Making sense of being a priest

My most confronting encounter this week has been with Jason. 

After the Traditional Mass he wandered into the porch , thank God for the open Church.  He just wanted to sit down, or so it seemed, and though I was ready to ‘up and go’ I thought the least I should do was give him some time.
He was clearly in some distress, and his speech was almost unintelligible.The Grandpa in me tells me that you just have to give this some time…try talking to a two year old . It’s not that they are not talking it is that I am not hearing.
Jason sat quietly in front of the glorious image of the risen Jesus with the open wounded hands and tears were flooding.
Oh shit! What am I going to do? This guy has come wanting to receive and can I deliver? Pretty obviously, not!
It is as this point I have to realise thatI am not the one who has to deliver. Why would he want what I have to offer?
“I’ll just sit here, and you just take your time!”  It was the least I could do, and yet I rather begrudged it.
“Do you want me to pray for you?”  I asked. 
Fairly confident that I know how to pray. Not just ritualistically, but with meaning and with the courage to pray for deliverance if necessary.
“Maybe later,” he says. 
So I go and sit down quietly behind him. And for once say nothing!
His tears were flowing, makes me cry now just writing about it. 
His barely intelligible utterances talked of a woman who had been raped and told she would never have children.
That broken woman had met this broken man and they had borne a child…I wrote that they had  fathered a child….and I think that was important for Jason he was a father and felt totally incapable being so. 
In his ramblings he alluded to three others, I am not sure if he was the father. Possibly…even probably.
Then he lapsed into “I don’t want to go to jail, they are just horrible to me in there.”
What had happened I do not want to know, but we can all imagine. 
I do not want to know. But maybe my turning away is part of the problem.
I had waves of fear about him because he seemed erratic, crazed. 
I asked him if he was taking drugs.
He told me he wasn’t. And I believe him. 
But I knew, and he knew that I knew that his mind had been crippled by f&$%in’ meth. 
Don’t use that term lightly.
This was a beautiful man, of gentle spirit  whose humanity has been crippled by the careless greed of the pushers,
I repeat again:
“Oh shit! What am I going to do? This guy has come wanting to receive and can I deliver? Pretty obviously, not!”
We couldn’t sit there for ever, 
I prayed with him.
A gentle prayer, and prayer for deliverance (exorcism)…I am not afeared to pray so [ thank you A J Davies…who though a curious man taught me to trust the prayer …. and deliver us from evil]
As we took a quarter of an hour to leave 
he talked about Her…the mother of the children, 
who was coming in on an interstate bus.
“She will love this place.”
I had to tell him the Church was not open all the time, Tuesdays and Thursdays and of course Sundays.
I really hope we see them ...our prayers   genuine prayers   will be there for them

I was totally struck that he knew how he had been touched by our Shrine.
 
And my heart thrilled, whilst also being sad that he had to blow his nose on his tee shirt because he was so overcome. (  I wanted him to have my used handkerchief, but thought that was a bit disgusting....on reflection it was probably not)
 
Let us not ever begin to think that we live in a country where everyone is equal!!
 
And God forgive me for my failure to be Jesus to this beautiful man.