Forty years has brought parish priest both foresight and wisdom

Maura Baker

Staff Writer

“I remember one day during Advent many years ago, I was sitting in the church office by myself. It had been a few years since I returned from a Marian pilgrimage but happened to be reminiscing about it,” Father Jeffrey Von Lehmen, pastor, St. Patrick Parish, Taylor Mill, fondly recalled. “There was a stack of mail which I was not anxious to open, usually just more bills — I felt a sense of spiritual emptiness and exhaustion which sometimes come with the pre-Christmas season. On top of the stack of mail was a brown package. I saw a return address from Florida and recognized that it was someone with whom I had been on the Marian pilgrimage. I opened it, and there was a nice note and a DVD movie — ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’” Father Von Lehmen, who is this year celebrating his 40- year jubilee in the priesthood, noted that he felt “a little vulnerable and humble” at the gift.

“Here is someone who could see who I really was and how I felt at the time,” he said, “Like George Bailey, I didn’t set out to be extraordinary. I just kept showing up — one day at a time, one person at a time. And somehow, mysteriously, God uses these small, ordinary choices to touch lives. Pope Benedict said it best speaking about priests: ‘God makes use of us poor men in order to be, through us, present to all men and women.’ That’s the miracle of the priesthood. It’s not about doing great things — it’s about making Christ present in the quiet corners of people’s lives … This particular memory has helped me remember what I need to be as priest. People don’t need you to be impressive. They need you to be real — to be an example. That’s when they see Jesus.”

Father Von Lehmen mentioned that his “favorite” part of his calling is when “through the gift of priesthood, the people I am called to serve can feel and know God’s favor upon their hearts and minds — those freeing and loving graces now accessible in Christ.”

He recalled a memory in the old Good Shepherd convent, with a retired Irish nun, Sister Rita, whom Father Von Lehmen said spiritually adopted him, along with the Mother Superior, Sister Kevin. “Surrounding me at a distance in the back of the chapel where I had Mass and heard confessions from time to time were orphans, prostitutes, the lost, angry, hurt — darkened hearts and misguided minds from intense brokenness,” he said. “I saw there on the table a book or article called: ‘You Ain’t Nothing But A Nobody.’ In this true story, a young boy comes home with good grades for the first time and his mom tears up his report card, saying, ‘You ain’t nothing but a nobody.’ I thought to myself the people surrounding me right now have probably lived this story. I wondered how many people in the world must feel this way in various degrees whether wealthy or poor, educated or uneducated.”

Twenty years later, Father Von Lehmen recalled being “privileged to encounter these very same persons again” at the retirement of Sister Kevin. “They gathered to thank her for her vocation and how they came to know God’s favor and grace upon each of them.”

“That evening, I learned what the favorite part of my vocation is: to participate in Christ’s Priesthood to form others, to bring out their true selves in the image of God in this space called grace,” he said. “In short, to evangelize and form others as God’s favorites is a favorite part of my vocation. And formation here does not mean to be better than others, but to help persons to be better for themselves and others in the Kingdom of God.”

Looking back on these experiences in the past 40 years, Father Von Lehmen said that he has learned “some foresight and much more wisdom.”

“Much of my wisdom has come from being with the youth all these years in the classroom and as a chaplain,” he cited, “together each year we learn how easily and with not much thought people misperceive themselves, their image of God, their image of the Church and their image of different cultures. … How many people, including very intelligent and well-educated people, have misinterpreted reality let alone the Scriptures? And how much has false accusation or gossip contributed to false perceptions? … so, my wisdom I have learned over 40 years is this: we must develop a prayer life to see ourselves and each other through God’s eyes with the help Mother Church.”

“Interestingly,” Father Von Lehmen said, “Forty is a number meaning thresholds. I think I have grown inwardly enough to better cross these thresholds through integration from self-knowledge to self-restraint to self-gift for others. St. Pope John Paul II said in his book, ‘Threshold of Hope’, that the real threshold can be summed up in two words of Jesus: ‘Follow Me.’”