Mark Wildman

Yes this is me unable to open a water bottle

I doubt if this will have any effect on the entrenched, but I’m going to do my best. Whenever I hire someone who has never worked in or for the Catholic Church, I have to give them this dreadful speech. I always have to tell them to prepare themselves for awful people. In their work in the church, they will encounter some of the cruelest, angriest, most judgmental and manipulative people they will ever encounter. I tell them that it’s oddly a good thing: most people who go to Church do so because some deep part of them knows they are broken. I invite them to pray for the people screaming at them over the phone, gossiping, complaining. I invite them to give Jesus the pain and let it be a fuel to never inflict that on others. I know everyone loves to have their favorite cause as to why people don’t go to church as much, but unlike most I actually talk to people. Whether it’s in the confessional at weddings or in supermarkets, I spend a lot of time around people who don’t go to church and for most of them it’s pretty simple: the people they know that go to Church do not appear any better to them. They look at us and don’t wanna be like us, not because of our virtue, but because of our arrogance, our unwillingness to meet people where they are. Being a public minister means you’re going to receive inordinate amounts of praise and inordinate amounts of criticism. The sharpest knives and the best aimed arrows always seem to come from those people who should have your back, but don’t. They’re too busy evaluating if you’re doing it right. Like many people who are trying to evangelize, I am doing my best. There’s a fear always at work in me that I’m not doing it right, that despite my best efforts, I’m leading people to hell by accident, all kinds of things that bounce around in my head. My comfort is always the God can see my heart: he can see how deeply I love him and want to help people know him. My challenge is that he’s the only one who can see those things. Everyone else looks at me and see their own issues through me. Today, I am so grateful to Jesus for those who accept me as I am, who fight hard for personal holiness, who don’t spend a lot of time evaluating those who are evangelizing and who lovingly correct me when I need it. I’m also grateful for those who choose to fight the good fight in public, knowing that the deepest pain will not come from sinners, but the righteous.

She could have had such a legacy

Yep.

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