Local pastor reflects on vocation, priesthood
Father Tom Hamilton knew as early as his boyhood years that he wanted to be a priest. “Priesthood was always in sight for me,” Father Tom told Catholic San Francisco. “I grew up with the idea of wanting to be a priest.”
Study toward ordination began after eighth grade and led to the Marist Fathers seminary program in San Francisco in 1971. “I left in 1975 and went home to test my vocation and see if it was mine or my mom’s,” he said, remembering tenderly how his mom’s “being so unabashedly proud” of his becoming a priest sometimes blurred the motivation. Father Tom returned to formation and study for the priesthood 10 years later and was ordained for the Marists Dec. 10, 1988.
During assignments for the Marist congregation, Father Tom celebrated Mass on many weekends in churches of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. “I came to know and like very much the local Church and priests of the Archdiocese of San Francisco,” he said. Father Tom’s increasing connection with the Church of San Francisco and his “growing to love the people here” led to his requesting incardination as a priest of the Archdiocese of San Francisco which became official in 2004.
“It’s been a joy and privilege to serve the people of God,” Father Tom said, “I’ve learned and continue to learn so much from them.” He said he is thankful for the time and ministry he has been able to share with the people of St. Anthony Parish in Novato where he was pastor from 2003-2008, and earlier, St. Robert’s in San Bruno. The gratitude continues, he said, in his work at St. Gabriel Parish in San Francisco where he has been pastor since 2008.
“It’s a great thing to be in a parish like St. Gabriel’s,” Father Tom said. “Every generation is represented and we’re becoming more and more diverse culturally.”
“It’s been a wonderful experience and it’s hard to believe a year has gone by. St. Gabriel’s is a very welcoming parish with a very competent and loyal staff. I have not one complaint. I’ve been very blessed everywhere I’ve ever been.”
“I’m especially enjoying the school at St. Gabriel’s,” he said, calling principal, Mercy Sister Pauline Borghello “an amazing lady” and noting confidence many have in her abilities is “well deserved.” The school has “a wonderful staff,” he said, with “many having attended the school or sent their children there.”
Father Tom remembered how a person approached him at a parish where he was assigned at another time and asked if he was going to “fill the shoes’ of the priest who had left. ‘No,’ he told her, ‘Father took his shoes with him.’
“We don’t come to replace anyone,” Father Tom said. “What gifts they are and how silly that would be to try. We come to share our gifts, make our home with the parishioners for a while and to learn from them.”
Father Tom is named for his dad’s cousin, Father Thomas Murphy, of the Diocese of Owensboro, Kentucky. “In a sense, maybe I was predestined,” he said, “but I certainly had the mark on my forehead. We always had close relationships with priests and religious and valued their friendship.”
“I’m at home in the priesthood,” Father Tom said. “I’ve had enough positive reflection from the people of God to say there’s something to it besides my opinion and that it is something the Lord has gifted me with for the sake of the Church. I am grateful for that.”
Father Tom recalled his ordination and celebrating the funeral Masses of his mom and dad as “poignant and moving moments” of his priesthood. He said he did not think he could undergo the emotional strain of presiding at his mom’s Mass, who predeceased his dad, until he spoke with his younger sister.
“She told me that ‘none of us knows what it would take to do it, but if you could you’re the only one who can and it’s the gift only you can give.’”
Father Tom said memorable moments also come in his daily ministry experience including “kindergartners yelling and waving in the yard, being at the bedside of someone in the process of going from this life to the next and being with the family struggling to cope with that, baptizing a child and seeing the wonder and the love and the life of the family.” What he hears from these moments, he said, is “This is right. The Lord is here.”
“Each of us in every generation, every economic class, every persuasion of any description knows as a people that the mission of the Church is the proclamation of Jesus and somewhere within each of us we know what that means in terms of our own fidelity or lack of it or struggle to live it. I continue to trust that the Spirit will lead us.”
Father Tom said in this Year for Priests he’d request prayers for himself and all priests. “It’s what keeps me going,” he said. “I really don’t need anything else.”
This story is part of a Catholic San Francisco series during the “Year for Priests.”
From December 18, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
