The Religious Sense at Work is a weekly limited series that explores the way our communal reading of The Religious Sense informs and illuminates our experience of work.

I am a diocesan priest, ordained a little over three years. My first couple years of priesthood were spent obtaining an extra degree that my bishop asked me to have for service in the diocese. After obtaining it in June 2023, I was excited to receive my first assignment back in the diocese and threw myself into that parish community, which needed a lot of affection. They generously received me and responded and I saw the Lord doing a lot there so I expected to be there for the duration of a regular parochial vicar assignment (around three years). I was very surprised to receive a call this past May that I was receiving a new assignment from my bishop, asking me to move parishes after only 11 months at my previous assignment.

The unexpectedness of this move, when it was communicated to me about a month before it would take effect, provoked a lot of questions — along with sadness and angst — in me as I wrestled with it over the next weeks: What does the remainder of my time here mean? How can I live this time fully, without allowing myself to check out or be swallowed up in the grief of what I am losing here? How can I look forward to investing in my future assignment given this experience of sudden change?

I went for a walk the day following that call and a grace appeared. As I was walking, a student from the parish’s school leaned out the window of his father’s truck to say hi. It was my day off and I was walking in plain clothes, but the student recognized me and called me by name, which really stirred me. I perceived within his simple wishing me a nice weekend that there was Another accompanying me, and that event, which happened outside of my plans and self-pity in the moment, set me on a new trajectory.

That simple experience has saved me from falling into the nothingness of paralyzing sadness, self-pity, and checked-out inertia during this time of yet another transition. It reminded me of the work we’ve done in School of Community, specifically in chapter 4 of The Religious Sense. Giussani says, “The more one is involved with life, the more one also, even within a single experience, one comes to know the very factors of life itself” (RS, 37). The call of that student, unexpected and surprising, shook me to engage with the whole reality of the moment I was living.

In doing so, I discovered this time was a grace, a verification of Christ’s proposal that all of reality is a sign of the Father unfolding before us: my life comes to me from Another. This is the moment of obedience that I have been called to live in an intense, involved way. I had a new capacity to embrace everything that the following weeks contained – sadness and excited expectation, change and loss. I could embrace everything because ultimately, the fulfillment of my humanity does not come from my maneuverings or depend on my circumstances. It comes to me, or rather, is given to me, by Another who is Father.

That experience freed me to look for Christ to appear in a new way. In the sadness, I discovered an expectation that something would appear for me. This was another verification of the work on the School of Community that has helped sustain me: “Has anyone ever promised us anything? Then why should we expect anything?” Fr Giussani writes, quoting the writer Cesare Pavese. “Expectation is the very structure of our nature, it is the essence of the soul. It is not something calculated: it is given. For . . . structurally life is promise” (RS, 55).

The promise of the face of Christ did appear in those circumstances, in the faces and humanity of the parishioners and schoolchildren saying goodbye and making known the impact my priesthood had on them. The parish had a reception for the last weekend I was with them; it was planned for an inconvenient time, and given that I had been there so briefly, I wasn’t expecting many people to come. Instead, there were hundreds of people who showed up. It was overwhelming and extremely humbling. I greeted parishioners in a receiving line for close to two hours and was conscious of involving myself in everything about the evening.

I saw that there was more in those eyes than the individuals themselves: there was a difference in them, there was Another there. From the school parents and kids wishing me well with homemade marker cards, to the old lady, whom I never really spoke to, crying on my shoulder saying she’ll miss my priesthood here, to the man who sent me a card after the fact saying he came back to the parish after 40 years because he sensed something different when I was there.

I saw the difference of Christ in so many that night, and so my hope was sustained in the face of the sadness of the move; I found myself looking upon the time of transition not with dread but with a new intensity, capable and excited not to shy away from or reduce the questions provoked by my involvement with these experiences. It could be lived differently. I noticed a peace – an interior quiet – that was able to emerge, different from resignation; this was something positive, not a lack. It is the peace that comes from not reducing things to my measure, as we discussed in the Fraternity Exercises this spring. It comes from being open to reality in all of its factors, as it appears before me. Welcoming the moment as it is in itself, rather than how I’d choose it to be, provides a depth to the experience of transition that I hadn’t experienced before; it could not be calculated, only acknowledged as something given, a grace. I can fully say “yes” to follow, to obey, and embrace this move in all of its dimensions, looking forward to how He who is Life will appear on this road.

As I have settled into the new parish, there have been days when I have been tempted to fall away from following, from living this way. But my interactions with the parishioners here, the way they have generously welcomed me, as well as the rectory life with my fellow priests here, have all been able to break through those moments. These interactions have begun a new sense of belonging with this community, and that belonging is a sign of the Father, which has provided me with all the last couple months have brought. This new belonging is really a continuation – another branch from the main vine of the ultimate belonging, albeit passing through new faces. As a sign of this Love that generates me, these new interactions have sustained me to continue trying to live the real intensely.

Fr. James, Loves Park, IL