On the path of priesthood, activism, neglecting prayer and setting aside spiritual direction can cloud our vision until we lose sight of Christ, the living source of our vocation. It can even lead us to feel alone or forgotten.
Even when we don’t see it clearly, the Lord calls us and asks us: “What do you want me to do for you?”
Let’s analyze some situations together:
1. Blind: When someone leaves the seminary and starts walking through a life between shepherding and administrative and executive functions, he can begin to enter a jungle world where he experiences life situations and saturations.
One of the first temptations that lead to blindness is to abandon spiritual accompaniment, continuing to abandon reading and spiritual and theological formation; bases and elements of priestly life. This starts generating myopia because you can no longer see the whole of your priestly life but just a part of it and you can reduce your gaze only to something not to someone.
The next thing that comes, the latest virus that can end up blinding you is activism, where your prayer time is reduced to the Holy Mass only. The blindness ends up being completed because your ministry is in a unique void, a void that does not allow you to look at your ministry or your life and makes you experience sadness and anguish.
2. On the edge of the road:
Here there are two issues
On the one hand is not walking and generating; Your life begins to fall into the monotony of living, you do not dare to generate anything either through your ministry or with the ministry. You feel that everything is a nothingness, but everyone around you live their lives and follow their path, and you remain stuck, you even begin to feel alone because everyone is doing their own thing and you remain isolated because you are blind and because you are blind you begin to isolate yourself.
On the other hand, being on the edge of the road is also playing with your life’s limits; Being blind and on edge, some pleasure may appear that do not add to your life. Well, as psychologists say, “in order to calm anxiety, the psyche seeks pleasure,” and the problem is that there are good pleasures like listening to music or watching sports and bad pleasures that trap you and are difficult to let go. However, we are not here to judge but to help and accompany, but in order to do this it is important to analyze reality the because we are blind.
3. Beggar: It is the hardest situation a priest can experience in his ministerial experience, because being blind he seeks someone to value him and looks to do things to be loved and respected. It is ministerial begging, even to be seen by his bishop or to be seen by society, a begging that can even seek to satisfy him with the search for power. It is asking why he cannot be valued for himself, nor loved for himself. He ties himself to others, whether he ties himself to another person, to a position, to seeking power, or even to a parish (level). Begging is a sign of inner poverty and losing even the supernatural vision of discovering that he has a hidden treasure in his heart, not only because he is a priest but because he is a son of God, that God called him to be a priest.
4. They silence him: Those who are close to Jesus silence him, it is possible that the attitudes of many of us who are inserted in the faith silence others, out of fear of what they will say, or of stigmatization or simply because they can blame us for their help or his work. Many times a blinded priest has an added bonus to his blindness and it is fear along with prejudice. As well as people who are “close to God” where they do not look at the blind and wounded because they fear “losing their race” in their walk close to Jesus.
Jesus’ works is different: He gets close and calls him in order to restore the sight of the wounded, fallen, blinded and beaten priest; Jesus sends for him because when you are blind you must trust that person God puts in your way to remind you again that you are called.
After calling him, Jesus is subtle with the priest and even asks him “What do you want me to do for you?”.
This is the priest restructuring.
Let him see” is to see life again, to see life even with the blindness experienced so that the priest can accompany the Christian in a different way, to accompany them from what was transferred to him and thus walk together again. The following will be different, because when one follows the healed Jesus, he can show that his life is a constant thanksgiving, because he experienced blindness, begging and contempt; but everything falls when Jesus finds you, he calls you and you follow him. It is a return to seeing and seeing with maturity, it is even a return to following, but it is a following with gratitude without seeking only to comply or only to go behind. It is a life impact that leads to a pact with your entire life. It is a follow-up out of love but not out of obligation, a follow-up to be able to see and not just to see, a follow-up to know one is alive and seen and not for points in the resume. Follow Him because you have seen and because you have seen Him and He has healed you, you have decided to follow Him again.
Please pray for us!
Something good is on the way!
