I was struck with the words of Bishop Gerardo Alminanza; If the shepherd gets sick, will the flock help? Being old and sickly myself, I understand how assistance, any assistance, is very important.
Getting sick is a humbling experience. It is a blow to one's ego. Adolescence is a great experience of independence. How well I remember when I first started to stand on my own. Going back to being dependent on somebody else is a struggle after many years of being strong and able.
Let us pray for our priests. Let us support them if we can.
At times, if you are in the same age as I am, you will feel useless, that the band has gone and left you fluttering in the wind. Priests, I think, feel that they are in the middle of a storm.
Let us love our old priests.
The young, egocentric ones will soon learn their lesson. I hope they realize it before they become old.
Thanks for pointing this sad reality out, and this is more true for our diocesan clergies than for our religious clergies. At least the religious have their community to assist them in their old age. But the secular clergies have to fend by themselves. They may not have professed the vow of poverty but so many of them are practising poverty for real to the point that they end up in their old age without any savings. With most of their siblings having their own respective families, some of them have no one to be able to take care of them. This is the reason why so many dioceses are now instituting their retirement houses for old priests, and this is indeed pretty practical and realistic. Indeed the community must support these aging priests and bishops who have nowhere to go but home.
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