The Weight

Tonight, in lieu of the Gospel for today, our pastor chose to read the one where Jesus sends forth 72 disciples with instructions on how they are to travel, etc.  "Pray the Heavenly Father to send forth laborers."  And in lieu of a sermon, Father asked us to pray in silence for all those "profoundly affected" by the news of the past week.  Expecting that Father would sit down in his chair in his silence, he threw us off kilter slightly by instead kneeling down in front of the Blessed Sacrament, where he remained for some time in quiet prayer.

As I watched him, I felt an enormous weight, so much so that it made me ache. And then I realized that I have had it all wrong about why Father is so upset.  He could not care less about himself.  He can deal with the shame that comes from the guilt by association of sharing a vocation with a small minority of priests who succumbed to evil.  The pain he feels is not his own;  it is from the constant attack on Our Lord.  Here is a priest already struggling with the loss of reverence and the sheer disrespect and indifference shown to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.  I can't speak for him or any other priest, but it must be so difficult to do everything you can to win souls back for God, only to have them yanked away by an evil that has no right to exist anywhere, let alone in Our Lord's house.

Last week, I spoke with my friend Father Bill, just briefly, about this subject, and my fear that I am not doing all I can to counter the attacks by people who  use this scandal as an excuse to further attack the church.  In his typical way, he chuckled just a bit and told me not to worry too much about what people think.  "Jesus picked 12 Apostles. One of them was a traitor.  What does that tell you?  Stuff like this even happened to Our Lord.  He goes on, and we go on with Him."

This, too, shall pass.