Sharing Our Very Selves

St. Paul tells us in the second reading today that he is proud that he shared with his disciples, “not only the gospel of God, but our very selves as well.” We all love teachers who put themselves into their teaching and give us more than just the words in the textbook. I think we love this quality in our priests as well. We love priests who understand us and with whom we have something in common. While we have beautiful examples of how the humanness of our priests helps us to know God better, their are also cases where the humanness of priests becomes a major stumbling block and even a scandal. It has always been this way since the beginning of the Church.

On this Priesthood Sunday we give thanks for our priests who are chosen from among us. We priests are called to image the perfect fatherhood of God, yet we often fall short, as all fathers do. Pray for your priests. Give thanks for the good you see, quickly overlook the bad, and remember that the two are always wrapped up together in the human condition. May God allow us as priests, broken though we are, to be living witnesses as we share not only the gospel of God, but our very selves.