I have been in the Bethany Mission for the Support of Priests for 22 years. I was a growing girl when I found a tiny article about the Mission in „Gość Niedzielny”. I knew that I wanted to get involved in prayer for priests. In my life I have met very good priests. There was a time when they all seemed holy to me, and my Parents instilled in me respect for the clergy. Our home was always open to them as well. Today I am a religious sister. I can say that my vocation was also shaped by the witness of the love of God that I saw in the priests working in my home parish. The sight of a priest who has a living relationship with Jesus always moves me deeply.
As a religious sister I have come to see that both sisters (and I say this of myself as well) and priests — we are only on the way to holiness and often we still have a long way to go. I also work with priests and I see the various problems they struggle with, of which an ordinary parishioner has not the slightest idea. All the more, then, do I see the sense and the enormous need of supporting priests with our prayer. I long for priests, who hold Jesus in their hands every day, to love him with their whole heart, to be completely given over to him. I believe that it is their personal holiness, their union with Jesus, that can set us — the faithful — on fire for holiness. Their witness can draw so very many people to God.
Over all these years I have come to see that prayer for priests is probably the most essential part of my personal spirituality. I have had various experiences of working and cooperating with priests. Sometimes I even said to myself that it really made no sense any more, that I did not want to pray for them any longer. God, however, somehow brought it about that I never abandoned that daily prayer, and I am grateful to him for it. Today I have three priests in my care for whom I pray every day. I pray for them from the moment I wake up in the morning, I remember them when I go to sleep, and during the day too I talk about them to the Lord Jesus.
I would only like to add that we must not idealise priests; they too are ordinary people. They carry within them a priceless gift, thanks to which, through their ministry and especially through the sacraments, we can meet God. Let us talk with priests, let us make demands of them, but let us also support them in their work. They too need to know that they can count on us. It is worth accompanying them in a simply human way… And above all let us pray for them, that they may be as Jesus wants them to be.
A Sister
