I was struck by something last night while watching the Hitchcock movie, "I Confess". Very good movie, positive portrayal of priests and the Catholic faith. The plot is about a priest who gets accused and tried for a murder. The twist is that the priest knows who did it because the killer revealed it to him in the confessional.
The priest bore the ordeal well, but at one point he was obviously struggling with the weight of it all. It occurred to me that it was in the person of Christ that this priest suffered.
How many good priests carry the weight of others sins? Just as Christ knew all the sins of the world in his agony in the garden, the priests participate in this suffering in a small and local way. How often does a priest know the wages of sin that he hasn't committed. The sin that drags down a community and its people. But he just has to bear them in silence as Christ knew that those he suffered for would continue to deny him.
Pray for your priest. God allows his grace to come into our lives through others being Christ in our midst.
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