The Lord wants the priest to be dispassionate from the love for money, because once he fell in this love believers would stumble over this and might leave the Church. This fall might come from the lack of resources or his salary. However, God wants your spiritual resistance in front of temptations. Even if the problem of the salary was solved, the person that is passionate for money might not be changed automatically into a dispassionate person. This transformation is the fruit of grace only. The priest must not nag about a difficult situation. Lots of people are in this situation, and solutions might not come easily. However, we must study the situation of the priest in a serious way starting from finding a satisfying salary which might not be possible if the small parish was responsible alone for the sustenance of the man and his family. There must be a central procedure in which the servants of small and big parishes would become equal or almost equal. Maybe, one solution would be to gather all salaries in the archbishopric and then divide them in the most possible fair way. If large parishes insisted on their complete independence, the problem cannot be solved.
If we couldn’t give all the money to the archbishopric, we could at least pay for a common account a percentage of our resources in order to sustain the priests of poor parishes. I am sure that some parishes, at least a few, store amounts of money that stay for years without benefiting anyone. They only let the parish gain some interest while other servants of the Altar live in great difficulty.
When will we understand that we are brothers and that it is a shame on those who have extra money to leave some brothers in severe need. We cannot escape forever from organizing a free or mandatory brotherhood in order not to let others feel isolated.
I didn’t force a mandatory system because I depended on the fact that sharing is spontaneous and this way I could make the most possible fair distribution. However, it is not too late; we could still get inspiration and become closer to each other.
While waiting for a complete organization, there is still the income that comes from the “Epitrachelion” i.e. when the believer pays his priest in occasions such as weddings, baptisms or funerals. Our people are used to this. There is no problem in this until we reach a full reformation. However, this system – the Epitrachelion – cannot succeed unless by having a lot of generosity and the negative point in it is that every believer is baptized only once and gets married and dies also once. This means that he pays three times for the man that fulfills the service. In addition to that, our people are not frequent practitioners, they are seasonal i.e. they attend the services in big feasts. Even in those feasts, not everyone attends. If money trays (that are collected in services) do not collect a lot of money, how can the priest’s salary be collected? Therefore, we still have a problem.
Nevertheless, a partial solution exists and it is to be generous towards our priest in occasions in order for us not to die in our stinginess and for the in need priest not to feel sad with his children who are also our children. Why is it destined for many altar servants to feel, with their sons and daughters, misery or poverty that is very close to misery?
Think together about these situations and then tell me what have you thought about in order to try to find solutions.
Translated by Mark Najjar
Original Text: “معيشة الكاهن” –Raiati 21- 20.05.2012
