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INTENTION : |
That priests who experience difficulties may find comfort in their suffering, support in their doubts, and confirmation in their fidelity.
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Rare would be the priest who cannot recall the graces associated with the day of his ordination. He likely remembers with cheer and emotion his first zealous celebrations of the sacraments, leading the faithful as Christ would wish and as the Church intends. Almost certainly he holds as unforgettable his initial priestly awe before the Eucharist as he led communities in appreciating Scripture and in loving our Lord in the breaking of the bread. Maybe he can still tell you the names of those families he first helped to grieve in the Church's funeral liturgies. He is not allowed to tell you anything about sins forgiven in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but those early sacerdotal consolations still linger. These and later experiences in Persona Christi gave impetus to his priesthood. In a perfect world, that energy and commitment would never dull, would never weaken for him.
As they mature, many fortunate priests with God's help are able to retain and to cultivate the holy idealism of their early priesthood. For others, however, the Holy Father's intention this month rings concisely, even piercingly true. The challenges of priestly ministry touch the conscience of every priest, uniquely created with his virtues and with his weaknesses. In the best scenarios, such challenges help to form saints. Regrettably, a few cases at the other extreme can tragically end up on the front pages of newspapers. Some priests commit serious public scandal. These latter situations wound the Body of Christ, and hurt the credibility of countless faithful priests who are doing their best each day. However, often the struggles to which the Holy Father points this month are not at all public. Some struggles are published only in the priest's soul, that deepest place where he confronts himself as he is, as a praying servant trying to do his best for the people entrusted to him.
The difficulties have many faces, of which here we can visualize but a few. Some faithful celibate priests find the evenings and nights to be lonely and isolating. Some priests are exhausted or are over-burdened with anxiety because there is not enough time in the day or enough money in the coffers or enough staff in the parish to address pastoral needs - and so discouragement creeps in for them, even though from month to month they may publicly offer a happy priestly face to all they meet.
Some priests, who were able to keep their ministry fresh and hopeful in their first decade or two of ordained service, find that they have slowly settled into a spiritless complacency of life, and they don't know where or how to seek appropriate support. Some priests too often have to address unanticipated challenges concerning the faith and teaching they are committed to uphold, challenges coming from culture, from government, from the media, challenges which they can't combat with fervor because their own interior doubts are growing incrementally. Some priests may have a physical infirmity or sign of aging which the faithful can see and may generously seek to help alleviate, but for others (including some among the youngest of priests) there may be unseen psychological wounds or maladies or addictions which are menacing, painful, and destructive. Finally, for a few there is outright infidelity to priestly promises, situations in which a priest is immersed in serious sin, in a 'double life' whereby his very priesthood hangs by a thread which inevitably will break if he does not return to a manner of life worthy of his calling. All of the above seek comfort, support, and confirmation.
Let us hold up with joy those priests who thrive and have been gifted with an ongoing strength and vitality in their ministry in Persona Christi. Let us also join with the Holy Father in this month's intention for those priests who experience difficulties, that they may find comfort in their suffering, support in their doubts, and confirmation in their fidelity.
Fr. Robert Geisinger, sj
Procurator General of the Society of Jesus
(Counselor to the Jesuit Superior General for juridical issues)
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