Your Parish Priest Needs You. Here’s How You Can Help

we're gonna talk about how to love our parish priests [Music] hey i'm father mark mary with the franciscan friars of the renewal and this is ascension presents some of you may know this some of you may not uh i am a priest i'm a franciscan priest one of the things about the the franciscan fries the renewal is that we don't run parishes and i live with 20 other friars i say this because what my life looks like and my priesthood looks like is is very very different than what we call like dasan priests like the pastors those who are at your your local parish the hope for this video is to actually as a priest but as a non-pastor as a non-doctrine priest talk about how we um as parishioners help care for and love and and kind of be part of this culture in this environment which which supports and sets up our dawson priest for success and fidelity and health and holiness one observation one point we have to make is this is uh a lot of priests have failed uh big time and very publicly in pastors um throughout history but in in an acute way uh this last century we're very aware of this right and priests right um they're free men which means that like you can't you can't point fingers at something else like this bad thing happened because of this situation like at the end of the day it does come down to our choices right and so there is real accountability and hopefully there continues to be more and more accountability so that's that's just what we have to start with what i want to say though is as well as this we don't want to make it harder on our passengers than we need to to be faithful and to be healthy and to be holy we can create an environment which really makes it difficult though it's still possible or we can we can kind of create a little bit more of a healthy environment let's just take a kind of a little observation of the situation i care a lot for for my my brother the awesome priest because in many situations it's it's really difficult right and and and this is where we're at now and i think it's going to keep growing like you have these these priests um who just want to give their their lives to the lord who aren't experts in everything who you know a couple years you know out of out after their ordination they become a pastor of you know a number of a number of different like churches and and they're on their own and they're stressed out and they have a lot of kind of criticism and negativity and it's just they're kind of overworked underappreciated often often and that's just not a recipe for success you know just recently i was i was visiting a priest friend of mine who's a little bit younger than me and he was showing me you know his eight different churches and he's the guy right he's the priest and so he's got to be there as priests but he's also there is running the staff and doing the finances and uh managing the buildings and all that certainly has a team but he's the one like overseeing this right and what all he wanted to do was to pray and celebrate mass and minister to god's people that's a hard situation to be in but that's not an uncommon situation another one is i was visiting a priest at his rectory i was staying the night and it was about he's a great priest really faithful really works hard just like pours himself into to those at the school those at the parish and it was about 10 o'clock on a saturday night right so 10 o'clock on saturday night like most people are not still working 10 o'clock at saturday night what happened was this kind of facilities emergency this isn't exactly what it is but to give you a kind of context it was like you know there um there was a a pipe that burst in the basement which is where all the sort of the paper documents of everyone's like baptismal records and all that sort of stuff had been kept for the last 100 years so that's an emergency so he goes and he has to try and solve this problem right understandable one thing that happened is that there's this nocturnal adoration that happens starting at 10 30 in the evening that he has the keys forward that he was supposed to go unlock it and so because of the emergency he wasn't able to go and unlock the church on time and he got there about whatever was 15 20 minutes late the gentleman who was there to attend this adoration when he finally sees him coming instead of saying like oh hey father thanks for coming it's all right what's going on begins to cuss them out you know and this is at 10 45 on a saturday night after this priest has poured himself out in so many ways you know and that's just hard and that's just hard and and being overworked and stressed out and being criticized like like that right like it really makes a man vulnerable to alcoholism to to gambling to other sins against the flesh right and so again each man each priest is free and in the context of really difficult situations he can be faithful but can we as a church also help to support our priest right because like there's no question of how important the health and holiness of our priests are for the ongoing renewal like of the church and of the world so what can we do what can we do i'm going to say we can we can pray we can we can sacrifice and we can support like number one i i i feel this pretty strongly um i think we all have a bit of a duty to pray for our pastors every day so if you're at a parish and you have you have a pastor maybe you have a couple of priests there can you as an individual and can you as a family make sure that you pray for them by name every day like that's that's really really important that's the least we can do um if you are criticizing and you are critiquing and you are not praying like come on all right so we got to be praying for it for our priest number two and again i feel pretty pretty convicted of this can you make a little sacrifice for your priest particularly your pastors it makes a lot of sense to me what i'm what i'm thinking here is okay it doesn't have to be the same sacrifice always but hey for this year for father mcgivney i'm not gonna have dark chocolate right and so the year goes by next year okay this year for father mcgivney uh we're not gonna drink hard alcohol okay so you can have beer you're gonna have wine no hard alcohol this year for father mcgivney i'm gonna give