In the latest episode of Charisms for Catholics, host Jill Simons dives deep into a topic often overlooked but profoundly essential—the support and service of our priests. Drawing inspiration from insights she received at the Encounter Conference and her personal journey afterward, this episode challenges us to re-evaluate our roles within the Church community, especially how we view and support our priests.
A Holy Conviction: The Priests as the “Football”
At the Encounter Conference, during a beautiful night of adoration, Jill felt a strong prophetic word from the Holy Spirit. She realized that the priests in the Catholic Church are akin to the “football” in American politics—a highly protected and indispensable asset. Just as the secret service fiercely protects the football, we should look at how everyone in the Church sacrifices to protect and support our priests. This revelation made Jill understand that priests are not merely there to serve us, but rather, we have a responsibility to support and care for them.
The Reality of Priesthood: Loneliness and Burnout
Jill pointed out a significant issue within the Church today: the loneliness and burnout many priests experience. With fewer vocations and many priests taking care of multiple parishes alone, the mental health strain is evident. This is a serious challenge, but far from hopeless. Jill proposes a fundamental shift in our mindset: instead of expecting priests to be everything for the community, we need to realize that they too need support and rest.
Practical Steps for Laypeople
So, how can we, as laypeople, support our priests? Jill offers practical advice and has created a free eBook, “100 Ways to Serve Our Priests,” available for download. Here are some key takeaways:
A Change in Mindset
First and foremost, we must expect our priests to need our support. Rather than solely relying on them, we should actively look for ways to assist and uplift them. This mindset shift is crucial for the sustainability of our Church communities.
Offer Your Charisms
Consider how your unique charisms could be used to support your priest. Whether through written letters or proactive support, let your priest know that you are there to help. Think of the Magi presenting their gifts to Christ; offer your talents and abilities to ease the burdens your priest may be carrying.
Pray for Their Needs
Pray specifically for your priest to find holy outlets and confidants. Whether it’s appropriate hobbies, spiritual directors, or brother priests, these elements are essential for a balanced and fulfilling priestly life.
A Call to Action for Priests
If you are a priest listening to this episode, Jill encourages you to humbly ask your parishioners for the support you need. Embrace the humility of Christ and our Blessed Mother, recognizing that you cannot do everything alone. Lean on your brother priests and seek out conferences or retreats that can provide the rejuvenation and community you need.
A Unified Effort
Jill concludes this powerful episode with an apology to priests for any failure to provide adequate support and a call to all laypeople to join her in doing better. By learning how we can individually serve our priests, we enable them to continue their essential work of bringing sacramental grace into our lives.
In this month of the Rosary, let’s take Jill’s words to heart and strive to serve our priests with the same dedication and love they show us. Download the eBook and start small—every bit of support can make a significant difference. Together, we can create a more supportive and loving environment for our priests, ensuring they have what they need to sustain their incredible vocations.
Jill Simons:
Hello, and welcome to today’s episode of Charisms for Catholics. I am so excited to be talking about priests today. I’m gonna be talking about just some insight that I felt like I received prophetically at the encounter conference and what that has spurred me on to really think about and imagine for our community here at many parts and everyone that listens to Charisms for Catholics. So when I was at the Encounter Conference over the summer, I was at this beautiful night of adoration where they had a priest bringing the monstrance all around this huge room with thousands of Catholics present. And as I was watching this and just this beautiful expression of love for our lord in the Eucharist. And I know a lot of you probably attended the National Eucharistic Congress this summer and just experienced this even just at your private adoration at your parish or just a time where you’re with the Lord in the Eucharist at mass where it was just so beautiful how we had the opportunity to be present with him and to experience the body present of Jesus in the Eucharist. And as as I was viewing this, I just felt the holy spirit really saying you only have access to this because of the priests that bring him to you and that of course is true. I have no ability to be able to all of the grace of the sacraments into our lives.
Jill Simons:
And the word specifically that I received is that the priests are the football. If you’re familiar with American politics and the American presidency, there is a suitcase that is never more than a few feet away from the president of the United States that has everything necessary to be able to launch a nuclear attack, and it’s called the football. And that is something that is protected at all costs, and that’s the primary role together with protection of the president of the secret service to protect the football. And that was the word that I received is that these these priests in the Catholic church are just this incredible gift that we should be looking at how does everyone sacrifice themselves to protect this gift in the church, and I realized how much my mindset is the opposite, right, that the priest is supposed to do things for me and give things to me and provide things for me, and it is not a thought about part of my role to be supporting and providing for him. And I really felt very convicted about that. I felt like I was being asked to go to the priests that were there present, and I was so moved by the entire situation that it was, like, through tears that I was just saying, thank you for being the people that bring him to us. We can’t have him present like this without you, and I’m sorry for all of the times that we have not cared for you the way that you care for us so selflessly and so faithfully. And we know it doesn’t take even a statistical quote to recognize the fact that we have less vocations than historically, especially here in North America and definitely across Europe, that there is a lot of burnout and struggle and mental health issues amongst priests that have been ordained because there is a deep sense of loneliness that goes with it for many men that are taking care of 1, 2, 3 parishes completely alone isolated from their brother priests.
