# The Eternal Priesthood/Chapter 11

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CHAPTER XI.
THE PRIEST'S SORROWS.
We read twice in the Gospels that Jesus wept, and only once that He "rejoiced in the Holy Ghost." He wept at the grave of Lazarus, and over Jerusalem when He saw it from the Mount of Olives. He rejoiced when He gave thanks to His Father because the mysteries of His kingdom were revealed, not to the wise of this world, but to the humble and childlike. Our Lord was the Man of Sorrows; and a priest must in this too be like Him, for the disciple is not above his master. But the three-and-thirty years of mental sorrow did not make our Divine Lord morose or melancholy or of a clouded countenance. The fruit of the Spirit was in Him in all fulness, and "the fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace." No countenance was ever more radiant with a divine love and joy than His. And we shall not be like our Master if our countenances are sad and our voices mournful. Nevertheless, a priest must be a ​man of sorrows. If he has the intuition of faith to see the sin of the world, and a heart of compassion to feel for the havoc of death both in body and soul, he must share in the sorrows of our Divine Redeemer.
1. The first sorrow of a priest is the consciousness of his own unworthiness.
The words of S. Paul must be in the mind of every priest: "I give Him thanks who hath strengthened me, even to Christ Jesus our Lord, for that He hath counted me faithful, putting me in the ministry, who before was a blasphemer and a persecutor and contumelious. But I obtained the mercy of God because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. Now the grace of our Lord hath abounded exceedingly with faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus. A faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief. But for this cause have I obtained mercy, that in me first Christ Jesus might show forth all patience for the information of them that shall believe in Him unto life everlasting." These words show that S. Paul did not count himself to be faithful; that he was conscious of his great past unworthiness; that he was forgiven because he sinned in ​ignorance; that he knew no one more sinful than himself; and that for this very cause he was chosen, that he might be a living witness of the patience of Jesus and an evidence of the sovereign grace of salvation, that none should ever despair.
What priest can look back without wondering that he should have been called to be a priest? How many of our early companions were every way more fit than we. They never committed a multitude of sins, follies, imprudences, we know of ourselves. Much we did knowing well that we ought not to do it; much we see now in a light which we then, through our own fault, had not. Of no one do we know so much evil as we know of ourselves; not perhaps of literal breaches of the law, but of great spiritual sins in the midst of great spiritual graces. The love, forgiveness, hope, confidence, and salvation we preach to others is to be seen first in ourselves. If His mercy had not been infinite, we should not only not be priests, but we should not even exist.
"What man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man that is in him?" They that know most of us know little of the world of inward life reaching back to our earliest consciousness. Our whole life is suspended in it as if now present in one ​view—childhood, boyhood, youth, manhood, distinct but continuous, seen all in one moment; there are lights of great brightness descending from God, and spots very dark blotting the light ascending from ourselves. How is it possible that I should be chosen to be a priest? I know more sins of my own than of my companions in boyhood who were not called to come so near to God. Was it that He saw that I should not otherwise be saved? that I am not fit to battle with the world, or even to live in the world? that without the surroundings and supports of a priest's life and state I should have sunk under the fraud, or force, or fascinations of the world? When I remember what I was, how can I dare to take the word of God in my mouth? When I warn men against sin, why do they not say, "Physician, heal thyself"? When I tell them of their faults, I hear them say, "Thou hast a beam in thine own eye," and, as S. Gregory says, ulcus in facie. And when I preach the reign of the love of God in the heart, and generosity, and self-oblation, knowing what I am—my impatience yesterday and my shrinking to-day—a voice says to me, "Thou whited wall." Every priest who knows himself will know what it is to be discouraged, saddened, depressed by a multitude of crosses and disappointments, but none are ​so heavy to bear as our own conscious unworthiness. S. Gregory of Nazianzum says of himself: "This held me in a lower state, and made me humble, that it was better to hear 'the voice of praise' than to profess myself a teacher of things beyond my powers; namely, the majesty, the sublimity, the greatness (of God), and the pure natures which hardly apprehend the splendour of God, whom the abyss hides, whose hiding-place is the darkness, being the purest light, and inaccessible to the multitude, who is in all and out of all; who is all beauty and above all beauty; who illuminates and eludes the speed and the sublimity of the mind, always withdrawing in the measure in which He is apprehended, and raising him who loves Him upwards by fleeing from him, and when held passing from his hands."
Who has not remembered the day of his ordination, and said, "Who will grant me that I might be according to the months past, according to the day in which God kept me? When His lamp shined over my head, and I walked by His light in darkness. As I was in the days of my youth, when God was secretly in my tabernacle."
