“How Many People Do We Have to Please?”
FR. COSTA’S WEEKLY MESSAGE, May 3, 2009


“‘You have to please a lot of people when you are in the ministry, said one cleric.’ Another clergy member, while filing an application for credit, was asked, ‘Who is your boss?’ He replied tongue in cheek, ‘Five hundred people – all the members of my church.’ No one can survive having 500 bosses just as no professional football player can survive if he tries to follow the directions of the 50,000 ‘quarterbacks’ shouting at him from the stadium seats. So the priest receives directions from his One and Only Master and endeavors to follow His game plan.”
“I like the words of Thomas Merton in this respect: ‘How many people fear to follow their consciences because they would rather conform to the opinion of other people than to the truth they know in their souls. How can I be sincere if I am constantly changing my mind to conform with the shadow of what I think others expect of me? Others have no right to demand that I be anything other than what I ought to be in the sight of God.’”
“‘Do not wish to be anything but what you are and try to be that perfectly’ (Francis de Sales).”

[Reflections on the Priesthood: An Anthology from the Church Fathers and Contemporary Sources, edited by Anthony M. Coniaris, Light and Life Publishing Company, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1993; pgs. 66-67.]