'Just Routine: Nothing Special' - a Priest in a Small Town

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Updated (May 9, 2010)

A more detailed re-write of the letter is now on the Letters to Priests website: "Just Routine, Nothing Special."

(Thanks for letting me share.)

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I forgot to make a copy of my submission to Letters to Priests this evening. I'm not sure how long it takes the Letters to Priests folks to process a submission, and besides: I'd like to get this one available in more than one place.

Here's more-or-less what I wrote, earlier today:

Father James Statz, of the Our Lady of the Angels parish in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, is just an ordinary priest.

Not everything about his years here have been strictly routine. There was the Christmas tree - over a dozen feet of it - that clipped him when it fell during Mass. (Sauk Centre Journal (December 25, 2005) And there was the stroke that could have killed him, but didn't. (Sauk Centre Journal (May 29, 2010) And there's the new Marian garden between the church and the rectory.

But for the most part, Father Statz just goes through the routines: celebrating Mass; hearing confessions; anointing the sick. Standing in for Jesus in a small central Minnesota town.

Which, when you think about it, is a pretty big deal.