On July 6, Father Mike Metz posted on Facebook that the St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Community at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was “alive and well.”
“Jesus is breathing his Spirit into our people with gusto and grace!” He shared that the day before, for the first time in his priesthood, he was blessed to celebrate “all seven sacraments in a single day!”
In an interview with Aleteia he shared how fired up he was, how amazing the people and community are, how hungry people are for the graces received through the sacraments, and just “how much the Church has to offer.” Their openness “to receiving the fullness of God’s life” is already cooperating with what God’s action.
Thanks to that reciprocal dynamic, Fr. Metz added, “This place is really rockin’ and rollin’.”
One day, seven sacraments, many soul encounters
Father Metz celebrated the sacraments of Baptism, First Communion, and Confirmation for a man who was raised Mormon and read his way into Catholicism, supported by his wife. Convalidating the couple’s marriage through the sacrament of Matrimony was the fourth sacrament of the day.
Fifth was hearing numerous confessions, offering Reconciliation for 45 minutes before Mass at which he baptized five other infants of families on base. Sixth was the Anointing of the Sick for a male volunteer at the church who has cancer and was going in for a surgery.
The seventh, Holy Orders, wasn’t received that day, but was the means through which the others were all made possible. “I felt like a big leaguer, hittin’ a grand slam, celebrating all of those sacraments in one day,” he shared with audible joy.
Where it all started
Father Metz was born in San Diego, California, the second of his parents’ eleven children who range in ages from 36 to 15. He is not the only one of this “big, beautiful family” to serve in the military. His father was a Navy jet pilot for 10 years. One younger sister served as a Navy nurse, two active-duty brothers went to West Point and a younger sister, on West Point’s parachute team, will return to active duty soon.
Young Metz’ first encounters with priests were the Legionary of Christ chaplains at Pinecrest Academy in Cumming, Georgia, where he attended grades 2-12. Back then he thought the priests were great, but the idea of priesthood as a calling was “for somebody else.” He dated a lot and was drawn to the military, enrolling in the ROTC program and graduating from Christian Brothers University in 2012.
The call to the priesthood came between his junior and senior year of college and the need he experienced for priests as military chaplains was part of that. As noted in this report of Father Metz’s June 18, 2018, ordination (jointly sponsored by the Archdiocese of Atlanta and the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA),
“Since 9/11, the number of active-duty chaplains has fallen from more than 400 to approximately 205. The Army has only 81 of those currently serving. While Catholics make up about 25% of all U.S. Armed Forces, Catholic priests currently account for only 6% of U.S. Military chaplains.”
As the “biggest diocese with the fewest priests,” hopeful news was shared earlier this year of an increased interest in military chaplaincy as Catholic priests.
Even when faith and moral conviction require living counter-culturally, Father Metz’ acknowledged there’s a certain freedom in that. “It puts the onus of work and responsibility in its proper place,” he said,
because I just have to be myself: a son of God the Father and a priest of Jesus Christ. Then, I get to love the person in front of me, as I am, with as much love and grace as I can. And it’s on Jesus to be the savior — which is wonderful because that means I get to love a lot of people who would never otherwise encounter a priest, with the heart of a priest…
“I live out his love as best I can and then Jesus takes care of the rest … It’s his thing. He’s the one who plants the seeds. He’s the one who makes them grow. I just need to make sure I till the garden don’t get in the way.
Where it has led
As is typical for chaplains to gain pastoral experience, the first three years of Father Metz’s priesthood were spent in parishes in his home archdiocese. The past five have been spent assigned to the biggest military installation by population in the world, at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
The base supports over 250,000 people with more than 50,000 active-duty troops and their dependents living on site, including the U.S. Army Special Opps Command and the 82nd Airborne Division. This unit, the Army’s elite rapid-response force, is historically famous for their roles in the June 1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy in France and further inland during the Battle of the Bulge.
Father Metz started out with the 82nd Airborne, then the Third Special Forces group and now acts as the garrison priest. Being one of two priests serving approximately 10,000 Catholic service members on base — although not all are practicing — is both an overwhelming opportunity and blessed burden.
Fort Bragg, he explained, is “the helm of special operations command,” and home to a lot of what they call “high speed soldiers.”
“They’re fast paced and they’re wild … a big part of the culture here is jumping out of airplanes — one of the things the 82nd prides itself in — having the capability of jumping into a landing zone with parachutes to try and execute our mission,” the Army priest added.
With a population of soldiers predominantly aged 18-22, Father Metz added that the nature of their missions draw a lot of high energy and adventure seeking young people. “Our guys are troublemakers,” he said, adding “so, we hear a lot of confessions.”
A paratrooper himself, with the additional training as an airborne jumpmaster, Father Metz doesn’t only meet soldiers’ vulnerability in the confessional. During a jump exercise, he is one of a special team checking and rigging parachutes, ensuring safe execution of the exercise, and his might be the last face the jumper sees before exiting the aircraft.
“My life is so fun,” he affirmed. “And it’s such a blessing to live a priestly life this way…” His military experience offers great metaphors for the spiritual life. He uses the analogy of jumping out of an aircraft “for discussions of virtue …" but mostly for the theo-drama of salvation … the Incarnation itself being a kind of “parachute maneuver, with Christ coming down to earth so that we can come up to heaven.”
To perform and to provide
The Army’s “catchphrase” for the chaplain’s role, Father Metz commented, is as a religious professional that performs and provides religious services for their assigned unit. In the pluralistic environment of the U.S. military, this means he performs what he can as a Catholic priest, but is also chaplain for non-believers, Jews, Muslims, and Protestants in his unit.
“My job is to perform the things that I can [as a priest] and then provide the religious support so that the Constitutional First Amendment right to freedom of religious expression is being supported,” he said, reiterating that it extends to followers of any religion under his care. “So, I give Qurans and Torahs and help make sure the Muslims and Jews have halal and kosher meals. Part of my job as an Army and staff officer is also to coordinate, using Army processes, to get an imam or rabbi in the right place at the right time with the right people.”
Father Metz further explained that in integrating his religious duties with his strategic ones on the operational side as an officer working under an Army commander, part of his role is to advise “on matters of religious importance to the responsibilities and risks” they assume for their area of operation.
“I’m meant to be the subject matter expert for the religious temperature on the ground, like what we need to worry about and inform our soldiers about in matters of religious or cultural importance; so that we can do our Army mission well, and the commander, with a religious sense of the area, can make the best command decisions for the unit’s broader mission and how to execute that, with as little risk as possible, and as much mission success as possible.”
He likes to think of the chaplaincy as analogous to the early North American missionaries and martyrs.
“Like the Jesuit missionaries that came over who didn’t know the language, didn’t know the people. They didn’t really know what they were doing or how to integrate into their society, but they just got in there and started working… They didn’t lead with ‘let me tell you about x, y or z’ they just got their hands dirty with them… ‘Let me learn your language as a missionary, let me sleep alongside you, let me smell like you, look like you, walk and talk like you… Now that I understand your humanity, I can use my own humanity as a bridge that leads to divinity.”
It’s with this sense of duty that Father Metz does his best to conform to the Army without setting aside his identity as a priest. He builds relationships on openness and trust, often using “Army words” to communicate the Gospel and provide the sacraments with as much “mission success” as is possible in the name of Jesus Christ.
