Our job, in the Parish of Mary, Mother of God, is to be missionary disciples of Jesus in south Bradford. This is the unfolding story of how Mgr Paul Grogan (Parish Priest), Fr Michael Doody (Assistant Priest) and about 500 Mass-goers seek to bring more people into the barque of Peter (while entirely respecting everybody else outside of it). It is a continuation of an earlier blog which narrated Mgr Grogan's work as a University Chaplain.
Mgr Paul Grogan
Friday, 23 March 2012
Priests need hobbies
Every priest, I was told by a wise priest when I was a boy, needs a hobby. Mine, this year, is learning French. (I might try learning a musical instrument next year though, frankly, time is running out). Every Wednesday evening I join six or seven other people at Leeds Metropolitan University and our excellent teacher Mme Kerr lingusitically stretches us, using a mixture of sentence drills, clips from French TV and radio stations, and photocopies from thought-provoking articles. Our group includes a retired teacher, somebody who works for a wine importer, an English professor, somebody who works for an oil company and an architect. Mme Kerr has a way of eliciting stories from us; you feel that you're letting everybody down if you don't try and recount something interesting which has happened during the course of the week. I last felt like this aged about eight. Perhaps the reason I enjoy our classes so much is that they help me to go back to childhood. Certainly, I get the same thrill now as I did then when a new word appears on the whiteboard (blackboards in my time) and I think, "Great, my knowledge is expanding." I sometimes launch excitedly into half-telling a tale and then get lost in sub-clauses and remember that I don't know key words. I did that when I was eight too. As I head away from the Chaplaincy on Wednesday evenings, I generally hear a student call after me, with due irony, "Au revoir, mon pere." I always dress down for the occasion. Once I didn't have time to change and so appeared in my clericals. "So you are a real one!" one of my fellow students exclaimed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment