Strengthening the priest financially is an expression of your faith because he is a main basis in the Lord’s Church in which he serves. According to the Book, he should get his living from the temple in which you are a member. In addition to that, you might feel that he is personally close to you through his good pastoral care for you and your family and situation. A loving person takes care of the living of the person he loves.
I am saddened by our sons that shock me with such words: “Let the responsible for Church properties increase the priest’s salary”. In this case you look like someone only interested in requesting without doing anything yourself. Such people barely know anything about the situation of the properties. In many cases, you wouldn’t find any Church property in the village and the income would be limited to what people pay in Church on Sunday: Those people are few and form a maximum percentage of ten percent of the parish in most places.
Because others aren’t present in Church, it is your duty to carry the Church on your shoulders. With this expression, I do not exempt those who are responsible but absent. We are all “the body of Christ, and each one of us is a part of it”.
Do not limit your giving to occasions (baptisms, marriages and funerals). Each of these happens only once in a lifetime. In Sacraments, you are free to give or not. It is insolence from the priest to refuse the amount because it is small. He doesn’t serve for a fee. You should initiate in giving so that he doesn’t feel sad; sadness disrupts the mission and weakens it.
Do not postpone your giving for tomorrow. Even if it was a small amount, give it in order to gain God. This person has dedicated his life and depth for you; shouldn’t you dedicate for him every while an amount of money according to your ability? He would mention your name in front of God and he would have surmounted in front of God thanks to you. If you opened your heart, the difficulties of life would become easy for you. Do not excuse yourself by saying that you are in a hardship. Through hardship, you would still have the penny of the widow and it would save you as it saved her. What you spend for the poor of the earth would become savings for you on your road to the Kingdom.
Encourage your friends to be like you because you might end the priest’s shortage through this. I am a witness of how the nagging of the priest would harm him and his parish. Take the burden of sin off him so that he could go to his service with joy and not be occupied by the obsession of money but be busy with the holiness of the service and reading. The person that is occupied by the Lord would relax from the burdens of life. Then, if he didn’t go to pastoral activity, you can blame him.
We cannot blame him if he tried to make his living through an extra job, but every job would take from him the time that should be originally dedicated to service. If he was in need, he would be tempted to be close to the rich people of the parish. Rich people shouldn’t have any kind of special status for the priest for any reason. Also we must not prefer any building plan or renovation or any physical activity over the strengthening of the priest, because a building plan could wait while feeding the priest’s children cannot.
In the old Greek civilization, philosophers didn’t own anything but lived from the city. If we brought a young man from the Institute of Theology to make him a priest, he would own nothing. He should live from the church a life that any educated person lives (buy books, travel to conferences, charity). Even if we forget about those activities, there would still be the normal living for an average family.
Move your hearts for the sake of those who serve Christ.
Translated by Mark Najjar
Original Text: “تعزيز الكاهن” –Raiati 24- 10.06.2012