up choco chip cookies i can still have ice cream i can still have brownies chocolate chip cookies are kind of my favorite i'm gonna give up chocolate chip cookies right there's a real spiritual dynamic in battle in which the demons have their bull's eye on our priests because we know that the the rise and the fall of many is going to be kind of determined by the faithfulness of the priests and so if you can get a priest you can get a lot of other people to fall as well so to help support them we can make this little sacrifice like a prayer united with sacrifice as again pope john paul ii talked about there's no greater force in human history than prayer united was sacrificed can we can we out of love and out of love of the priesthood and understanding the importance of the priesthood can we make a sacrifice for our pastors thirdly can we offer some sort of support and encouragement and that can that can look like a lot of things as a pastor as somebody who's in charge of a lot of things you're going to receive a whole lot of criticism you're going to hold a whole lot of feedback and negativity and there is a place for that you know people aren't going to like your your homily or they're not going to like your mass time and they're not going to like your mass length they're not gonna like the music or they're not gonna like the the banners or whatever it is and and father right father you know hopefully he's just pouring himself out and he's trying to live a life of sacrifice and he's trying to do the best he can and he's gonna receive a lot of criticism can we make sure that he's also hearing some encouragement and some support and so what can that look like again it's going to take some time and effort but i think like the priesthood's important and father's important and as a sign of gratitude you know how great it would be if on you know one of his homilies if it speaks to you take a little moment to write him an email or write him a letter hey father on sunday you said this word it resonated with me this me in this way hey just thank you for your priesthood thank you for your fatherhood um god bless you i'm praying for you can you as many do can you invite father over for dinner um can you uh with the kids like write them a little card or something i'm telling you this like i've been in a lot of rectories and often what father needs isn't cupcakes or cookies it's a great sign of love like 110 percent my father can only eat so much right and there's there's a lot of people who are good people who want to give this stuff and so i've seen you know the the freshly baked muffins sort of live on the shelf until they go bad and they end up in in the trash can right but i've also seen this i've also seen this um again and again like the muffins usually end up maybe in the trash can but if there's like a picture especially from kids like of of the priest or something like that hand drawn with like their names on it like that type of thing goes up on the wall and it never comes down that type of thing goes up in father's office and it never never comes down like he he he we want to be our pastors they want to be real spiritual fathers and when they have an experience of that it really resonates and it really helps and it really encourages and supports all right so so so again like words of encouragement letters something like that making him feel like he's part of the family that is going to do a huge amount to create a space and a little bit of margin so that father's not just trying to tread water and to try and get through you know life isolated and alone um here's one other very sort of practical suggestion uh coming up in holy week right is holy thursday and holy thursday is a special day in which we celebrate the institution of the eucharist in the priesthood i'd really love for there to be this this kind of development of a tradition of in preparation for um holy thursday the christmas all of that that parishioners and that families take this time to kind of like have father's day to take this time not like in the celebration but this is a great time to write a letter um this is a great time to send a little word of encouragement this is a great time to send like a spiritual bouquet or something like that it's a day in which we're we're honoring and reverencing and celebrating the priesthood and it's a great day it's a great day for us to make sure our particular dawson priest feel loved and supported and and received and seen in all that okay and lastly i could just get into holy week which is like a really busy time for father having that love that support to get into the busy to holy week again it's just going to do a lot um father is a grown man and he's a disciple and and he is responsible for his falling with the lord and he's free and he's going to be judged on his yeses and his nose his fidelity or not but as a church like we can also help set him up for success by praying for him by helping to protect him through our own sacrifices and through and through encouraging him and letting him feel like he really is part of the family i think this is i think this is part of the remedy i think this is part of the remedy and part of the renewal of the priesthood just renewing the way in which we care for our pastors and lastly i'm not a pastor this isn't i have i live with 20 guys i have a different kind of support system um which is but even more it like moves my heart to make sure that we're taking care of of our other brother das and priests and pastors i know you got them i know you got them thank you for watching remember we are pilgrims on this earth someone's peregrine with poco poco little by little bum say we're gonna make it god bless you [Music] you

Channel: Ascension Presents

Views: 21,833

Keywords: ascension, ascension press, ascension presents, father mike, catholic advice, catholic inspiration, catholic motivation, cfrs, franciscan friars of the renewal, fr. Mark-mary, fr mark mary, father mark-mary, catholic friars, pray for your priest, catholic priesthood, diocesan priesthood, diocesan priest vs religious priest, support the priesthood, fr mark mary franciscan friars of the renewal, father mark mary rosary, catholic inspirational videos, parish priest

Id: rpk9G9o62q4

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 04 2022