I've been thinking a lot about my decision lately. One thing you learn by going through a discernment process like this, is that every priest leaves something behind so he can become a priest. Maybe a good career, or a romance. Every priest has a past, something that is in his heart that only he knows about. And maybe at night when he's by himself he thinks about it, he goes back to the time in his life before his name started with "Father." It's the part of himself that he has to let go of because now his life is the mission. Now he's out there for everyone else. He's the servant.
My parents used to tell me all the time that I can't save the world. It's true, but I definitely still have this hero complex. Not that I think I am one, but I want to be one. Like Jack Bauer from 24 for instance. There are several parallels between the life of Jack and the life of a Catholic priest. As a Catholic priest, you're on call 24 hours a day. Jack Bauer's personal life has always been difficult because of the enormity of his duties. He has to give so much of himself to his mission that there is really very little left over for anyone else, for his daughter or for his love interests. He is forced into extreme situations that constantly tempt him to compromise his principles, to take an easy way out, but by using his guts and his brains he somehow manages to do the right the thing, at least most of the time. Kiefer Sutherland, the actor who portrays Jack, said in a Rolling Stone interview that people identify with a man who is trapped and succeeds in one way and fails in another. All this also describes in one way or another the life of a Catholic priest. Priests are constantly faced with situations that invite them to compromise the Gospel they have been entrusted with. They might have personal lives, but primarily they live for the mission. Celibacy is the clearest parallel here. Sometimes they have to make really difficult decisions, succeeding in one way and failing in another.
And actually, Jack Bauer is just the most recent example. Comic book superheroes too, like Spiderman and Batman, and the Jedi Masters from Star Wars. The image of the tragic hero goes back a ways, into the earliest tales. A man whose calling in life is so all-encompassing that he scarcely has time in his life for anything else. People have been writing fictional stories about heroes like that for ages, heroes who have to sacrifice everything, for the good of their families, their country, the world.
Do you think all of this is a stretch? Sure it is; they are fantastic illustrations of the desire that every man has that is right up there with sexual desire and may even run deeper than that. But unlike the sexual desire, it entices in a different way. It doesn't invite us with its pleasantness, with its pleasure and comfort. It invites us with its difficulties, because deep down in the hearts of men we know that those difficulties ennoble us, that those difficulties serve a higher purpose. We want to give all of ourselves to something. To the people. To the mission.
Jerry Seinfeld actually said that for young men, comic book superheroes aren't fantasies, they're options. It's true. Every man wants to do something stupendously amazing with his life. Every man wants to save the world in one way or another. Every man wants at some deep part of his being to forget about himself, to forget about everything he wants and to focus on what other people want. He wants to live for other people, to do things for them, to catch people by surprise with sacrifice and heroism. And at the end of it, it would be just as well for him to disappear, to blend back into the crowd. He can do without the interviews, without the photo opps, without the noteriety. He just wants to be able to look himself in the mirror at the end of the day knowing that he laid down his life for the people around him.
This is the great thing about men, the part about men that we really hear so little about these days. For every image of a real man in the modern media who really sacrifices himself, we have another twenty who are just hedonistic self-seeking weasels. Men reduced to monkeys who have only one thing on their minds. Sadly a lot of men buy into this and thus never even realize that there's this whole other deep-seated appetite within them, the desire to die to oneself and live for others.
And that's what makes it possible for me to really take the prospect of celibate life seriously. Because every man at some level really understands that being able to live a life entirely in the service of friends, of tribe, of country, requires such a letting-go. But in letting go of that, one gains the opportunity to experience a life of altruism par excellence. You get to really be like Jack Bauer, or Batman, or the Jedi. You get to save lives, spiritual lives. You get to really help people on a daily basis. You get to give up your own conveniences for the good of the people you're serving. I'm convinced that all men want to do this in some way shape or form, but they've forgotten about that. Not that all men necessarily want to be Catholic priests, but they all want to live selflessly, because that's what really fulfills a man. So there's a lot of men out there who are starving, starving for the opportunity to give. They dream about being some superhero, about saving the world, and they never get that the opportunity is right in front of them.
That's why I want to be a priest. I want to wake up every morning, and say, "It's time to save the world. One person, one Mass, one prayer at a time." And just like Jack Bauer, I want to never back down from my principles, no matter how difficult it may seem at times. I want to do whatever it takes to fulfill the mission that comes from Jesus. Because when you get down to it, none of us has time for anything less.
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