"They think I spend all day playing golf"

or "people don't think we exist unless they come to church and see us there". 
The first of those came from a local Roman Catholic priest and the second came from a Church of England priest in rural England. As they were comments made to me or read by me only two days apart may I introduce you to the life of a priest?
It will have to be the first one as I haven't had an opportunity to talk to the second one, although her comment is pertinent to this.
I asked T.... to tell me - for the purpose of this blog - about his previous day.
T's day began at "just before six". He had a phone call from a doctor at one of the local hospitals. Could he come over now? One of his parishioners was asking for him and the doctor judged there  was not a lot of time left.He went...and sat with her until she died about twenty minutes after he arrived. He went on from there to see two more patients in the nearby hospice because he knew they would be awake and have no family there at that time.
He followed that with a visit to a refugee family the parish is looking after and walked them all around to the school the children will be attending and saw they were enrolled.  Following that he "grabbed a coffee and a roll" and consumed them as he was driving to a meeting.  That was his breakfast. 
Following the meeting he went to the juvenile court for a meeting with a magistrate and two social workers about a teen in trouble and the family that might take the boy on. 
He came back to make a regular visit to an aged care complex and then his assistant, a nun, phoned him to say that the son of the woman who had died had arrived at the airport and was making his way up to see him. That meant organising someone else to take cricket practice for the teens-at-risk he is keeping an eye on. 
Someone had left a couple of fish in the fridge for him so he filleted those and then met with the son and had a preliminary discussion about possible funeral arrangements.
He made it to the last of the cricket practice. Following that he cooked the fish and, while he was eating, read the article he wanted to discuss with me. 
Then he wrote a piece for their church newsletter.
Throughout all this he also answered phone calls and made some. 
     "So, when are you going to play that game of golf T...?" I asked him when we sat down for fifteen minutes to talk about the article.
We both knew the answer to that. He doesn't play golf but he might, if he is very fortunate, get some time to go for a short walk along the "priest's beach" (a local beach some of them occasionally gather at) on Monday.
And I remembered the cartoon I once found and gave to another priest I know. It was a picture of a young clergyman standing in the Bishop's study and the Bishop saying to him, "But you knew when you took this job on you couldn't have Sundays off."
T and I both know what Mondays can be like if he isn't careful - but they aren't spent playing golf.