It is the Priest Who Fathers Our Souls

What is a family? Is it just the people we share blood with? Or does it go deeper than that? Consider that a priest is more of a father to us than our biological fathers. The relationship we have with each other in the family of God (with God as our ultimate Father) should be the basis for what it means to be family. And one of the primary actions of this family is love and sacrifice - our willingness to give of ourselves to each other.

Our latest chat installment dives into these important topics. Explore with our chatters what it really means to be a family, and what it really takes to love that family through sacrifice and self-giving.

If you like the chat below, check out the Living Jesus Chat Room of the Visitation Sisters. Join us at 7:30 p.m. ET each Sunday!

Sherry: Had a chance to get to the Visitation monastery in Vienna – and talked to Sr. Gratia there!

Visitation Sister: Tell me more.

Sherry: About the monastery?

Visitation Sister: Yes.

Sherry: The cloister church there is AMAZING! It is like sitting in the midst of Salesian teaching – I would love to send you pictures. But how?

Visitation Sister: Email.

Sherry: OK. Will do.

Bethany: A monastery is a very strict place for living a life of prayer and meditation.

Sherry: I talked to Sr. Gratia in the “meeting room – with an “open grill.” They have there something like “companions of the Visitation order” – and these women get the cross to wear. I was a little bit jealous to be honest. Anyway, will send you pictures.

Denise: Would be wonderful to hear about your visit there, Sherry.

Sherry: Not so much to say though – but I am contemplating to go over for an 8 days of silence retreat in their monastery. They open their monastery for that. But so does your monastery, right, Sr. Susan?

Visitation Sister: Yes.

Sherry: When Covid ends…expect a knock from me on your door one day, Sister.

Visitation Sister: OK. Welcome at that time for sure.

Bethany: Living in the spiritual life with Jesus in the monastery, not all the people can enter and become a nun or priest, they have to get this calling from Jesus; it is not you who chooses him; it is he who chooses you.

Sherry: Ok. Thanks for letting me share a bit. But I would love to hear all your answers for the questions today too.

Our Father(s) on Earth

Question 1: How do priests and bishops become our fathers in an even more real way than biological fathers?

Bethany: They are getting a call by Jesus.

Sherry: Well, we share the same spiritual DNA with our priests – not necessarily with our biological father though.

Sherry: The priests and bishops provide my spiritual food. Like my father did when I was young.

Visitation Sister: They father our souls, which is more eternal (at least now) than our bodies, although we will resurrect someday.

Sherry: They provide “spiritual shelter.”

Lucy: If we are looking at father as the relationship of the elder to the younger, the mentor, protector and advisor, all of these can be filled by a priest in our growing in God.

Sherry: Well said, Sr. Susan and Lucy.

Bethany: Like Jesus choosing St. Paul to become his disciple to become the teacher of the church.

Sherry: In your experience – what do you think – do all priests take the spiritual fatherhood on? Is it necessary?

Lucy: In today’s world, the lines of fatherhood are very much more blurred than in the past and allow for others to fill that role even without a biological connection.

Sherry: I agree, Lucy – I think we have lost the beauty and honor for fatherhood somehow. In a worldly way.

Visitation Sister: Most priests want to be helpful, but not all can direct souls as well as others.

Lucy: I agree there is a loss there.

Sherry: Sister – but it does not even have to be Spiritual Direction. Which is in one way or another – a form of a spiritual gift too – but the willingness to be a Father. That is a big load on the shoulders.

Lucy: Whether priest or familial, not all fathers fill the role equally, but that is not to say they are not giving their best.

Denise: Many priests and Bishops have become attached to the world and are not shepherding their flocks.

Sherry: Probably harder for younger priests too.

Bethany: God choosing you to become spiritual leader is not easy, but with Jesus’ help, it will be easy, but in your spiritual life without his help, you can’t do anything to become a spiritual person.

What is a family?

Visitation Sister: Q2 2. Reflect on the fact that the earthly family is ultimately created by two unrelated strangers getting married and having children. Are the spouses less family than the children who share blood? What, then, is the essence of family?

Sherry: It's a covenant relationship between spouses. Most intimate form of relationship.

Lucy: There are different ways to enter a family, but once in, it should be for life and therefore devastating to have that bond broken.

Visitation Sister: I think marriage is also a mystical reality that binds people as much as blood relationship.

Denise: A supernatural bond forms.

Visitation Sister: Perhaps family is a call to souls that God has chosen to be together.

Denise: But not in all marriages.

Sherry: God has not even the same “species” with us – and we become part of His family through sacramental covenants.

Lucy: Yes, the choice of commitment, blessed as a sacrament, the birth of children (again a blessing), and the choice of adoption.

Sherry: Sister Susan, I think I will take your last line – and put it in the wedding card for my niece.

Caroline: We have a special bond in Christ because we share His body in the Eucharist.

Sherry: We share the same Father and the same blood. What could be more family?

Denise: Yes!

Lucy: I like it.

Rebecca: We acknowledge the same Father, care for one another, share — some blood relatives make their lives into the opposite of “family” — use one another instead of acting in love, as a Christian family does when it is indeed Christian.

Visitation Sister: Christians are more family again in the sense of soul.

Ines: If we’re all children of God, which makes us brothers and sisters. We’re children of God through baptism.

Sherry: Yes.

Ines: Although sometimes these days it seems Christians/Catholics don’t treat each other that way. Particularly online, it seems. Lots of division. Division everywhere in the world and in the U.S., but when it invades the Church, it makes me incredibly sad.

