I have now entered my third year as Parish Priest of Holy Family, Mt Druitt. I have never been a Parish Priest before. I was not entirely sure what was involved in the role but at the end of the day what I did know was I wanted to impress people and wanted everyone to like me. How naïve of me! It has taken me close to two years to realize that I will never impress everyone and that not everyone will like me. I can see you all smiling and laughing and shaking your heads in agreement and perhaps saying to yourselves, ‘he only took two years to realize this!

It was Donald Cozzens words at the conference which named this for me and helped me to articulate exactly what it was that I needed to do in order to move forward and enjoy my ministry of being Parish Priest in an area of great love but also of great need.

I am sure that Donald was using this example of not being held in favour to demonstrate to us all the important need to attain the grace of freedom so that we can be true servants of the Gospel. In using the motto of the USA Special Forces, “To free the oppressed” he helped me to understand further that to free others we need to be free ourselves. I once thought this was a life long task that one may achieve but I can see these past months a movement forward. Thank you Donald!

I need to thank Michael Whelan for his summary of the conference and hope that this may also be printed in the Swag. His words also hit a cord with me. I make four points, although Michael made 11 points!

• Listen to your own experience for this is the only way to grow. I could not help but think of my own spiritual tradition of St Ignatius and his Spiritual Exercises. These exercises are completely steeped in Ignatius’ own experience. God begins to speak to us where we are now, in our own experience.
• Become contemplatives. Michael encouraged all of us to take time to pray and acknowledged that effort was needed in order to make the time.
• Foster conversation. All conversations must be real, and he challenged us to enter these conversations with the possibility of ourselves being converted!
• Michael reminded us that every encounter is charged with God.

Sadly, I must own up to the fact that this was my first NCP conference in thirteen years of being ordained. I came to the realization in conversing with others that they too were experiencing their first NCP conference. I am sure all of us must have asked ourselves why it had taken so long to attend a conference which gave us the opportunity of growth in our ministry and produced so much support for what we do for the Great Glory of God. The camaraderie was wonderful. To see people I had not seen for years and meet new people energized my soul. It was pure joy to meet face to face the staff from the NCP head office. I had only ever had a phone or email relationship with them!

Many need to be thanked but I hope in thanking Ian McGinnity as Chair is one way of saying to all those who made this conference happen that I sincerely appreciate the huge amount of work it would have taken to prepare for such a time together. I hope you all realize how much we are grateful to you and for you and that the noise of joy at the conference dinner is testament to the conference being a major success for lifting the Spirits of all!

Edward Dooley SJ