Day 29. Admonition 26

 

That the Servants of God should honour Clerics.   1. Blessed is the servant of God who exhibits confidence in clerics who live uprightly according to the form of the holy Church.   2 Woe to those people who despise the cleric.  Even if the clerics may be sinners, no one ought to judge them.  Because the Lord Himself reserves to Himself alone the right of judging them.   3. For their duty of administering the most holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which they receive and which they alone administer to others—is greater than all others.    4. So the sin of those who offend against the cleric is greater than any sin against all the other people in this world.

I believe that all of us, at some time, have the difficulty of separating the deed from the doer.     Therefore, when the Cleric seems to be all they should be in the eyes of their congregation, it is easy to trust them.   We receive the sacraments from them in confidence - because we see that they live life according to the form of the holy church.   We do not expect their outward appearance to differ from the interior and so we are confident in them.   Exteriors are deceiving…   In today’s world it is easier to see that a cleric is first of all human and we may dislike this person.   They might be a known sinner yet we are not to pass judgement on them because they are priests of God.    Remember: Exteriors are deceiving…   They stand in the place of Christ at the altar and confect the blessed sacrament for us.   They alone may do this and Francis tells us that God alone reserves the right to judge them; Francis also says that those who pass judgement on the Cleric commit a sin greater than any other.