Of all the people I’ve known and all the places I have been, there’s no place like home. Even as it changes over the years–now almost unrecognizable–it’s still home. And I happily returned home every year. But I’ve also accumulated many homes.
When you embark from somewhere, the place you were sent from intrinsically feels like a home. There’s a from-ness in home and a home-ness in from. When it comes to my priesthood, I’ve been sent from so many places, and I continue to be sent to new places, to new people, to new experiences. A life of love, of ministry, of giving and receiving. A life ever from and ever to.
As a new priest it has been personally important for me to go back to significant places and offer Masses of thanksgiving with key people in my journey. I’ve offered Mass at the Church of Loretto at St. Mary’s College where I often joined for Mass as Seminarian. I’ve offered Mass for Latino student ministries at Notre Dame, a community I ministered to and with. I’ve offered Mass with the Moreau Seminary community, the resident community of Graham Family Hall at the University of Notre Dame, and places I ministered as a deacon: Stonehill College, Holy Cross Church, and Immaculate Conception Church. I’ve offered Mass at my home parish in Ashland, Oregon. I’ve offered Mass at Pearl Harbor, the place I worked as an engineer for six years, as well as my home parish in Aiea, Hawaii, the parish I left to go to Seminary, and my parish in Kailua, Hawaii, where I lived for two formative years. Finally, I made it to my beloved Alma Mater, University of Portland.
I’ve offered Masses at new places of course. I’ve been a chaplain for a pilgrimage to Rome and offered Mass in the Major Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. I’ve presided at numerous parishes — just filling in. Each place has a whole history, a whole community of people: saints and saints in the making. Just last Sunday, I felt so welcomed as I presided at a beautiful parish in Taunton, Massachusetts, for the first time. And all this is tracing just one sacrament. I have also baptized two of my nephews, presided at my uncle’s funeral, heard so many beautiful confessions, and anointed family members and friends. I offer sacraments for people I know and people only known to me in Christ.
But for all of this new sacramental ministry, I find myself reflecting more and more on who I am sent from. My whole time in seminary, I never asked the question, “Why me?” It was simply a gift from God. Now that I’m on the other side of seminary formation, as a religious and ordained priest, I keep feeling connected to the places and the people I was sent from.
My ministry today is still part of each of those places, still sustained by a whole host of people and by each of those communities. Supported by their prayers, yes, but more than that. My priestly ministry is a sustained part of those prayers. I have a growing sense that priestly actions in ordained ministry are moments that trace the act of being set-apart, yet still a part of. They are moments of being sent from but in no way sent away from. And perhaps in these moments I can share a glimpse of the eternal home from which we are sent to.
By Fr. Aaron Morris, C.S.C.
Published February 11, 2026
Photo of Fr. Aaron celebrating Mass in the St. Stephen side chapel in the Major Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Rome, Italy
