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SUGAR CREEK, Mo. — Benedictine Father Thomas Bailey drove about 80,000 miles over the past eight years in service to the Eparchy of Parma as the sacramental minister to St. Luke Byzantine Catholic Parish.
Each round trip to the Sugar Creek community, where he celebrated Divine Liturgy on Sundays and holy days, was 180 miles.
His newest assignment in service to the Byzantine Catholic Church will have him travel yet another 5,300 miles, this time to Rome, where he will serve as the director of studies at the Pontifical Greek College of St. Athanasius, the only full seminary for Byzantine Catholics in the Eternal City.
Born in Sherman, Texas, June 1, 1979, and raised in North Central Texas, he entered the Benedictine Marmion Abbey in 1998, after graduating from St. Meinrad College. He professed solemn vows in 2002, and he was ordained a priest two years later.
Father Bailey said he grew interested in the Byzantine rite during his novitiate. His confrere, Benedictine Father Frederick Peterson, was the pastor of St. George Romanian Catholic Parish in Aurora, Illinois, at the time.
“He would invite us for liturgy when there were solemnities. The liturgy fascinated me. There was so much to take in,” said Father Bailey. “However, it wasn’t until I was in seminary studies that I decided I wanted to celebrate the liturgies of the Eastern Church.”
After ordination, Father Peterson taught Father Bailey how to celebrate the Byzantine liturgy. However, it would be another six years before Father Bailey would begin his ministry at St. Luke Parish, where he was able to put his knowledge to full use and integrate Eastern spirituality into his priesthood.
“The parishioners of St. Luke’s truly helped me to become a better priest,” Father Bailey told Horizons. “St. Luke’s helped me to learn to listen better, to keep others in mind. I am also greatly indebted to the parish because it was here I learned to live the rhythm of Byzantine life.
“I’m sure every Eastern Catholic knows St. John Paul II’s famous statement on how the church needs to ‘breathe with both lungs.’ Well, before St. Luke’s I was taking an occasional breath, but the Sunday-after-Sunday and feast day-after-feast day (over) eight years finally helped it to sink in,” he said.
Father Bailey’s order was entrusted with the Pontifical Greek College of St. Athanasius in Rome by Pope Leo XIII in the late 19th century. And, while the Benedictine Abbey of Chevetogne in Ciney, Belgium, was entrusted with the administration of the college in the 1950s, the abbot primate of the Benedictines remains the apostolic procurator of the college.
Father Bailey said he believes he was tapped for this new assignment by the current abbot primate, Abbot Gregory Polan, who is originally from Conception Abbey in Missouri.
“I had known Abbot Gregory for the last 10 years because he was the abbot of the monastery in whose seminary I was working,” said Father Bailey. “And so he knew of my work both at the seminary, as well as my devotion to working with the parishioners at St. Luke’s.”
Father Bailey said his leap from local parish work to service at the heart of the universal church in Rome is “at its core… the same ministry.”
“Whether I am in a small parish with 30 people in attendance on Sunday or at the Greek College, which is serving multiple eparchies in Eastern Europe and Southern Italy, it is about the person in front of (me). Where is this person in his relationship with God? Where does he need help in his journey of theosis? How can I allow the Holy Spirit to work within me for this individual for the betterment of God’s Kingdom?
“The Apostles took the Gospel to the whole world by telling the people in front of them (of the Good News). And though I am certainly no apostle, I have the same Holy Spirit given to me in baptism that they were given at baptism, that all of us were given at baptism,” he said. “The Apostle Peter wrote in his first epistle, ‘Always be ready to give a reason for your hope,’ and if I can do that and help others be able to do that, then I’ve done my job.”
Father Bailey will leave for Europe in July. He will spend the summer learning Italian and Greek, before he moves to Rome for the start of the academic year.
Caption: Benedictine Father Thomas Bailey preaches his last homily at St. Luke Byzantine Catholic Parish in Sugar Creek, Missouri, before moving onto an assignment in Rome. (Photo: Ray James)
As published in Horizons, June 17, 2018.
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