2. Another sorrow of a priest arises from the sins of his bad people. The chief and lifelong ​mental sorrow of Jesus came from the daily contact of His divine sanctity with the sin of the world. Looking upon the distortion and defacement of the creation of God, He said, "O just Father, the world hath not known Thee." The world knows not its Maker. It is a profound contempt of the Divine Majesty not to know Him. And yet for those that knew not what they did Jesus prayed upon the Cross. But who is there in our charge that does not know God? Even the grossest ignorance is an affected ignorance. If we have in us the heart of our Master, the sins on every side of us, sins of the flesh and of the spirit, the havoc and ravage of Satan in men, women, children, must be a ceaseless sorrow. In the measure in which we have a hatred of sin and a a love of souls, the spiritual death of our people will be always a perceptible and personal grief. Ill-usage and ingratitude can be borne patiently. All that men can say or do against us is of little weight. A priest is signum cui contradicetur: he is a butt for all the slings and stones of false and evil tongues; but though this can do us no hurt, yet to be hated, scorned, and ridiculed is cutting to flesh and blood. Nevertheless, this brings little sorrow. It may excite resentment, but resentment dries up sorrow. Sorrow comes from love, compassion, pity for souls: ​such a sorrow is a sign of likeness to the Good Shepherd. As S. Paul said to the Corinthians who turned against him, "I most gladly will spend, and be spent myself, for your souls, although loving you more, I be loved less." Our Lord also had said before: "If the world hate you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you." To be hated, therefore, is a countersign of our fidelity.
We live with the vision of souls that are dead continually before our eyes. The plain of the dry bones was spectral, but the revelry and surfeiting of souls that are spiritually dead is far more ghastly. But it needs a spiritual intuition to discern it: therefore some men can live in the midst of it without perceiving it; and even we, who ought to have the first-fruits of the Spirit, perceive it only in the measure of our discernment.
Men of evil life are murderers of souls. By direct intention, or by the infection of example, they destroy the innocent and turn back the penitent. We can see the plague spreading from home to home, from soul to soul. The reign of sin and the shadow of death settle upon souls and homes over which we have long been watching, but in vain. Sometimes Satan seems all but visible: his presence ​palpable, and his power may be felt in the overthrow of years of labour. In every flock there will be the enemies of God, open and declared, clandestine and concealed. Of all such S. Paul says: "Of whom I have told you often, and now tell you weeping, that they are enemies of the Cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things."
3. But besides the sins of bad men, a priest has to suffer by the lukewarmness of good men. That people should be so good, and yet not better; that they should be so full of light, and yet fall so short of it; that they should do so many good acts, and yet not do more; that they should have so few faults, but so few excellences; that they should be so blameless, but deserve so little praise; so full of good feeling, but so spare in good works; so ready to give, but so narrow in their gifts; so regular in devotions, yet so little devout; so pious, yet so worldly; so ready to praise the good works of others, and yet so hard to move to do the like; so full of censures of the inertness and inconsistency, omissions, faults, and lukewarmness of other men, and yet so unhelpful and soft and unenergetic and lukewarm themselves—all these are spiritual para​doxes and contradictions which vex and harass a priest with perpetual disappointment. Where he looked for help he finds none; where he thought he could trust he finds his confidence betrayed; where he thought to lean for support he finds the earth give way. There is something in sorrow for sin which unites us with God. It alarms, and warns us that we are in the front of the battle, and that we can never put off "the whole armour of God." It is a wrestling with spiritual wickedness in the high places of subtilty and strength, in which souls perish before our eyes, and we ourselves are in danger. This braces and confirms our courage and self-command. But the petty and paltry faults of good people, the littleness and the selfishness, the self-pleasing and the refined insensibility to the sorrows, sufferings, and sins that are around them—these things irritate and provoke without rousing our self-control. We are tempted to fret and complain under our disappointments from good people; and we understand S. Paul's disappointment when he said, "I have no man so of the same mind, who with sincere affection is solicitous for you; for all seek the things that are their own, not the things that are Jesus Christ's." As a rule, they who talk most do least, ​and they who are always asking why this or that is not done are the last to do what is needed. Our people may be divided into talkers and doers: the doers are silent, and the work is done; the talkers mostly find fault with the way of doing it, and the work itself when done. Complaining is their contribution to the work, and they give little else. It is sad and strange how few will give their personal service. They will give money, but not time and trouble. Almsgiving has less self-denial than personal work. But personal care of the sick or the sorrowful or the sinful is more precious in God's sight than all gold and silver.
