Take your priest or pastor to dinner?

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Take your priest or pastor to dinner?

Yesterday, I asked my U.S. Congressman if my wife and I could take him to dinner, we’ve met on couple prior occasions.

Later, I was reminded of when my wife and I would take our parish priest to dinner. I sure enjoyed doing that and so did our priest.

With all that our priests and pastors do for us, have you ever taken your priest or pastor out for a nice dinner?

Have you ever thought of asking them to have dinner?
 
We’ve had our Priest over for dinner many times. The funny thing is, he asks a few people each week over to his house, the rectory, for breakfast each week between morning Masses. He is an elderly priest in amazing health. He bikes all over the place. He comes over to our house all the time during the summer… at least 5 miles from the rectory… and asks for a glass of water. he’s on his bike! Most times he ends up staying the day with us and hanging out with the kids, splitting wood, gardening with me. I know we’re not the only family that this happens with. We have 1300 families in the parish. He visits each one regularly. I hope that we all can give to him as much as he gives to us!

Steph
 
I grew up in a large Jesuit parish in South Florida during the 1940’s. Our home was considered by our parish priests as their “second rectory”. It was sort of a joke that our home telephone number was written on the wall next to the rectory telephone, in case someone was dieing and needed a priest in a hurry.
It was not uncommon for me to come home from school to see Father so-and-so wearing a Hawaiian shirt, sitting in a beach chair, reading his newspaper and drinking a beer in our back yard. My mother was an excellent cook in the European tradition and we had one priest or another eating supper with us several times a week. Many times one of our parish priests would help me with my homework! These priests were like uncles to me and my brother.
As a result of my childhood experiences, I grew up knowing that priests were not only to be respected as holy men, but they were also human beings!
I would recommend that all Catholic families have their Pastor and/or parish priests over for dinner on a regular basis. You will find it a most rewarding experience.
 
Taken him out for dinner.

Had him over for dinner.

Had him over for BBQ, and Swimming Pool,

He’s just a nice, regular kind of guy.
 
Appreciate the question and these wonderful answers. I have wondered about the appropriateness of this for both my Parish priest and my Spiritual Director who is also a (retired) Priest. When our Parish was young and small, we had a Home Mass opportunity. Anyone could sign up to have a Home Mass which would be followed by dinner. Sometimes several families put together a potluck and other times just one family hosted. We also used to have Seminarians who were getting experience within a Parish every year. They were ALWAYS happy for a dinner invitiation! Young men, hungry…not hard to believe is it? Things have changed in the past couple of years so we don’t have these same opportunities.

Now we have a temporary Priest who lives far away from our church. He doesn’t hang around after Mass but maybe he’d enjoy getting dinner or a late lunch before returning home.

Lisa
 
I invited the priest from my wife’s parish a couple of times, but he declined. I did buy coffee for the office staff once.
 
The Husband and I have invited Fr. B over, but our respective schedules have thus far made it impossible. Generally, we can find a time that works for Father and me but not for The Husband. :banghead:

What I do instead is bring him a meal every three weeks, a portion of whatever I have prepared for my own household. My pastor is always pulled in so many directions at once that he actually cherishes the opportunity for solitude, which he uses for prayer or other spiritual activities. Bringing dinner to him is my way of caring for his corporal well-being without making demands on his personal spiritual time. Father must eat plenty of professionally/industrially prepared food because he always seems so enthusiastic when the day for me to feed him draws near and so grateful for what I bring him on that day. My cooking skills surely couldn’t be the reason for this joy—Father only eats French food, and if the best homemade French cooking he can get comes from the hands of an American of Asian ethnicity, I feel sorry for him :o
 
Jimmy_B said:
Take your priest or pastor to dinner?

Yesterday, I asked my U.S. Congressman if my wife and I could take him to dinner, we’ve met on couple prior occasions.

Later, I was reminded of when my wife and I would take our parish priest to dinner. I sure enjoyed doing that and so did our priest.

With all that our priests and pastors do for us, have you ever taken your priest or pastor out for a nice dinner?

Have you ever thought of asking them to have dinner?
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I’ve eaten with my pastors before, like we’ll meet to discuss something regarding the church, or my membership, etc. I’ve not yet treated one and their family to dinner yet (mostly because I couldn’t quite afford it until now). I did give gifts, however - like at my last church, I gave my pastor my old bookshelves because I heard he needed some.

I’m sure my wife and I would love to treat our pastor and his family to dinner.
 
Yes, we’ve had our pastor over several times. The last time our dog tried to bite him, so don’t know if he’ll come again.:rolleyes:
 
We’ve had our priest over for lunch, dinner and things in between. In addition to parish work, he works as a hospice chaplain, so his work takes him all over. He stopped by a few weeks ago to bless our house. He called and told us that he was 12 minutes away (by GPS), was this a good time? We were just having lunch, so he joined us after he blessed the house. He’s married, with kids the same age as our children, so we’ve had the whole family over for dinner as well.
 
I’ve sort of wanted to do this, actually - I have no idea how to ask though! Especially as a single woman I’m sort of worried it could be taken the wrong way…
 
DarkLight said:
I’ve sort of wanted to do this, actually - I have no idea how to ask though! Especially as a single woman I’m sort of worried it could be taken the wrong way…
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Take somebody with you, and/or ask him to bring someone with him. Then it isn’t just the two of you. The more the merrier, and the less likely it will look weird. I have to say, though, that it often only looks weird to people who want it to look weird, and many of those are going to take it the wrong way no matter what. 🤷

The “taken the wrong way” factor doesn’t disappear once a woman gets married—if anything, it may get worse. I say this as a married woman. YMMV.
 
DarkLight said:
I’ve sort of wanted to do this, actually - I have no idea how to ask though! Especially as a single woman I’m sort of worried it could be taken the wrong way…
Click to expand...
Me too…but what I did in one case is get several other women to join in a small group.
I don’t think it would look wierd if you took a priest to lunch or dinner in a very public place. Our priest often dined out with his very attractive sister and far as I knew, no one so much as raised an eyebrow. OTOH a single woman inviting the Priest to her home might be a different story. Again, I joined forces with another woman and we co-hosted dinner at my place. Agree that you can’t compromise even on appearances but it’s relatively easy to either get someone to join you or ask Father if a brother Priest or Deacon would like to come as well.

Lisa
 
I used to take one of our priests, and one seminarian to hockey games.

Always had a great time.
 
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