Jill Simons:
And this is really a hard state of affairs in the church right now, but it is far from a hopeless one. I think that there’s a fundamental shift that we are really going to be focusing on a lot here at Many Parts here specifically in the month of October, looking at how can we be of a mind that it is us that we need to serve our priests. We need to support our priests in a large part as a way of showing our love and affection, definitely for our blessed mother in this month of the rosary, but also for Christ. Because they are the ones making Christ present to us and we want to see and experience and respond to that in every person that we meet. But there should be a uniqueness to how we respond to that in priests, because priests in their vocation are not called to be everything to everyone. I think this is a very common misunderstanding. I’ve seen really shocking, from my perspective, posts in Facebook groups about, oh my gosh. I’m so hurt that my priest took a vacation or I can’t believe that my priest has an hour that he goes and plays tennis or something like that.
Jill Simons:
And that is frankly horrifying to me that we have this or even some of us have this mindset, like our priest should just be robots that are just constantly on available, no needs, no personal life, no anything that really reflects the freedom that we should all expect to experience in our life of Christ. And so, of course, priests are the only ones that can bring pre can bring Jesus, make him present in the Eucharist, bring sacramental grace into our lives. But then when you reach the furthest reaches of their specific role through the sacrament of holy orders, then they are left with just their charisms as well. And I don’t say just to be pejorative. I say that to emphasize that they’re not supernaturally imbibed with absolutely everything that a person could need when they become a priest. They have specific things they’re good at and specific things they’re not. They have specific things that they can do and specific things that they cannot. And I think that this is the the number one place we have to start as the lady is just with our mindset of being able to say, I don’t expect my priest to be able to be everything to our entire community all the time.
Jill Simons:
It’s just not a really attainable, practical thing for any of us to expect, and that really rejects this narrative of identity and rest that is so clearly carried through the entire narrative of relationship with God, and we should be as a community, prioritizing the spiritual life of our priests, which so often requires, which always requires, I would say, that time with Christ in the quiet place. And we need to start recognizing, take that old President Kennedy quote and not say, what is it that our priests can do for us? But what is it that we can do for our priests? Because what they already do for us is incredible. It is unthinkable for so many people throughout history to have constant, so often daily access to the sacraments like so many of us enjoy, and we should be looking for how we can serve in thanksgiving for that. Again, like we always talk about with charism, it’s not from a place of, oh, we need to earn this from our priests, but from this overflow of gratitude that they bring this to us, that this is something that we are able to receive because of their yes to their vocation, their humility, and their fidelity to their vocation. So I want to talk about what we can think what we can think about as lay people where we come into this intersection of our charisms and how we support priests. And then also if you are a priest listening, I’m gonna end with kind of steps that I would invite you to pray with about how you can really share the fact that you desire to be more supported. It’s a like a scary thing, but we’re gonna we’re gonna try and go there. But first of all, I wanna talk to you laypeople.
Jill Simons:
This is me preaching to myself. This is something that I have tried very intentionally to implement in the several months since I really received this word and this conviction, because I was not doing this well prior to that. I think that a important founding principle is that we should expect our priests to need our support and not the other way around, where we expect us to be supported by our priests, because we can’t have the kind of sustainability that our churches need if the weight of an entire community is balancing on the pinhead of the 1 man or maybe 2 men that are the priests for the parish. What we need to do is be looking at we are constantly having in our vision and in our mindset the things that we receive from the priest that are beautiful gifts and we want to of course reach out to him for all the things that we do need from him. When someone is dying, when someone’s in the hospital, when there is sacraments that need it, yes, we need to ask for those things from him, but there’s also so many things that we can do for him that he is likely not gonna ask us for, But we can choose to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the places that we know he has gifted us through our charisms to support our priests. And that’s where I want you to consider what it would look like, If you think about the Magi coming to Christ, If you think about the Magi coming to Christ and just saying, These are the things we have we’d like to give you. This is the same kind of energy where and if it doesn’t work to be a meeting or something like that, this can be a written letter. There’s a variety of ways you can do it, but to just let the priest know, This is what I’ve discerned that the Holy Spirit has given me.
