Let us pray in April 2026 for priests who are going through moments of crisis in their vocation, that they may find the necessary accompaniment and that communities support them with understanding and prayer.
Life is a process of becoming, constantly evolving. Everything is moving. As you walk, the landscape evolves, as does the way you see it… And the evolution is never homogeneous, predictable. The life of Christ attests to this with the great evolution between his secret life and his public life. But even in public life, there is the time in Galilee, the ascent to Jerusalem, the time spent in the holy city, the Passion and the time of the apparitions until the Ascension of the Lord.
Each time a new period opens, requiring us to reinvent ourselves by finding a response to the new situation, consistent with the leitmotif that set it in motion: “You are my beloved child”. To speak of vocation therefore means an orientation of life, with a start and situations which, then, continue to evolve and provide the opportunity to deepen the vocation. Life cannot be a straight line, it is like a symphony where the parts respond to each other…
As a result, no life can be without crisis, without a moment when everything collapses to allow us to be considered differently… So why not start again from the etymology of the word “crisis”. Its meaning: judgment, decision… The crisis is this moment of evolution where we move from an old way to a new way of considering and doing. This requires accepting the loss of what was in order to rediscover the more fundamental relationship which had supported a way of responding, which had become obsolete. The crisis requires us to accept the situation through what we experience and, from there, to consider a new investment of our freedom, consistent with our fundamental aim.
Help is terribly necessary in this evolution where it is a question of breaking away from the usual, of reconnecting with the depths of oneself, of reopening oneself to the initial promise. The help can and must therefore be broad to enable all dimensions of the person to be able to invest in this quest. It’s about giving the person a chance to find themselves, to rest, to experience and express, and then to get back on track. This therefore means that this crossing is not possible alone.
We all need help and support which can be very diverse. And this regardless of their social or personal status. The ancient expression of Saint-Augustine “With you I am a Christian, for you I am a priest” encourages everyone beyond their ecclesial status to open themselves to a multitude of potential help: spiritual, psychological, medical, friendly, educational and physical… Getting through the crisis requires living this moment fully open and to find ways to remobilize one’s being in a new way, listening to the Promise, oneself and the past situation…
This is how, little by little, we are given to enter into a deeper trust, to consent to exist more from the relationship with the Lord, and to discover how our priestly and Christian life marries what the Lord himself experienced in his own life as an evolution.
Jean-Luc Fabre, national director of the Pope’s World Prayer Network France.
