Priest retirement is an opportunity to become more "popular" than ever among your brother priests! Your retirement is a time when you start getting e-mails from priests whom you haven't seen or heard from in a hundred years asking you if you are available to fill-in for them while they go on vacation. The request is often sent under the e-mail heading "pressing need."
Most of the time, they don't even make the calls themselves - they tell the parish secretary to make the call or to send a group e-mail request on their behalf. I can almost hear them saying to their secretary, "Remember old "Father-What's-His-Name?" Call him! He's retired! He's probably not doing anything! See if he's available!"
Since you haven't heard from him in years, sometimes you have to get out the Priest Directory and try to figure out who this priest is who is making such a request for help because you can't remember him ever offering you help or even good wishes!
On one hand, his "pressing need" can actually become a golden opportunity to re-connect to a long-forgotten brother priest and to help out his faithful community, but it can also become an irritating reminder that you have just become another old "Father-What's-His-Name."
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