Good morning.
Well, I hope this, uh, this camera is on.
I am Fr. John Muir. And I’m a priest.
And you’re in my kitchen.
The other priests are still sleeping.
We’re getting an early start today. We’ve got a lot going on.
It’s a pretty packed day. And um. We’re going to be doing this together.
First thing I usually do is, um, check the fridge and then see if there is anything that I could eat.
But then I always think: If I eat that and then I run, is that gonna work?
I had a piece of this last night at like midnight. It's a giant meatloaf
Um really into, uh, Simply Orange orange juice.
Although I’m not sure why- this one has pineapple in it.
I’m not sure how it’s simply orange if it has pineapple.
This is the run.
I just love breathing this air and getting the blood flowing.
Played a ton of soccer and baseball growing up.
In college I played some baseball.
I even ran some cross country in college. You’d never know by my form.
Yeah. I don’t know if you Google "health and fitness" if, uh, you’re going to get
the Catholic priesthood anywhere in the top hundred hits. Ha.
Which is a shame. Which is a shame.
You know I’m 34 now. I wanna be a priest when I’m 94. So...
which makes me think I better- I better pick it up a little bit if I’m going to make it to 94
We’re back in the rectory.
The run was a major success. No pulled muscles or other injuries.
Fr. Clements is up and about.
I’m rocking the eggs and toast.
But actually, the big thing I love to do for breakfast is make toast.
And then I dunk it in my coffee. Like this.
It softens up the toast, and it gives you just enough coffee to taste.
I learned this when I was a kid.
Yikes. It’s burning. Burning the eggs.
We pray, uh, morning prayer together and well that’s actually one of my favorite parts of the morning.
We’ve got this beautiful image of the face of our Lord.
The Veil of Manoppello it’s called. We dedicated a whole year at the university where we work
to- to the face of Jesus, the face of God. And we love to say morning prayer in front of that.
And give your strength to your servant and save your handmaid’s son show me a sign
of your favor that my foes may see to their shame that you console me and give me your help
So we’ve, uh, had a nice little morning. Had a good run.
Fr. Clements and I prayed our morning prayer together. Had a nice breakfast. A couple of laughs.
And, umm, now, uh, I’m, uh, in my - in my sin fighting suit and off to the, uh, university where I work.
On my way to work I like to listen to uh music to kinda get me fired up.
Kinda get me in the mood for my life as a priest. And what I really like to listen to is
the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart chanting a requiem mass in B minor.
(dance music playing)
Actually I like to listen to all sorts of things. I’ve been on a David Crowder Band kick lately.
Um, I’m super into this Jars of Clay song called “Jealous Kind”.
It just kinda gets me going about the Lord’s love and how intense God’s love is and that’s
kinda what my whole day is about so I’m gonna get that going.
This is the Newman Center. This is my office.
This is a football.
Probably the first thing that people notice about my office is that
I have a huge digital mixer and a little keyboard. Uh, we do podcasting. Um, do some music stuff.
I figured God wanted me to be a priest, uh He wanted me to be a priest.
And so I’ve tried to keep those things going. Some times it does surprise people when they find out
“You like things besides super religious things.”
Uh, yeah. I- I love to throw down a hip-hop beat over an acoustic guitar riff like the next guy.
And uh, that didn’t go away when I became a priest.
Headed into our beautiful, old church here. Gonna do my holy hour.
Sixty minutes in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. It’s just a great way to start your day.
It’s always the way that God sorta charges my day. It really gets me started so
so we’ll head in there now. I don’t know if anybody else will be in there.
Well, that was a good holy hour.
Prayed, uh, John Chapter 4 when Jesus heals the official’s son.
Beautiful, beautiful story.
Um next thing is we’re going to head on to campus.
Just get to meet some students and uh talk to them and do a little evangelization.
So that’s where we’re heading now.
Nice to meet you.
(Student): It was nice to meet you too.
Thanks, Myriel.
We can keep in touch. We can send you our newsletter.
It’s got a lot of our student activities if you want to get involved with any. I’d be happy to give it to you.
