In certain circles, St. Sebastian Parish rectory has the name, "The St. Sebastian Arms." It often serves as a sort of bed and breakfast for priests and seminarians. Monsignor Zwisler, our founder, built a rectory with four suites and two guest rooms for priests. Later, an addition of two suites were added on to the rectory to house his sister who acted as caretaker of the house. (And this does not include the rooms for what was once live-on help.) Many of the rooms have been converted into other purposes, not the least reason for which is the extreme lack of office space. But there are still some extra rooms and rather them becoming storage spaces for junk as happens in many places, they are put to good use helping priests and seminarians having a place to lay their weary heads when needed.
There are any number of reasons that a priest might need a place to stay. This weekend we will have two missionaries. We've had priests in town for "business" and needed a place to stay. Sometimes a guy just needs to get away and we provide a room or they live way north and will be catching an early plane from Akron Canton Airport and this is much closer. You get the idea.
I was particularly glad of this situation this year. Fr. Simone is a newly ordained priest assigned to St. Sebastian. Imagine having spent the last number of years at the seminary surrounded by your brothers, always having any number of guys to talk to or do something with, and then finding yourself in a rectory where it is just you and the old pastor. It might be tough.
Having all these people around and activities going on might make the transition easier. At least I imagine having a number of guys around the dinner table in the evening would fulfill a need for priestly fraternity.
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