In many times throughout history as well as today, and definitely in Itally back in Don Bosco’s days, the priesthood was a well paid, prestigious, and upper class position. Don Bosco was offered a few different jobs as a new priest that could have earned him a lot of money and improved his chances to be a bishop. He chose something else though. Jesus lived a life with the poor. He ate and drank with tax collectors and prostitutes. Yet people looked down on Don Bosco for spending time with street kids.
A priest is not a business manager. He is not an executive of a company. He is not a president of a council. A priest is not a financial administrator. He may do the jobs of all these things, but that is not what a priest is. A priest is a minister, a pastor, a caregiver to anyone who comes to him. I believe strongly that in following Jesus’s example, it is a priest’s job to do his best to lovingly help any person whom the Spirit sends to him. And a priest should also go out of his church to seek those outside and make sure all God’s people under his care always feel loved and taken care of.
A priest is not just there to start a program and then tell it what events are happening and what money it can expect from the church. A priest is supposed to help his people grow in holiness everyday toward our Lord Jesus. One of the reasons I want to be a priest is because it attracts me what Jesus did. He played that hero part. He sacrificed. He layed down his life for every person ever. A priest should do his best also to lay down his life-not just his physical life, but his own desires, his will- to bring Jesus to the people and bring the people closer to Jesus.
I recently watched an excellent movie about Padre Pio, a 20th century Italian saint. This man did everything to first and foremost honor God, and then to bring everyone else to learn to do God’s will also. As I grow and learn and all the more focus myself and being ordained as the Lord’s servant, I am trying to understand what a priest is called to do, by Jesus, by Rome, and by the society. And what I see I that people need and desperately want a true priest. They want Jesus! I only pray that God can work through our human thickness.