I realize that I’m probably, as a priest, one of the most visible religious figures around campus.
So I probably get a lot of looks, but um I probably give a lot of looks too.
You see all sorts of different groups on campus. In fact there’s one over here that’s
kinda catching my eye.
(Protester): This guy has been a hate-monger on campus for weeks now.
I’m just here to express my distaste for it.
(Student): So how do you feel about everything that’s going on here?
(Fr. Muir): He’s just basically saying that sort of like: where did all of creation come from?
Like the big bang stuff, like is there a cause behind it? And I think the other guy
h-he- he’s concerned that the other gentleman represents kinda like, kinda of an extremist
position that like if you’re, that like, like saying certain groups are going to hell, like
if you’re this or if you’re that you’re gonna go to hell.
I don’t know it doesn’t sound like they’re having the most constructive conver- constructive conversation.
(Student): Yeah I’ve seen these groups out here a lot so I was just wondering, like
your take on it?
(Fr. Muir) I mean the basic Christian take is that all things came from God
and that God is love. And so there is no conflict between like the truth of everything.
It has been great doing this campus evangelization. Time always flies out here. Oooh. Goodness.
We’re in the sacristy in the church. This is Fr. Parks.
(Fr. Parks): Hello (Fr. Muir): Brother priest ordained a couple of years after me.
You’ve been a priest for how long?
(Fr. Parks): Uh, just under 2 years.
(Fr. Muir): 2 years. Under 2 years. And um we’re saying mass together.
Behold the handmaid of the Lord
(Congregation): Be it done to me according to thy word.
(Fr. Muir): Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou among women…
He’s a law-giver. He’s the same God that we see, um, who speaks to Moses and says….
We pray for an increase in vocations to the priesthood and to religious life.
Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received
the wine we offer you fruit of the vine…
Behold the Lamb of God. Behold Him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those
called to the supper of the Lamb.
Well here we are. It’s lunch time. Mass went really well. And it’s been a good day.
Good interaction on campus. Uh. Yeah and then Fr. Parks, you were the unexpected visitor at mass
It was great having you. It’s good saying mass with a brother priest.
Here’s my fortune: Do not dwell on differences with a loved one. Try compromise.
(Fr. Parks): oooh. Nice.
You will have full contentment by summer’s end.
(Fr. Muir): Mmmm.
So far so good. We had a good morning on campus doing some evangelization.
We were a little late for mass and we had g-good Chinese food. And uh, I bid Fr. Parks farewell.
He’s off to do some different things. So, uh, off we go downtown to do some chancery work and to
and to see the li- the life of the diocese on that, uh, administrative level so that hopefully
will be, uh, interesting for you.
Yeah you know it’s funny when I’m just sorta in these moments between
umm, between things to do between appointments
I’ll be- just be driving in my car like I am right now and just kinda think to myself:
I’m a priest. What am I doing? What am I doing as a priest?
You know the funny thing is that uh when God called me to be a priest it all just sorta fell- fell into place.
He called me to be a priest when I was 19 and that was when I was pretty sure he was calling me to be a priest out of the blue.
But when I 22 um that’s when God called me to go to the seminary.
I picked up the phone. I called my mom.
And I said: Mom, God’s calling me to go to the seminary. I’m going.
And she said- she was totally unsurprised. And she’s like:
Okay, honey. What do you need from us?
Do you need a plane ticket? What do you need? Nothing? Okay. That’s great.
Bye. Love you.
My friends were like: Wait a minute. Explain one more time what you’re doing.
Explain this one more time. Cause I didn’t have any friends who had- had become priests
I had no idea where a priest came from. I thought I was kinda like this alien.
But act-actually after I entered the seminary like six of my best buddies from my youth group
entered the seminary and now almost every single one of them is priest.
And we just had lunch with one of them.
I’m asked a lot, actually, if I get lonely.
Uh, I think people are - people see priest as the celibate man and they just wonder
how- how - how can you live? Do you get lonely? Umm, almost like this image of a priest that we
just kinda go home to like this dark empty house and sorta sit around and stare at the wall.
