A Day in the Life ...
............................ of an Episcopal Vicar


Father Ian Farrell

Father Ian Farrell
is the Episcopal Vicar for Vocation [web]
and the parish priest of St. Joseph's, Longsight. [email]

Monday Morning, up at 6am, breakfast at 6.30am.

7am, prepare the Church for Exposition and Holy Mass, 7.30am pray the Office of Readings and at 8am expose the Blessed Sacrament and together with a few parishioners pray Morning Prayer. Spend an hour before the Blessed Sacrament and then at 9am offer Holy Mass.

After Mass a number of parishioners want a quick word and then at about 10.15am just time to prepare for the 10.30am fortnightly briefing visit of the accountant who helps to manage the parish finances.

At 11am there is time to say Prayer during the Day and spend forty minutes looking at the readings for next Sunday and beginning the process of preparing a sermon.

Then at 12 noon to the primary school for the weekly meeting with the Head Teacher, lunch and a chat with the Children and then, at 1pm, a class with the children preparing for the sacraments of Confession, Confirmation and Holy Communion.

At 2pm there is a home visit to someone preparing for reception into the Catholic Church and a one hour lesson. After this it is straight back to the presbytery for a lesson with another potential convert.

At 4pm there is time to check the post and respond to any 'phone messages and say Evening Prayer.

At 5pm, 6pm and 7pm respectively are appointments for baptism preparation, someone who wants to go to confession and a couple preparing for marriage.

After Night Prayer it is generally bed at 10pm.

Out of all this activity the single most important thing happens between 8am and 9.30am Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and Mass.

When I was a training to be a priest Mother Teresa of Calcutta came to speak to us. We expected a talk on the duty of care for the poorest of the poor - of the need to see Christ in those who are abandoned, the work for which she was world famous. Instead in a gentle pleading voice she said "You must be priests who pray before the Blessed Sacrament. You must spend time adoring Our Lord in the Eucharist. If you do not do that then I and my sisters cannot do our work".

The heart of the Priesthood to which Christ has called me is Christ; Christ who is present in the Blessed Sacrament, who offers Himself to me in Holy Mass. Mother Teresa said she could not do her work if priests failed to pray before the Blessed Sacrament. I don't think she meant that she could no longer care for the poor, but rather that nothing would come of it. That's how I feel as a priest. If I didn't pray before the Blessed Sacrament and offer Holy Mass then I could still do all of the things in my daily timetable. But nothing would come of it.

"If the Lord does not build the house,
In vain do its builders labour.
If the Lord does not watch over the city,
In vain does the watchman keep vigil".

I know popular cultural references are two edged but fictional characters like The Men in Black as played by Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, Like Aragorn and the Rangers in Lord of the Rings, even like Dr. Who, at least in his two most recent incarnations, are pale but non-the-less interesting representations of a perhaps dimly perceived understanding of the Priesthood and the need for it.

We Priests are set apart from many, we perceive reality in a different way from many, we have a task, a mission that seems incomprehensible to many, we work for them, struggle for them, live and die for them, yet many are unaware of our existence. For, to us, God has unveiled the potential beauty of everyone and everything we touch. Fleetingly as we kneel before him in the Eucharist, as we hold him at Mass, we see as he sees. We know what can be. We see beyond the ordinary, the humdrum, the confinement, the convention of a world with its eyes closed. We see the world and the people in it as God sees them. As a priest we try to serve those people as God serves them in Christ.

It is a noble, dignified, exciting, utterly fulfilling vocation. I could not want, or even imagine ever doing, anything else.

Article date: March 2008
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