This week, I feel like a city priest. For a week now, I’ve been anointing the dying, and arranging funerals, and burying the dead, every day except Sunday. And the rest of this week offers more of the same.

I’m accustomed to a funeral every three or four weeks, so six funerals in six days is definitely a thing. It gives me a taste of the life of my suburban counterparts, who carry this sort of workload all the time. In my case, I think it’s related to the unusually cold winter conditions.

Confession: it is wreaking havoc on my interior life. I’m spending three or four hours in the car each day, rather than the usual one or two. (Maybe that detail is still unique to the country priest!) Driving, at least, lends itself to praying the psalms and the rosary.

But all my time out of the car is spent ministering to people, and time constraints limit even that. There is little time for meditation before the tabernacle, and no time for spiritual reading. As someone who strives to be a contemplative in the world, I’m feeling very shrivelled right now. But I suspect I shouldn’t dialogue with that. I’m called to be a contemplative in the world, which is distinct from the calm routine of monastic life.

One thing I am very much conscious of: activism is fatal to priestly ministry. I think a priest who does not pray is a fraud. His spiritual reservoir is quickly exhausted, and when he’s running on empty, how can he give to others what he does not have himself?

On the other hand, it is inevitable that duties of ministry will occasionally preclude the usual prayer routine. Right now I feel like one of the disciples, joining the Lord for a spiritual retreat in the wake of the devastating death of John the Baptist. Only to be confronted by a large crowd which moves our Lord to pity, and requires me to roll up my sleeves and get to work.

At this rate, World Youth Day will be a time for me to rest and recharge. Blessed be God!