A truly people-friendly priest

Blessed with a people-friendly priest

I had the opportunity to attend the Easter Vigil mass on Saturday 23 April 2011 at St.Anne's Church, Bukit Mertajam as some friends were being baptized there that night. The mass was celebrated by the parish priest Rev.Fr.HenryRajoo.

It was such a wonderful experience attending his mass.In fact it was after a long time that I really attended a mass and went home happy and satisfied. He was so people-friendly and never uttered anything that could hurt the feelings of the people.

He may be a relatively young priest but I was impressed with his humility and the respect he had for the people. His message was very practical and he delivered it very simply and clearly with full conviction. When I left after the service, my friends and I couldn’t stop praising him for the way he conducted himself.

We went home spiritually satisfied and the message he gave in the homily about relationship with God and fellow men lingered in my mind for many days. In fact he reinforced my belief that unless we enhance our relationship with God we cannot relate well with others and if we cannot relate with others we will never find true happiness in our life. I shared this simple but important message in my blog and the Face book for the benefit of others.

Attending his mass that night was a pleasant change for me, my wife and friends. We hope we can find the time to do so more often in the future. In fact it would be indeed a pleasant and rewarding experience for many Catholics in some neighboring parishes who are being verbally abused and insulted every Sunday by their Parish Priests.

Being people-friendly is very difficult these days not only for priests but for all of us as well. It is extremely difficult to be friendly and polite to people who are over demanding, uncooperative and finding fault with everything we do or say. One needs a great deal of humility to be truly people-friendly these days where people tend to be critical, suspicious and at times hostile. This virtue of humility is what most of us lack and it what we all should ask God to grant us in abundance.

As Fr.Rajoo said in his homily that night, unless we enhance our personal relationship with God, there is no way we can acquire the humility to relate well with the people around us. If we cannot relate with others there is no way we can find the true happiness in our lives.