I think the closest maybe I get to really feeling lonely is when I get- when I get so busy or
my brother priest get so busy that we just don’t have time to kinda connect with each other.
Um. And uh That’s uh- those are probably the times I feel the most lonely.
Yeah, at times, young men will come up to me teenagers, guys I meet in the high schools
or in the university. They’ll come up to me and say:
"You know Father, I’m thinking about being a priest" and I can just see the concern and almost the fear in their eyes
and um we’ll kinda have a conversation about it and sometime sooner or later behind that fear
is this concern that "I won’t be happy I won’t be joyful. I think maybe God’ calling me to be a priest"
"but I just, I-I I just don’t think that’s gonna make me happy or joyful." And uh, I just
laugh because I know from experience how incredible the priesthood is, what a gift it is, what a gift the life is.
Fort Knox does not have security like the Catholic Church has. Retinal scan!
Just kidding, there is no retinal scan.
That’s me. I have my own name tag. This is my office!
I guess I could just kinda jump right in. I’ll check some voicemails right here actually.
No- No you can’t baptize your llama.
The priest showed up 5 minutes late to mass today…
It’s Justin Bieber!
Work down here is probably a little bit more organizational a little more administrative.
Here, instead of focusing on just like one little parish, here we’re kinda focusing
on the whole diocese. The hundreds and thousand of catholics that we serve.
How do we serve them? How do we teach them? How do we help them grow in their relationship with God?
I’m actually disappointed right now because um the meetings downtown went so long that
I wasn’t able to make it to the abortion clinic to, uh, pray with all of the uh the
young people out there. Awesome news though. One of them just texted me and said that
while they were out there praying a young woman was coming up to the abortion clinic and, umm
just kind of stopped there, talked- didn’t talk to them but just looked at them and then
just kinda quietly turned around and walked away. So praise God for that.
A life may have been saved today. So uh, yeah I just wish I could have been there.
You know it’s - priest get pulled in so many directions, umm, and uh, you just can’t be everywhere at once.
And you know those meetings were uh were going long and I just thought that’s where God needed me to be.
Guys, let me say a word to young men. Especially those who-who think they might- might be called
to the priesthood or think about the priesthood: Come get in the battle. We, uh, we need priest.
The Church needs priests. And priests are real men. They’re real men that God calls.
Jesus Christ say that the harvest is abundant but the labors are few.
So man up, get off the couch, and come and be a priest.
So here we are at my favorite coffee shop. It’s a great opportunity to take a break
in between the daytime stuff and night time stuff back at the university.
Uh yes. I came here to do reading and I forgot all of my books back at the rectory. Umm, But that’s why
thank God for eKindle. Because I can read books on my magical little box here.
Well, here we are in the sacristy in the basement of this old church in the university.
Fr. Clements is already up there starting Eucharist Adoration. He’s going to lead it.
He’s going to expose our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. I’ll be in the back hearing confessions.
And uh, hopefully we get a good turn out from the college students. So it should be a beautiful night of prayer.
You know, if there’s ever a moment in my day when I just feel kinda overwhelmed with
this happiness and joy, umm, it’s-it’s right now. Just the privilege of being able
to see, uh, all of those people all like under the age of 23 going to confession
adoring the Lord in the Eucharist and having quiet time before Almighty God. Uh, a lot of faces
that I’ve never seen before. Faces that I recognize and I know what they’ve been
through and all the trouble they’ve been through. That’s - that’s- that’s it
right there you know. It’s just like my shepherds heart is just going thump thump
thump thump thump thump.
Whoa.
I have unbelievably good skateboarding skills. Yes!
Longboard in hand. We finally made it here to uh to the restaurant. tonight’s really
just about socializing and, uh, getting to meet new people and hearing how people’s lives are.
And I was like: "colon slash mark"
After this we basically close the day by getting together at the rectory and
say night prayer with the other priest and then hit the hay..
It’s been good hanging out. I hope you enjoyed the day. Seeing what my life is like, the
life of a least this one priest. We’re gonna go mingle right now and close the day.
But It's been really good hanging out with you.