Choosing beggars

Criticism is one of the easiest things.  We should be careful of the easy things.

Last night, a few friends and fellow parishioners and I sat in a pub, and the topic of conversation rather naturally came around to our church.  One of us commented that, in all his years at the church, he has never really been able to understand any of the sermons.  All our priests come from other countries, and they often speak with thick accents.  I understand completely.  

But we need these men.  We in the West have failed our faith in many ways.  We have failed to produce the priests we need, and therefore we often beg for priest from countries far poorer than we, though richer in faith.  In many ways, we have become mission territory.

My friend is right about our priests: some of them are difficult to understand.  There's one whose masses sound as though they are prayed by an adult from a Charlie Brown Special, and therefore, whenever I see this man processing toward the altar, I bow my head and thank God that this man heard His call and obeyed.  We need thousands more like them, accents strange to our ears or no.