HOPE: It can be a special struggle for priests/religious because more often than not we do not see the tangible, immediate results of our work. A doctor can see the patient healed, even a plumber can see the leak fixed, but rarely do we see tangible immediate results of our work as priests.

Who knows how our sermons go over?Who knows if our words in the confessional helped?
Who knows if the marriages we have performed worked out?
Who knows if the kids we got ready for First Communion will even keep faith?
What do you do when you sit for hours in the confessional and no one comes hut the scrupulous person and the pious lady who was changing the alter linen?
What do you do when you get all excited preparing your presentation for the parents of the First communion children and all they really want to discuss is whether the girls will wear white veils and the boys sport coats?
What do you do when you are preparing a young couple for marriage and they are only interested in the wedding dress and the church decoration?                                                                    

We trust that in some mysterious way the Lord is working through us even when we cannot see the effect.
• To trust that God is listening even when there is no response.
• To hope he is there when it seems he has abandoned us.
• To trust that our efforts at prayer are producing some invisible fruit when all visible signs of success are  not there.

• To hope that “wasting time with the Lord” is actually more productive than getting some practical  work accomplished.
• In the end what counts is not how many times we have succeeded or failed, but how we have begun again after a failure.

 “There are no plains in our spiritual life, only hills and valleys and the way to growth in holiness is not to lose hope when in the valley,(F.Sheen)

BishopTimothy M. Dolan’s  first Lenten sermon when he was a priest.

President of Men’s association reminded him, “Father, you are supposed to give us an evening recollection in Lent”  He took the reminder seriously prepared for hours over three talks, but two men turned up. Just two men! He was crushed. But gave the talks all the same.
Twelve years later he visited a woman in the hospital, paralyzed, bedridden, her husband caring tenderly for her. “Oh.” said the priest. “I admire the way you care for your wife.”
“Father, I’m just trying to be that Simon of Cyrene you talked about.”
“Yes, remember that Lenten evening recollection you gave, ‘Just as Simon helped Our Lord carry his cross, we do the same every time we help somebody carry theirs. I’m just trying to help Ramona carry hers”  

The effect of a sermon twelve years later!”

By Fr. Tom Karthik SDB