My parish is situated in the midst of a growing medical-professional area in the Bronx, surrounded by three hospitals and a number of outpatient and specialist facilities. During the day as I walk the neighborhood I am more likely than not to encounter medical personnel on break. One of the great oddities that I have observed is how poorly so many of these doctors, medical students, nurses and EMTs take care of themselves. It is not unusual to find a group of them gathered outside of the local McDonalds eating the very foods that they don’t recommend for their patients, and chasing it down with an after-meal cigarette that likewise would not get an endorsement from them were you to ask them about it as a patient. They know the objective unhealthiness of it all, but when it comes to ourselves we have a way of justifying and rationalizing beyond what we know to be true.

In the parish, I have also found that those parishioners who are most often out caring for others, visiting the sick and the elderly and bringing them meals, often don’t take care of themselves very well either. It is far easier for them to help a senior care for their apartment than it is for them to keep their own apartment clean and livable. My best visitor of hospitalized parishioners has a terrible habit of not informing anyone, including her pastor, when she herself ends up in the hospital.

I suppose that these observations provide some commentary on human nature. How easy it is for us to see the need in others and how hard it is for us to see and address the needs within ourselves.  As we approach the penitential season of Advent, perhaps it is a good reminder for us of how important it is for pastors to continually be in a position not only of providing spiritual comfort and care, but in being on the receiving end of it. It is far too easy to self-justify our own bad habits, spiritually or physically, with the rationale that we are ultimately working in the service of the Lord. An outside physician for our souls, coupled with the regular liturgical call to self-examination, may simply tell us what we already know to be true, but it nevertheless remains something that we all can stand to hear clearly through the din of our everyday routines.