I celebrated Mass, the moment that was supposed to have been the high point of every day, the fons et culmen of my new life as a priest?

At first, I tried to interpret what I was feeling as some kind of purification. And in a sense, it was. I had to trust that the mystery was still real, even if I couldn’t feel it. That my priesthood was real, even with my flaws and failings—and yes, my sexuality.

But as I look back from two years’ distance, I think it was something more. An unspoken desire was stirring deep beneath the surface of my soul. I’d written about it years before, at the end of my first year in seminary, when a classmate I had grown fond of left unexpectedly. I didn’t know how to make sense of the longing and loss I felt when he left. Shouldn’t Jesus be enough for me?

Sweet Eucharist! Far more than I deserve,
yet less, somehow, than heart’s-desire
(or if not less, at last, then other-than)…

Now, that same mysterious longing was rising in my heart, that same insistent voice asking to be heard, coupled with the same confusion and frustration I felt back then. I was finally a priest! Why wasn’t I satisfied?

It turned out that all my studies, all my faith and pious discipline, all my years of formation, even priestly ordination itself, were not enough to drown out that voice. “Many waters cannot quench love,” after all (Song 8:7).

Fast forward through two of the hardest, most soul-stretching years of my life—years filled with grief and beauty, joy and pain—and I find myself in a place I never expected to be.

I am still a priest.

But I’m stepping away from public ministry… maybe for good.

I’m moving across the country, far from my diocese and all that I have known.

I’m coming out.

I’m deconstructing much of what I once held firmly.

I’m searching for something deeper than the theological certainties I was taught.

I’m looking for truth, honesty, integrity, and love that doesn’t demand the denial of who I really am.

This anniversary brings all of that to the surface. The beauty and the pain, the memories and the questions, the grief and the grace.

When I first began this journey of deconstruction, I admit that a part of me wished I had never become a priest. I feared the shame and disappointment that would surely come if I continued down this road.

I don’t feel that anymore, though. I don’t regret becoming a priest. I don’t regret the years I’ve given to the Church. She gave me much in return. She formed me, gave me life, even though she also broke my heart.

But I also don’t regret where I am now. For the first time, I’m listening to the voice I tried to drown out for so long. And I believe that this path I’m beginning to walk, however imperfectly, is one of fidelity. Not to an office or a title, but to the God who called me from the beginning to come and follow Him, and who is calling me still.

Wherever I go, whatever I become, I know I will always be a priest. But I hope that in this next chapter, I can learn how to be myself: to serve without shame, to love without fear, to be known without disguises.

And while today brings up a mix of emotions for me, I hope that one day, this anniversary won’t only remind me of who I was or might have been. I hope it will bear witness to who I’m still becoming—more honest, more merciful, more loving, more free, more alive—and to the goodness of a God who is far greater and kinder than I once imagined.

There’s a traditional greeting we priests offer each other on the anniversary of our ordinations: “Ad multos annos!” It’s a wish for many more years of priestly service.

Today, though, I’d rather mark this anniversary with the words of Dag Hammarskjöld:

“For all that has been, thanks.”

“For all that will be, yes.”

Here’s to the next stage of the journey.