When Father Michael Augustinowitz was ordained 50 years ago, there were 270 priests serving in Vermont’s Diocese of Burlington. Today, there are just 50. But for Augustinowitz, Pastor at Our Lady of the Snows in Woodstock and Our Lady of the Mountains in Killington, the mathematics of decline does not diminish the constancy of his calling. At 50 years of service, he speaks not of endings, but of continuations — of the unbroken thread that connects an infant’s first baptism to a funeral’s final blessing, of the unchanging human need for connection, hope, and community.
Augustinowitz’s journey began in the small Vermont town of Barre, where his family was deeply involved in their local Catholic church, and he attended Catholic grade school through eighth grade. “It was basically very much a part of my life,” he recalled of those formative years when faith formed the foundation of daily existence.
That early immersion in Catholic community life planted seeds that would bloom into five decades of ministry.
Father Michael Augustinowitz has served the Diocese of Burlington throughout his entire career and is currently the pastor at Our Lady of the Snows in Woodstock. Courtesy of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington
What has sustained Augustinowitz through half a century isn’t the grand gestures or momentous occasions, but the intimate rhythm of human life itself. He describes his role with a poetry born of experience: “We deal with infants at baptism. We deal as they grow up, as far as communion and confirmation, and then you deal with them for the weddings, and then at the end of life, anointing them and doing their funerals.”
In an era marked by declining religious observance — particularly among younger generations — Augustinowitz offers a perspective shaped by both faith and experience. When asked how he maintains hope amid global suffering and social change, he pointed to what he calls the “three cardinal virtues: faith, hope, and love.”
“Everybody concentrates on faith and love, but hope is key as well,” he explained. “In light of the world situation, even the community here in Woodstock, the different things that are happening within the community, you still have to remain hopeful that things will work out and things will be better.”
The COVID-19 pandemic provided perhaps the greatest test of Augustinowitz’s ministry. When church doors closed and services moved online, he made a choice that revealed his pastoral heart. Rather than conduct virtual services that would reach only some parishioners — those with reliable internet in rural Vermont — he chose to wait until he could serve everyone equally.
“So much of our area here, you do not have the internet or whatever, and so I didn’t feel comfortable just doing it for the people in Woodstock that would be able to receive it, because then everybody else…” he explained, the sentence trailing off as if the inequity speaks for itself.
As Augustinowitz looks toward his remaining years of active ministry, he sees not a culmination but a continuation. “The needs are basically the same,” he observed. “People still want their children baptized, they still want Mass. They still want weddings and funerals.”
The work may be the same, but the context has changed dramatically. Where once there were 270 priests serving Vermont, now there are 50. Where once churches were filled, now pews are less crowded. Yet Augustinowitz finds meaning not in the numbers but in the constancy of human need and divine calling.
“As long as I remain healthy, then everything is good,” he said. For five decades, that has been enough. For the years ahead, it will be enough still.
For more on this, please see our July 17 edition of the Vermont Standard.
