Clergy find ways to maintain balance

Social unrest, innocent school children and youth shot, refugees forced to flee their homelands.

Compound those events with the COVID-19 pandemic, and one can easily be overwhelmed with despair, wondering how to help others and keep one’s self balanced.

Priests and deacons in the Diocese of Baton Rouge on the front line of having to perform funerals while counseling stricken family members,  experience those same feelings. 

Father Paul Yi, pastor of St. George Church in Baton Rouge, said the greater priority sometimes is meeting spiritual needs rather than physical needs. He said people can carry someone to the Lord because of faith, not necessarily on a stretcher into the church, such as in the parable of people bringing a paralytic on a stretcher to Jesus for healing but through silent prayer.

Father Yi recently had a real-life encounter with the parable. He pondered the Gospel reading of Jesus healing the paralytic while preparing a homily for a daily Mass and shortly after leaving St. George, in the thoroughfare of the Siegen Lane roadside near the church, there was a flashing light and a small group of people gathered around a man who was writhing on the ground. He was like the paralytic in a sense that his limbs were mangled, a victim of a hit and run.

“And these good Samaritans (including a Louisiana State Police officer) were surrounding him and assuring him that it would be okay, that the ambulance was on its way,” said Father Yi.

He gave the man the anointing of the sick and prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet while first responders tended to him. Father Yi believes the anointing and Divine Mercy chaplet helped the man as much as the physical help he received. 

While aiding those undergoing intense suffering people should remember two things: the importance of community support and self-care, said Father Trey Nelson, pastor of St. Jude the Apostle in Baton Rouge.

“I’ve always believed God calls us to what I call the three adages: happy, healthy, holy,” said Father Nelson. He said priests, too, must remember holiness also includes taking care of personal needs.

“I would like people to realize the old expression, ‘Priests are people too,’ ” said Father Nelson. “We have our ministry that we do self-care, our personal health and then issues in our own family.”

Father Nelson experiences joy but also sees ample brokenness in providing spiritual direction to youth and young adults. He also ministers to students and families from St. Jude School experiencing trials.

“Then you have the basics of priesthood; you’re hearing confessions and getting called out at 3 a.m. to the hospital because someone is dying,” said Father Nelson.

He had a recent challenge of celebrating five funerals in one week, a record for St. Jude.

And in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Father Nelson lost his mother, Dorothy, on Nov. 5, 2020.

“That was really hard,” said Nelson, who was the celebrant for her funeral Mass.

In addition to dealing with pastoral challenges some priests live alone, which can add to the potential of loneliness and sense of isolation, according to Father Nelson. For him, prayer is critical to keep perspective.

“If I don’t have my early morning private personal prayer time, I don’t feel I’m going to be much good for anyone that day,” said Father Nelson. 

He also counts on support from his permanent deacons and staff. There are also friends he is close to and “doesn’t really have to say anything” about the problem. They are simply present for him.

This helps him remembers the privilege and joy of being present with others.

“All this (trials, sufferings and frustrations) is overshadowed by the joy that it is to do this. It is a joy and it’s a privilege to walk with people through all these moments,” said Father Nelson. “Whether you’re doing a funeral or sitting down with a 19-year-old who’s trying to figure out where his life is going it’s all privilege and it’s all a joy.”

Father Nelson and Father Yi are consoled when the laity embraces suffering together.

“Some years ago, I invited an engaged couple into the church to practice their wedding vows,” Father Yi said. “As we entered, they saw tables full of baby photos and toys that had been set up for the funeral for a 19-month-old boy the next morning. The bride-to-be knew the parents of the boy and she began to cry. She was grieving with the parents of the little boy. She cared.”

“And that’s what happened at the funeral of that little boy – hundreds of friends and acquaintance of the family streamed through the church to grieve and to cry with the family,” he added. “The suffering resulting from the physical loss of that baby was in some way uplifted by the spiritual outpouring of their friends and neighbors.”

Father Nelson said that before each funeral he meets with the family twice, once to plan the funeral Mass and a second time in which the family shares their memories of their loved one. The day of the funeral nothing is scheduled at the same time as the funeral and he has an “excellent funeral ministry in place” that allows him to close his doors and spend time focusing on the funeral and the homily message. He also doesn’t go back to work immediately after the funeral. 

When there is tragedy, the St. Jude community brings it to prayer, said Father Nelson. 

In response to the 2012 shooting and killing of 26 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in New Jersey, St. Jude now gathers each January to celebrate the feast day of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the founder of Catholic Schools in the United States. Likewise, in 2016 the community prayed together when six Baton Rouge police officers were shot, the fourth recently dying as a result of the ambush. 

“Each year we pick a theme for the year for the whole parish, which includes the school. And this year the theme was chosen based on all bad stuff that’s going on in the world. And the theme is from Isaiah 49, verse 15: ‘I will never forget you,’ ” said Father Nelson.