4. Another of the sorrows of a priest is from false brethren. Under this name may be classed not only apostates and men of unsound faith, but dissemblers and betrayers of secrets, and whisperers and murmurers and detractors, and those who hang about a priest's house, and note and observe and pick up and carry away every discontent and grief and grudge that is against him. Such men are usually profuse in words of respect and of personal attachment and of devoted loyalty. Their reverence is servile, and their professions of goodwill beyond all measure. Who can suspect such men without rash judgment and an ungenerous mind? The better a ​priest is, the more trustful he will be. He believes others to be as himself; he hates dissimulation, and believes other men to be incapable of it. Therefore he answers simply and without suspicion, and where he can speak out he tells the questioner all he wants to know. In a little while a cloud of misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and misstatements come like gnats about the priest's head. Whence, why, and what about, who can tell? Friendships are broken, resentments are kindled, the parish is divided, dissensions separate families. At last the poor priest remembers the day and the man and the questions. It is a lesson for life; not the first, perhaps, nor the last. And yet people blame him for reserve and silence, as if it had not been burnt into him by cautery. False brethren are bad enough; but false sisters are worse, in the measure in which they are less accurate in hearing and more unwearied in retailing.
These things are vexatious; but there are worse still. There are false brethren who carp at every act of authority, and criticise every word. They are thoroughly out of harmony with those who are over them. The parish priest never does right, and can do nothing aright. And this murmuring infects others with discontent. These things, in themselves ​contemptible, will nevertheless set a parish in contention against their priest. A spirit of criticism, once roused, is ravenous and unrelenting. Peace and charity are destroyed, and ill-will arises between flock and pastor, from whose hands they receive the absolution of the most Precious Blood and the Bread of eternal life. At first sight some may wonder why S. Paul, after summing up a black list of the sins of the flesh, adds "enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths, quarrels, dissensions, sects," and closes the list with "murders, drunkenness, revellings, and suchlike." In truth, the spiritual sins of "enmities and dissensions" are more Satanic than the sins of the flesh, for Satan has no body; and they are more at variance with God, because they are spiritual, and God is charity.
5. The last great sorrow of a priest that can now be added is the fall of a brother priest. It may be of one who has grown up with him from boyhood, and was ordained with him on the same day, or of one over whom he has watched with the care and hope of an elder brother. He was once innocent, bright in mind, single of heart, his intelligence full of light, and his natural powers largely unfolded. His outset was full of promise. Every one looked ​forward to a life of multiplying usefulness and of sacerdotal perfection. All at once, as a tree breaks asunder and shows decay at the heart, he falls, or little by little the leaves grow pale and droop, and a sickliness which none can understand overspreads the tree. Some secret temptation, some perilous allurement, some unchastened intimacy, some clouding of the conscience, some relaxation of rule, some neglect of self-examination, some omissions of prayer, some fatal opportunity, when conscience is silenced, and the will is weak and the temptation strong—then comes the first fall, after which to fall again and again is easy. The gulf is passed, and he enters upon an unknown world ubi nullus ordo et umbra mortis. He wonders to find himself in a state so strange and new, and to be so little afraid. Once he thought that after such a fall he should have died; but now he finds his life whole in him. And God only, and one more, know the truth, and the truth need never come out. The seal of confession will cover it; and outwardly he is the same man—priest and pastor. Who shall know it if he do not betray himself? To shrink from work, to cease to be seen and heard, would call attention and awaken curiosity. He goes on as before, or rather he is more seen and more heard than ever. Nobody ​suspects him. The stone in the wall is silent, and the timber in the roof does not cry out; who, then, can know? Nobody could prove anything, even if people suspect. Safety is impunity, and impunity leads to impenitence. In the end all comes out into the light, not so much by the search of man as by the finger of God. Long impunity gives time and occasion for a long career of reiterated sins, and a daily practice of simulating piety and of dissembling sin hardens his forehead and his heart. He defies all witnesses, denies all evidence, and persists in deceiving all who can be deceived. But the priest who loves him, and knows all, cannot be deceived; and his sorrow is for the soul on which the sacerdotal character was indelibly impressed in the day when he was consecrated to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth, the image of the Son of God, a shepherd of the sheep. His sorrow is also for the souls that have been wrecked by the priest in his fall; for the scandal to the faithful and to those that are without, and for the sanctity of the priesthood which has been stained, and for the Church which has been dishonoured, and for our Divine Master, who has been once more sold and betrayed. What sorrow can go beyond this? All that can be said is, "Alas, alas, my brother!"
* ↑ S. Luke x. 21.
* ↑ Gal. v. 22.
* ↑ 1 S. Tim. i. 12-16.
* ↑ 1 Cor. ii. 11.
* ↑ Orat. ii. § lxxvi. tom. i. p. 49.
* ↑ Job xxix. 2-4.
* ↑ 2 Cor. xii. 15
* ↑ S. John xv. 18.
* ↑ Philip, iii 18, 19.
* ↑ Philip, ii. 20, 21.
* ↑ Gal. v. 19-21.
* ↑ 3 Kings, xiii. 30.