Ines: We can disagree and even argue — and certainly Church Fathers and Mothers have! — but the degree of nastiness and siloed thinking has become hurtful to our Church and to individuals.

Denise: Agree, Ines.

Sherry: I agree too.

Rebecca: I agree and feel the same way.

Caroline: Yes, it’s even worse when we divide ourselves within the Church.

Denise: We are in the midst of a diabolical disorientation.

Ines: And to a great degree, there is a “group think” that seems to hold sway in the world right now, and if you don’t belly up to that bar, you are shut down. There is no room to discourse and understand. No family can exist like that for very long. It is diabolic, I agree, Denise!

Caroline: Yes, the world makes people disappear now.

Ines: Literally and figuratively. How could it benefit the Church (and the world) for us to live more attuned to this family reality of our Christian faith?

Caroline: It is very hard for Americans because we have been raised to act as individuals.

Ines: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Sherry: Good point, Caroline. Individualism is very dangerous to unity.

Ines: Witnessing agape love, growing in virtue, tending to the weakest and most neglected and abused – this speaks to the world more loudly than anything.

Rebecca: Amen to that, Ines.

Sherry: I am preparing for a ‘restorative practice’ workshop right now for a church council who has completely fallen in conflict and somewhat even entrenchment. I think most people do not know how to “practically” love. That’s where Salesian spirituality becomes so useful, I find.

Ines: We can be individuals and still die to self. There is in our current world a danger of annihilating the individual such as happens in Communist societies — just as bad. But to be “out for #1/self” is of course to swell with pride and all the other cardinal sins/vices.

Love and Suffering

Sherry: Love has become – not action – not linked with humility and gentleness anymore, it is all about “kind fake words” – I find. That’s enough. If it sounds loving – it is OK. But that is not a love that feeds the soul and nurtures relationships, I find.

Rebecca: It is. But how do we undo these extremes?

Caroline: We have accepted cheap sentimentality instead of the down-in-the-trenches love.

Ines: Yes, Sherry, love is a “feeling” according to the world. Whereas we know love is a choice (often made with great difficulty).

Sherry: It’s a choice to become less.

Ines: Yeah… Rebecca… if we had the answers… I wish I did! Both extremes are from the enemy. Prayer, witness of life, the Sacraments.

Visitation Sister: The SACRED HEART IS THE DEEPEST LOVE POSSIBLE; HOW DO WE BRING OTHERS TO Jesus’ heart?

Rebecca: God calls each of us to become more like him in our here and now in the world.

Caroline: By letting Him transform us so that people will want what we have.

Denise: We can bring others only to the extent we are ourselves, and then only as we live and they see.

Ines: Amen, Sister! How… I think it’s living in a way that attracts others, when they notice a peace or patience or other virtue in difficult circumstances. People will want to know what that special quality is, or how that peace can enter their hearts. Caroline said it better, lol.

Caroline: I don’t know about better, just shorter.

Ines: Succinctly, anyway. I like it.

Rebecca: Agreed.

Sherry: Could it also happen through our suffering?

Ines: Yes… I think when others see how we endure suffering with peace and patience, which is a sign that something else is present (someone else!). “We” as if I’m the picture of perfect suffering!!! I’m not!! I whine a lot.

Rebecca: I think there is a way that we can unite our suffering to HIS, and even if no one sees it, it can have a positive effect on others.

Ines: Rebecca — yes! That spiritual reality beyond the witness. Of course. Well said!

Sherry: Rebecca, that’s what I was wondering.

Rebecca: Not sure of your meaning, Sherry.

Ines: I waste a lot of suffering. I want to be better with this reality of uniting my suffering to Christ’s.

Sherry: Oh, Ines, I hear you, sister. I am so NOT good in suffering either. But I am better than 10 years ago where I did not even consider suffering for a moment.

Caroline: It can be hard if we keep trying to figure out why.

Ines: Yes, this is true for me as well. And you know, in our world today, everything is geared to avoid suffering of any kind, to the point where we will do horrible things to not have to suffer.

Sherry: I read a short biography from a Saint last week. And honestly, I think she had every possible disease you can imagine. I caught myself whining upwards saying: “Please, Lord, not a life like that. Please not.”

Rebecca: I believe that there is somehow an “economy of suffering.” It has to do with us all being connected.

Sherry: I am not avoiding EVERY suffering – but a life consumed with pain…I need so much grace for that.

Ines: Rebecca – agree. We are connected through the Passion, death and Resurrection of Christ.

Denise: Whining upwards, thank you!

Sherry: Rebecca, I would like to read about the “economy of suffering.” Can you recommend a good read on that?

Ines: Through His Sacred Heart!

Rebecca: Sometimes I think it is LITTLE sufferings that are harder to endure than the BIG ones.

Sherry: Rebecca, you are spilling over with wisdom tonight. You are probably right. When we are drenched with suffering – it might be easier to surrender to it than when we are “sprinkled” with suffering.

Ines: Drenched with suffering, rather than being sprinkled with it. Like Jesus was.

Caroline: I must go early tonight–my friend is here. Have a blessed week!

Sherry: Bye, Caroline. Was great to see you here tonight again.

Denise: Goodnight, Caroline!

Ines: Good night, Caroline!

Denise: The time has gone fast tonight. Goodnight to all and thank you. God bless.

Visitation Sister: Yes, blessings for each of you!

Sherry: Oh my. I just realized – we are actually done already.

Ines: Good night, everyone!

If you liked the chat above, check out the Living Jesus Chat Room of the Visitation Sisters. Join us at 7:30 p.m. ET each Sunday!