Titles and entitlement – a gentle warning!

Titles and entitlement – a gentle warning!
The Notebook
Fr Vincent Sherlock

 

He was at a wedding the day before. I caught up to him as he walked towards the door of our local church for the Vigil Mass. He was telling someone about the wedding – a great do with plenty of food and, of course, drink. I smiled as I caught up to him and he could not have been any more unaware that I was within earshot.

“Maloney was there! I was telling him I’d have to come here tonight to give Sherlock a few pound!” Maloney was the other priest in the parish; he had been moved and I was now the regular priest for Mass in this church too.

The Gospel that weekend was apt. It was about Jesus warning people against those who like to be “greeted obsequiously” in the market square and who are given to wearing clothes and robes that distinguish them. It’s a Gospel passage that always makes me feel uncomfortable. I wonder where we fit in to it all – with titles and robes, and places at top tables!

The man at the door left no room for doubt. A letter to my house might very well be addressed to ‘Very Reverend Father’ but the man was coming to the church that night to “give Sherlock a few pound”.

Insult was neither intended or taken. There was a fondness there and a good-natured heart that lifted mine. This man had my back as he had Maloney’s! He spoke freely to and about us. Chances are he’d call me Father. He’d mean that too. But I couldn’t have liked him any more than I did outside the church that evening.

Still Jesus’ points were well made. We must constantly avoid getting caught up in titles, pomp or any notions of grandeur. Not just priests – all of us.

There can, all too easily, creep into our lives a feeling of superiority that might have its origins in the family of our birth and the place in society’s self-made pecking order to which that seemingly entitles us. Maybe a degree and the letters/title associated with it makes us feel a step or two above the next.

Absolutely a mistake. We all bleed, we all have doubts and, at days’ end, we all need the support of people around us. We all need to feel loved, cherished and respected not for what we are but who we are. Not for what we do but for what we mean.

Wise
 priest

Years ago, a wise priest who taught me many lessons in life, told me of a woman running down a beach, screaming frantically for help. She was in total distress but managed, nonetheless to choose her words:

“Help! Help!” she cried. “Help! Help! My son, the engineer, is drowning!”

Sherlock was glad of the few pound – it helps keep the church open – he was glad this man chose to come and worship God with his neighbours and friends and, truth told, was especially glad this man felt he could make his own of him.

I need not have worried about being greeted obsequiously after all!

 

It was needed

He was a child.  He returned the shopping trolley to the bay and when he offered his mother the returned euro, she told him he could keep it. Later he accompanied her to the butcher shop and then to the newsagent. Finding herself a euro short, she turned to him and asked could she have the coin. “I don’t have it”, he replied. “Where is it?” she asked. “I put it in the box in the butchers”, he told her. “What box?” “The one,” he said as naturally as anything could ever be said, “with THANK YOU written on it”. He didn’t know what the box was but if it was thanking it must be needing!

 

Fishers and fishing

I recently attended the funeral of a priest. He lived his retirement in our diocese, choosing to move to Foxford because he had come there many years earlier on a fishing holiday and returned regularly.

I like to think he found peace there and met peaceful people through his fishing. Fishing seems to call for great patience, respect for what lies beneath the surface, the ability to cope with disappointment and the belief that the tug on the line is all that’s needed. The reeling-in can then begin.

It’s no wonder four fishermen were among the first called by Jesus.