CHRISTMAS BLESSINGS, CHRISTMAS JOY!

                                                            at Christmas 2014

                                                             He became what we are

That we might become what He is.

-- St John Chrysostom

My very dear friends:

 

As I have done annually at Christmas since the start of this century, I send you once again my best wishes and prayers for a happy Christmas and the Lord’s richest blessing in the coming year. I do so with overflowing gratitude for the blessings I have received in the year now ending. Herewith a brief account --

 

In February I flew to London (for 52 hours!) to speak at the Memorial for my dearly loved friend, Emi-Lu (Kinloch) Astor, who died on December 27^th, 2013. From our first meeting at Easter 1948, when she was an 18-year-old London debutante, and I just graduated from Harvard, not yet 20 and about to enter an Anglican theological college (seminary) in England, we were like brother and sister. Our mothers had been classmates at New York’s Brearley School in the early 1920s. The service was held at St. Michael’s Church in Chelsea, where Hugh and Emi-Lu had married in November 1950. Hugh, who died in the late 1990s, kindly invited me to be one of his ushers. In the decades following I enjoyed countless happy visits to their beautiful country house near Reading, and witnessed the birth of their five children.

 

On April 3^rd year I celebrated the 60^th anniversary of my priestly ordination. I did so at the simple weekday Mass which I celebrate five times weekly at 6.30 AM for parishioners at Christ the King Parish, where I have been “in residence” for over 24 years. To my grateful astonishment there were over 80 people present, despite heavy rain and a tornado which touched down only a mile away, rather than the normal congregation of 10-20. In place of a homily I read them an updated version of the Litany of praise, thanksgiving, and repentance which I compiled for my 60^th birthday in 1988. You can find it on pages 322-325 of my autobiography, No Ordinary Fool.

 

On May 14^th I celebrated my 86^th birthday. In June I flew with a priest-friend to northern Germany for visits in Cologne, Osnabrück, and Münster, where I lived from 1965 to 1969, received conditional ordination as a Catholic deacon and priest, served as curate/associate in a German parish, and studied for the German Dr. theol. with (among other teachers) Prof. Joseph Ratzinger, now Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI. We returned to this country from Hamburg aboard the QUEEN MARY II. A highlight of the 9-day passage was the daylong stopover in Southampton. With my companion I went to nearby Winchester (20 minutes by train), where we met, in the splendid medieval Cathedral, the two Astor brothers and an English priest-friend now teaching at Oxord, and enjoyed a wonderful meal, with conversation like intellectual champagne. God willing, I shall repeat this trip and experience with another priest-friend in June of 2015.

From age 12 I have wanted to be a priest: I have never wanted anything else. Every time I served Mass, as a teenager, I thought; ‘One day I’ll stand there. I’ll wear those vestments. I’ll say those words.’ It was wonderful the first time I did that, on April 4^th, 1954. It is, if possible, even more wonderful today.

 

Not all of those 60 years have been happy. That does not happen in any life. Some have been bitterly unhappy. But if you were to ask me, “If you had your life to live over again, knowing in advance the worst that priesthood would throw at you, would you still choose priesthood?” – I would answer without hesitation: “In a heartbeat! I would change just one thing. I would try to be more faithful, and above all more generous.”

 

My joy in priesthood, which causes me to say every day, more times than I could ever tell you, “Lord, you’re so good to me, and I’m so grateful,” is best expressed in what I have written about my celebration of Mass in No Ordinary Fool (p. 305f):

 

The eucharistic prayer is for me, the heart of the Mass. Seldom am I unmoved by the narrative of institution with the words of the Lord himself, “This is my body,” and “This is my blood” I recite the words slowly, with reverence and awe. Those precious moments with him, repeating his words, are quite literally the high point of my day. No man ever longed more ardently for the arms of his beloved that I for that daily encounter with the Lord.

 

I became a priest not to be with people, but to be, in a specially intimate way, with the Lord.  I honor priests who experience this intimacy through pastoral ministry.  I consider them my superiors: better priests, and better human beings. I experience intimacy with the Lord most of all at the altar. Ministering to people can be fulfilling – but also frustrating. Not everyone wants what the priest has to offer.  God always wants us. The worship I offer him at the altar is imperfect. Yet he never spurns it. And, for me, the offering of that worship never palls.  

 

In His love your deeply grateful friend,

 

Jay Hughes