How do you cope with sad times?

Being a priest means being invited into some of the most moving and life-shaping moments of people's lives. It is an extraordinary privelege, and so at times of sadness, illness or loss when you as a priest are called in to be with a family or a person, it is a moment requiring great sensitivity and often very few words.

Although it is never easy to be there with other people who are suffering or sad, there is also a sense of hope and constructiveness. You are called there to assist the people to pray together if that is what they want to do, and to witness to the promises and hopes that we have in our faith.

You are offering the strength of the gospel to people at times of great need..... and this always strikes me as a awesome privelege. You are able to be of great service to people at these times, to be a listening ear, a quiet voice of  calm, assisted by the fact that you are not yourself overcome with the natural grief of a situation.

Whilst never trying to "spiritualise away" or downplay people's grief, there is often a sense that you are bringing a positive moment of hope and promise at a time when often nothing else can be done. 

The sad moments are often moments of incredible and unexplainable power. Perhaps its because we are all helplessly turning in absolute hope to our God at a moment of intense difficulty.

these moments in no way turn me off my vocation, quite the opposite, although I never look forward to them happening.


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