A PRIEST FOREVER

A PRIEST FOREVER

I have long wanted to write about Priests and Priesthood but I always ended up groping in the dark. Priesthood is a profession and a vocation that entails endless sacrifice and hardship. It needed strong determination, self discipline and many extraordinary characters to attain the goal.

The life of a Parish Priest must be very difficult, I just realized after I had a casual chat with our new Parish Priest. I could imagine the difficulties he would encounter during the adjustment period. To be able to cope with the whims of thousands of supposed to be followers who have their own individual ideas on how the Church should be.

Intermingling with these regular churchgoers with irregular moods was never a walk in the woods. There are the ‘convent hangers’ who think the convent is their own house as well as other church goers with their own peculiarities in characters. There are the other religious sects, the ‘born again’, the ‘born already’ and the ‘born also’ that needed to be dealt with intelligently.

Furthermore, a Priest most of all is also human, with his own genetic traits. He too gets hungry and tired. His own emotion could also be adversely affected by unwanted incidents that occur around his life.

A little mistake or mild shortcoming is quickly magnified. He has no one to quickly turn to during moments of weakness. He also needs a shoulder-to-cry-on even while his own shoulder is still dripping with tears of others.

It is about time parishioners should pay more attention, consideration, understanding and compassion to their Parish Priest. Let us forgive them too even if they do not directly confess to us.

A Priest is a Priest forever according to the order of Melquiesedec. Let us adjust to him while he is adjusting to us without expecting perfection. Let us wear his shoes once in a while just to have a feel of how it is to be one. After all a Priest is Christ’s representative to look after us. He is as fragile as we all are because our bones and his are not different. Our flesh and his are just the same. Our blood and his are of the same color and content.

Without the cooperation and help of the parishioner a priest can actually do nothing but without the Priest that caters to our spiritual needs we all shall be damned.