On Respect for Priests
What is a parish? What are our duties to it? How can we best form our sons so that they become good and contributing member of the parish? Simply put, the parish is a family centered around a father (the parish priest); it is a home built around the hearth, which is the altar of the parish church.
The parish priest normally receives authority from the diocesan bishop to instruct, sanctify, and rule the faithful who live within the parish. He thus participates intimately and intensely in the Fatherhood of God. Even if a prior does not have this ordinary and delegated jurisdiction proper to a pastor, he is still a father. A healthy spirit of Faith will push us to make our own the spirit of the prior, encouraging everyone in our circles to respect him and to have a supernatural docility to his guidance.
This means striving to understand the reasons for his teaching, commands, and instruction and making them our own. In other words, we must allow ourselves to be formed by him, since He is an instrument in the hands of God to accomplish our sanctification. Even if different prior/pastors have distinct styles and areas of concern, we can follow each intelligently, convinced by our Faith that God leads us in different manners at different times. God sends us the priest that we need at the time.
There is always a danger to be led by our naturalistic and humanistic judgments, preferring this or that priest because he is more personable or has the same interests as we do. We can become too attached to some priests and unwilling to hear others. Such excessive affection for priests we like and dissatisfaction with priests we have a hard time with will hinder the work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost in our souls.
Each priest is a creature who has his own set of talents and weaknesses, and so will be strong in some areas and weak in others. It is for us to see and receive the good and to pray and offer our help to supply weaknesses. If there appears to be a real problem, then we can approach the priest with great respect and present our concerns to him, as we would to our father. It may be that he has reasons that are hidden from us that account for a decision or action that we did not like or understand. Or, he may agree with our concern; then we ought to give him the benefit of the doubt and time to allow him time to address the issue.
It is much the same as a marriage. No man or woman is perfect or without flaws. A spouse must see the good and support the frailties, doing what is in his or her power to encourage the other to virtue. No good marriage just happens. It is the product of the effort, time, and dedication invested by both spouses. There is a will to make the marriage work. There must be a will to make the parish work in union with the pastor.
However, a priest’s natural qualities are of secondary importance. He is ultimately an instrument in God’s hands to transmit to us the means of grace, through the preaching of the Gospel, his life of self-sacrifice, and the distribution of the sacraments. Any priest with any sense is aware that he is utterly unworthy of his vocation. When St. Pius X wept and begged his fellow cardinals not to elect him, he was not play-acting. He knew his littleness. But when he was elected, he trusted in God and accepted the task.
As a result, it does not matter greatly who is one’s pastor. God can work through amazing or mediocre men. Indeed, sometimes Our Lord will make a point of working through a man of meagre talents so as to teach us emphatically that all good comes from Him.
We must see Jesus in our priests. And we must help our children see Jesus in priests, most especially in the reverence we show them in our attitudes, speech, and behavior. Please pray for the priestly souls whom God has sent to you, that they may be faithful.
