“[L]ike the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand,” reads the 18th chapter of Jeremiah.

Constantly remolded and remade, the Rev. Joseph J. Koury, a Roman Catholic priest, will tell you his life has been a whirlwind of unexpected joy and emotional transition.

On June 30, after 10 years serving Orono’s Our Lady of Wisdom Parish, which includes the University of Maine’s Newman Center for Catholic students, and St. Mary’s Parish in Orono, Koury will pack up his belongings and move to St. Francis Parish in Belfast.

He has been in and around Orono and the university community for 10 years, his smile and engaging personality making him an ideal minister and friend to those who meet him. Rejecting more formal titles, he prefers to be called “Father Joe.”

He is a calm, resilient man who enjoys riding his bicycle on the many trails that dot the Bangor area.

He starts with a car ride. “I find a place on the map of Maine I’ve never been, and I just go for a ride,” he said. “I’m one of those ‘just drive to the end of the peninsula’ types.”

Yet, beneath this free spirit is a quiet wisdom that has been appreciated by members of the Orono parishes he serves.

It is these communities and the interaction with their people that Koury said in an interview this week he will miss.

“It is a marvelous and a privileged time to see late adolescents, young adults, finding their way and then off to grad school or whatever,” Koury said of the students.

Indeed, the congregation he serves is in constant flux – he has baptized children of UMaine students he watched grow through their own college years – and he constantly witnesses new faces from different places.

“In many ways, it makes it unlike a typical Catholic parish because this one is characterized by transitions and movement, whereas in many Catholic parishes, many people stay,” Koury said.

The architecture of the Newman Center, like its mission, is both open and favorable to transition. The worship area was constructed to mimic a large, descending ‘L.’ Steps lead from parishioners’ chairs to a large, flat area where musicians and the altar are located.

“It doesn’t look like a Catholic church. It doesn’t feel like a Catholic church,” he said. “But sure enough, it’s a Catholic community.”

Born into a Rhode Island family, Koury was the seventh of eight children.

After graduation from high school, he obtained his undergraduate degree at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., then enrolled at McGill University in Montreal, where he studied languages and Middle Eastern issues.

Soon after leaving McGill, he joined the Order of Jesuits, a religious order within Roman Catholicism.

In 1977, he was ordained into the priesthood and began ministering within the Archdiocese of Seattle. He took a part-time job with the archdiocese’s tribunal, where he studied and gained an appreciation for a distinctive Catholic discipline.

“Doing that, I realized I liked working in canon law,” Koury said. In 1983, he finished work on his doctorate at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. After a period of teaching in Cambridge, Mass., Koury joined the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, and in 1995, was sent to UMaine to serve as pastor. In 1997, he assumed additional responsibilities at St. Mary’s Parish in Orono.

From Koury’s point of view, the greatest change facing his denomination is the round of parish realignments in Maine and the larger priest shortage. In early April, Bishop Richard Malone announced that the number of Maine parish clusters would decrease from 31 to 27. In five years, 60 to 65 priests are expected to be serving in the Diocese of Portland. Ninety-five serve today.

Maine Catholics, he said, have difficulty grasping the idea that soon there might not be a priest next door, or that they might have to help the parish through small tasks such as paperwork or building repairs.

“Catholics in Maine, their memory of the way things used to be, it’s as if it was yesterday. … They speak of it fondly,” Koury said. “The present time in the church is a challenge. Imagining the future is very, very difficult.”

The priest abuse scandal has rocked many parishioners’ faith, Koury said, but he believes change is coming.

“The Catholic Church’s response [to the abuse] imitated the response of schools, athletics, the Boy Scouts, the military: … Silence,” he said.

“But with the remedies put in place, we’ve now become the leading institution on providing remedies and protections,” he said.

“Change comes only with difficulty,” Koury said.

In Belfast, he said, he plans to take some time to get to know his new parish community.

“A wise pastor that I served with years ago said, ‘You know, it’s important to spend your first year as a pastor … really listening to the people,'” Koury said.

No matter what happens in his life, no matter where the “potter’s hands” may take him, Koury said he has fresh courage for whatever comes his way.

“God is still at work in the world,” he said.