Over the years I’ve come to have profound respect for clergy who can keep their mouth shut and carry on serving God and Man with love and joy. Believe me, it would be much easier to become resentful, bitter, and mean. Even worse, the priest could become an old gossip, letting junk just fall out of his mouth with ease. The temptations are always there.
One priest told me told me of his inaugural conversation with his bishop wherein he expressed interest in ordination. The crusty old man looked him straight in the eye and said, “Boy, do you pray?”
“Why yes, I pray every day . . .”
“Pray to God you don’t have this curse!” said the bishop.
I think the old man had let the vocation get the better of him. It happens. Or, as one priest said: “I wanted to be a priest out of arrogance; God allows me to be one as a penance.”
+Fr. Joseph Huneycutt, from One Flew Over the Onion Dome, Chapter 17 Concerning the Clergy
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