The Parallels Between the Priest and the Artist

Over the years, there have been many priests and ministers—Catholic or otherwise—who have also been great writers of fiction.  Robert Hugh Benson, John Henry Newman, and George MacDonald come immediately to mind.  While some may say that writing fiction was incidental to their primary vocations, there is, I believe, a deeper connection between what some would consider a mere hobby and the sacred life of a priest.

So then, why would a priest spend his valuable time writing fiction?  Is writing fiction an activity that detracts or adds to the vocation of a priest?  Or is it a mere hobby, a harmless way to pass time and recreate, and nothing more?

These questions are particularly important to me.  As of writing this essay, I have been ordained a priest for nearly four years, and live my life in active service for the local Church of Charlotte, North Carolina.  At the same time, I have spent the last twelve years planning and writing a high-fantasy trilogy, which contains multiple unique cultures and dozens of characters.  The first book of this trilogy will be published in Spring 2025.

In writing this story, have I been imprudent with my time?  Should I have put aside this fantastical project like a teenager might turn off his Xbox in order to complete his homework?

While I would never suggest a priest neglect his sacred duties to pursue his own personal projects, I do believe that writing fiction is a very fitting activity for a priest to undertake.  In fact, the life of a writer (and more generally, of an artist) and the life of a priest are more similar than different.

I’d like to explore this connectedness in two ways: objectively and subjectively.  First, the objective.

On the face of it, the vocation of a priest seems to be at odds with the vocation of an artist.  One way to mischaracterize the vocation of a priest is to believe he is a man who is detached from the natural world, that he cares only for spiritual things and despises that which is material. Yet nothing can be further from the truth.

The priest should not spurn the natural world, but rather love it dearly; he should not suppress it, but raise it up to the sacred.  One only needs to think of the sacramental life of the Church to see this principle on full display.  At Mass, for example, the priest takes ordinary bread and wine—that is, material elements—and offers it to God, so it may become the Body and Blood of Christ.

Now consider the artist.  Some may mischaracterize him as one who is inordinately attached to the natural world and exists purely on a physical plane: canvas and paint are his tools, and nothing more. Yet to make this claim would be to grossly underestimate his vocation.  The artist, like the priest, uses natural means—be it canvas and paint, or paper and pen—to encapsulate something supernatural, something that does not have a body.

Ultimately the priest and the artist partake (albeit in different levels of participation) in the very mission of Christ Himself.  He who is the Word—that is, the enfleshed idea of God, the supernatural made natural—has elevated us to the transcendent through the natural world, which is what all priests and artists are called to do.  By the Incarnation, the physical and the spiritual have been bridged, and nature has been elevated to the divine.  As Tolkien once said in his essay, On Fairy Stories, “By the forging of Gram cold iron was revealed; by the making of Pegasus horses were ennobled; in the Trees of the Sun and Moon root and stock, flower and fruit are manifested in glory.”  Likewise, by the Word becoming flesh, all of the world and the things in it have been made sacred.

In the end, the vocations of both the priest and the artist are not opposed to one another.  On the contrary, they are wonderfully similar.

Concerning the subjective way in understanding the connectedness of the life of a priest and the life of a writer, I will quote my artistic guide—the one who first provoked me into pursuing beauty years ago, which led to the discovery of my priestly vocation: Dante Alighieri.  In the first Canto of the Paradiso, Dante writes,

“Truly whatever of the holy realm

I had the power to treasure in my mind

Shall now become the subject of my song.”

As romantic as it may sound, the eyes of my heart were opened upon first reading Dante, which shed light on all the sources of beauty that had surrounded me throughout my entire life.  All of these epiphanies of beauty pointed back to the same source: God Himself.  Like a lover obsessed with his beloved, I desired to express “whatever of the holy realm I had the power to treasure in my mind” to the world.

While this idea of “the holy realm” manifested itself in a myriad of ways, I believe it can be summed up through the idea of story.  Whether it was Dante’s Divine Comedy, or Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, or paintings like the Calling of St. Matthew where Christ calls Matthew to leave his illuminated earthly comforts to embark on a dark, spiritual adventure—or even more popular sources of entertainment such as Star Wars or the Legend of Zelda—I perceived a common thread that ran through it all: they were all expressions of the immeasurable depth of the human experience.  And all of it—all of humanity’s longings, all of its hopes, all of its fears, and all of its dreams—finds its fulfillment in Christ, the archetype of all that is true, good, and beautiful.

Through my priesthood and through my writing, I am compelled to communicate whatever of the holy realm I have the power to treasure in my mind.  And it was the idea of story, above all, that provoked me into the life I live now.