“Then Peter said to him in reply, ‘We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?’” — Matthew 19:27
The death of a fellow priest recently left me with a sadness deeper than the grief that naturally comes when a brother in the priesthood passes away. He died poor. He left behind no wealth, no substantial savings, no property that could easily answer for the expenses of his final illness. What remained was a large hospital bill, a financial burden that now has to be faced somehow by the Diocese and by his family. He had already gone home to the Lord, yet those who remained behind were left wondering how everything would be paid. I do not write this to criticize anyone. Neither do I write it to question the goodness of God. I write because his death awakened a question in me that I suspect many priests have quietly asked themselves but are hesitant to say aloud. Will I die like him?
One day, Peter looked at Jesus and asked a very human question: “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?” There was something painfully honest in those words. Peter was not necessarily bargaining with Jesus. He was simply looking at what he and the others had left behind and wondering where this road would eventually lead them.
A priest can understand Peter. When we entered the seminary and eventually received Holy Orders, we knew that priesthood was not a road toward material security. We did not become priests to become rich. We did not surrender the possibility of building our own families so that someday the Church would owe us a comfortable life. Priesthood is not a contract in which sacrifice is exchanged for security. It is a vocation, a response to a call, and ultimately a gift of one’s life. Still, we are human.
Underneath the cassock is a man who grows old. He gets sick. His body becomes weak. His kidneys, heart, lungs, eyes, and other organs do not become immune to disease because his hands were anointed at ordination. A priest who has spent decades visiting the sick may eventually become the one lying on the hospital bed. The man who has prayed beside the dying will someday become the dying man himself. Then a very uncomfortable question arises: Who will take care of the priest when the priest can no longer take care of anyone?
For most of our lives, priests are expected to be available. When someone is dying, call Father. When a family needs a blessing, call Father. When there is a funeral, call Father. When someone needs confession, counseling, prayers, assistance, or simply somebody to listen, call Father. We go because this is what we freely chose. This is part of the beauty of priesthood.
Yet there eventually comes a day when Father himself needs someone. There is something heartbreaking about imagining a priest reaching the end of his life after decades of ministry while worrying whether his hospital bills can be paid. There is something equally painful about imagining his family, who already surrendered much when they allowed their son or brother to give his life to the Church, suddenly facing enormous financial obligations because he became seriously ill. This is where Peter’s question begins to sound different. “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?”
I ask that question now, not as a demand before God. God owes me nothing. Everything I have received from Him is already grace. If tomorrow He calls me home, I have no right to tell Him that I deserved a longer life, an easier illness, or a more comfortable death. I know that He knows what is best for me.
Still, I confess that the death of a brother priest makes me think about my own end. Will I someday become seriously ill and leave behind hospital bills that others will struggle to pay? Will my family have to worry about expenses they cannot afford? Will my Diocese have to look for funds while I lie helpless somewhere? After spending my life trying to accompany other people through suffering and death, will my own final days become a burden to the people I leave behind?
These are not questions of faithlessness. They are questions born from human vulnerability. Priests preach about Providence, and we believe in it. We preach that God will provide, and we trust Him. Yet Divine Providence does not excuse human responsibility. God normally provides through people, through communities, through structures, through foresight, and through a Church that cares for her own.
This is why the death of a priest should lead us to something more than condolences, flowers, funeral Masses, and beautiful tributes. It should also force us to examine how we care for priests while they are still alive, especially when they become sick, disabled, or old.
A Diocese is a family. Its priests are not employees who simply render religious services until they are no longer physically useful. They are sons and brothers who have placed their lives at the service of a particular Church. Caring for them in sickness and old age should therefore not depend only upon emergency collections, personal savings, generous friends, or the financial capacity of their biological families. There should be serious, sustainable, and transparent structures that give priests reasonable assurance that when illness comes, they will not face it wondering who will pay the next hospital bill.
The faithful also have a place in this responsibility. Many people have been accompanied by priests through the most important moments of their lives. A priest baptized their children, witnessed their marriages, heard their confessions, buried their parents, blessed their homes, visited their sick, celebrated Mass for their intentions, and stood beside them during moments when they thought they could no longer carry their burdens. Caring for priests when they become old and sick is one way the Christian community can say, “Father, you carried us for many years. Allow us now to help carry you.”
None of this should create entitlement among priests. Priesthood must never become an excuse for privilege. We must live simply. We must also exercise personal responsibility, prudence, and foresight whenever possible. The Church’s responsibility does not remove the priest’s responsibility to care wisely for his health and prepare responsibly for old age and illness.
Still, no priest should have to approach his final years with the quiet terror that becoming sick might financially devastate his family or become an unbearable burden upon his Diocese. Maybe this is why Peter’s question touches me differently now. “What will there be for us?”
Jesus never promised Peter a life without suffering. In fact, Peter would eventually give his life for Christ. The answer of Jesus was not worldly security but something greater: whatever is surrendered for His sake is never forgotten by God. I believe that. Yet while we wait for the reward that only God can give, the Church on earth must also remember those who have given their lives to her.
Someday it will be my turn. Someday another priest will stand before my coffin and speak about resurrection. People may say that I served, that I made mistakes, that I tried, that I failed at times, that I loved the priesthood despite my human weaknesses. I do not ask for a comfortable death. I do not ask God to spare me from suffering. I certainly do not ask to be rewarded materially for having become a priest.
I ask for something much simpler. When that day comes, I hope I can close my eyes without worrying about the bills beside my hospital bed. I hope my family will be allowed to grieve without being handed a financial burden they cannot carry. I hope my Diocese will not have to scramble desperately for money because one of its priests became sick and died. Most of all, I hope that every priest can grow old knowing that the Church for whom he left everything will not leave him alone when he has nothing left to give. Maybe that is part of the answer to Peter’s question. “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?”
Ultimately, our answer is Christ. He is enough. He has always been enough. Still, until we finally meet Him face to face, may we find Him also in a Church that remembers her priests, cares for them when they are weak, accompanies them when they are sick, and holds them when their journey is coming to an end. We priests spend much of our lives telling people, “Do not be afraid. God will take care of you.”
When our own final hour comes, it would be a beautiful grace to hear the Church we served whisper those same words back to us: “Do not be afraid, Father. You are not alone. We will take care of you.”