Jill Simons:
I want to put these in your service. Use me. Place me where you see the need, and if there’s things that I can support you in or help you with because of these gifts that can take something off your plate, create a little less stress for you, whatever the case might be, that is my desire. I desire to support you in your vocation because so much of what I rely on spiritually comes from your yes to this vocation. And when we expect to support that, it really shifts the way that we think about our priests. And the other option, either married with, the idea of, you know, giving your gifts as a written list or as a presented list to your priest, you can also simply proactively support your priest through your charisms. We created a free ebook for this episode specifically and for the month of October when we’re gonna be talking about this called a 100 ways to serve our priests. It’s free to download.
Jill Simons:
You can grab the link in the show notes to get it, but it’s called a 100 ways to serve our priests. There are different ideas for every terrorism about how you can use that terrorism to support your priests, And then there’s also ideas we encourage everyone to do. So we’re gonna leave you in suspense. You gotta go read the book to see what they are, but you can just download it for free. And I encourage you to share this with other people at your parish that maybe are looking to be better parishioners, really? How do we support our priest more fully? And so these are things that are directly for him. These are things that are to the larger parish as a whole. Just different things that will support and serve your priest who pours out his entire life supporting and serving you. And then, of course, we want to pray for our priests, absolutely, but there’s kind of a specificity that I invite you to pray with, which is for your priest and all priests, of course, to find holy outlets and holy confidants.
Jill Simons:
So to find hobbies and recreation and leisure that’s going to be holy and truly refreshing to him to help stem any overwhelm or burnout he might be experiencing, and then also holy confidantes, whether it’s brother priests or spiritual director or someone else in an appropriate position to be able to receive and help process some of the heaviness that priests have to deal with on a regular basis. If you think about constantly listening to lists of sins and being with people as they’re dying and all these things, there’s a great beauty to it, but it also can be married with a great heaviness that so many priests experience acutely. And it is not, in many situations, the kind of the best thing for a priest to be unloading about those things on his parishioners and in many cases especially with confession that is against canon law and the seal of confession and all of those things for him to do that, but there are necessary and appropriate holy supports that priests can receive in that area. And so one of the best things you can do as a lay person is just to pray for your priest to find that, to experience that in his vocation. It’s likely not going to be you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t intercede for it, that you can’t help pave the way for that, whether intercessory prayer is one of your charisms or not. That’s something that we can all do to further support our priests. So once again I just really encourage you to download that ebook, a 100 ways to serve our priests, and look at the charisms that you have and how they fit in with our ideas. And, of course, the list is not exhaustive, so if that kind of gets your creative juices flowing and you think of something else that would be a great thing to do for your priests, then fantastic.
Jill Simons:
Go do that. That’s wonderful. We just want to move into this mindset of being in service to our priests. And then if you are a priest listening to this episode, I want you to just pray with what it would look like to humbly ask your people for what you need, not inappropriately, not in a way where you’re shirking duties or something like that, but to just really embrace the humility that we see in Christ himself and in our Blessed Mother, of course, to recognize that you are in Persona Christi, you are bringing Christ to us, but you are not God. You can’t do it all. You can’t be it all on your own. And what does it look like to maybe just targetedly, maybe going to people individually, maybe making a more generalized ask? What does it look like to ask your people for the support that you need to be faithful and really just sustained in your vocation. And then I also really invite you to lean on your brother priests when you don’t know where else to turn and to be vulnerable with them as well.
Jill Simons:
And I know that I obviously I’m not a priest. I have no authority to tell you what to do. You can tell me go kick rocks if you want, but I will say I very recently heard about the way that Catherine of Siena was speaking to priests and inviting them, and specifically the Pope inviting him to do the right thing, and how so often it is women within the church who are called to inspire not just priests but men in general to what God desires them to embrace, and so this is in all humility from me not because I know more than you but because I feel that feminine impulse of motherhood towards priests. That’s been one of the biggest fruits of this prophetic word I received where it’s just this motherly care for priests even older than me. It’s a confusing experience, but this desire, I think, in unison with the heart of our blessed mother for her sons, the priests, to have what they need to be supported in the way they need to be supported. And so much of that in a bodied sense can come from your brothers. And if you do not have that, like, physically, locally, there are so many places where you can connect with priests, whether it’s going through a specific conference or event that really lines up with your specific location or spirituality or whatever the case might be, receiving extended training, going to healing the whole person events for priests that I know Sister Miriam and Doctor. Bob Shoots are putting on, just being open to the fact that overwhelm and burnout and feeling 100% drained does not have to be the status quo, and I want to say that I’m sorry to you priests where we have failed you to such an extent that it maybe feels like that is the case.
Jill Simons:
We have not done everything that we should do to love and support you, and I know that that is coming from a very personal place of this is the apology I need to make to the priest that I’ve had in the past, and I would like to do better. I just invite all other lay people listening to this episode to just seek to do better with me, to better love, better care for the brave and faithful men that bring sacramental grace to us week after week, day after day. Let’s learn better how we can individually serve them so that they can continue to serve the church.
