By fr. JLucas, 22 October, 2026

I carry two schools in my heart. Saint Patrick’s Primary, the school attached to my parish, and Holy Trinity High, where I serve as chaplain. I love those children with my life. I say that without exaggeration. The little ones at Saint Patrick’s and the young people at Holy Trinity are not an extra duty on the edge of my priesthood. They are part of the reason I can still stand in it.

Parish life is heavy. Bills arrive with their own kind of volume — the electricity from JPS, the water from the Water Commission — and behind them sit the quieter weights: people in need, decisions that will not wait, grief that does not clock out when morning comes. I often walk toward those schools with a mind and a heart already full. And then I arrive, and something in me is set down.

The genuine smile. The honest “Good morning, Father.” The shout of “Father! Father!” across the school compound. Those sounds do more for me than I can explain to a ledger. I have met a few who, while I was trying not to linger, looked me in the face and claimed me anyway. They wanted to be my sons and my daughters. They were not performing. They were genuine. I love that about them. Being among them is the most consoling hour of my ministry as a young priest.

This morning we had Mass as usual. Before seven (7:00 am), they were already filling the pews. Some went all the way to the back of the church and settled there, as if the front were meant for someone more important.

I was in my chair, scrolling through pictures of my friend. Fidel died weeks ago, and I cannot stop praying for him. Grief has a way of opening a second screen behind whatever you are looking at. So I sat there with his memory, and I watched the children the way a father watches a son at homework while the newspaper is still open in his hands. If you grew up in that generation, you know the picture: the parent is present, half in the page and half in the room, and love is happening in the looking.

In that moment the homily arrived. I did not go looking for it. It was already in the church.

I told them: do not take the back seat on any occasion unless those seats have been kept for someone else. Otherwise, the front is yours. Here is why.

I am chosen.

You are chosen as a winner. A front-seater. A victor, in the way Jesus is a victor — not by pushing other people aside, but by standing where love has already placed you. God did not create you to disappear into the last row of your own life. You are chosen to become the person He made you to be. Chosenness is not a medal you earn after you have proved yourself. It is the reason you walked into the room. When you slide to the back out of habit, you teach your own heart a lie: that your place is whatever is left. The Gospel says something stronger. You were named before you raised your hand.

I am special.

Special people sit in front. There is no moment in which you should decide you are unimportant because you come from the inner city, or because you attend an inner-city school. Saint Patrick’s is well known for academic achievement and for sports. That reputation was not imported from somewhere easier. It was built by children who look like you, in classrooms and on fields that know your name. The postcode on a letter does not rank a soul. Special is not a costume for other people’s children. It is the truth about you when you take the seat that matches it. Sit where you can hear. Sit where you can be seen. Sit as someone who expects to be addressed.

I am loved.

God is love, and He loves us in a very particular way. His love for children is not a smaller version of His love for adults. It is love with the door already open. And that love does not stop in heaven. It travels.

Jesus loves you, and so He gives you loving parents.

Parents love you, and so they send you to loving teachers and a loving school.

Teachers love you, and so they bring you to a loving priest.

Father Lucas loves you, and so he brings you to Jesus.

Follow that line, and you will see it is a circle. It begins with Jesus and it returns to Jesus. Every person in it is a bridge, not a destination. I am not the end of the love that found you this morning. I am one pair of hands passing you back to the One who loved you first.

If you are reading this from far away — another city, another language, another kind of church — the pews may look different, and the bills may come from other companies. The children are the same. Somewhere near you there is a young person who has already decided the back is where they belong. Tell them the front was kept for them. Tell them they are chosen, special, and loved. Then walk them, as far as you can, toward Jesus.

And if you are one of mine: I saw you before seven. I was praying for a friend, and I was watching you. Come closer next time. The front seat is not for visitors. It is for you.