People and prayer for Michelle Pilet

PARKHURST – Some call her ‘Father’, some call her ‘Mother’, but to most of her parishioners, she’s just Michelle.

Rector of Parkhurst’s St Paul’s Anglican Church, Michelle Pilet, described herself as “soft-spoken and timid” and said despite this apparent weakness, God had used her as a “pioneer”.

Born in Queenstown, Eastern Cape, Pilet became aware of a sense of her vocation in life while still a child.

“When I left school women weren’t being ordained yet, so I went to Rhodes University and studied English and Afrikaans Nederlands through a broadcasting bursary,” she said.

Pilet said the debates around women’s ordination took place while she was studying and once again felt a vocation to ministry.

“While working off my bursary as a radio station researcher, I began a diploma in theology through the Theological Education by Extension College,” said Pilet.

In her last year of working off her bursary, Pilet offered herself for the possibility of ordination, and found herself in one of the first groups of women to be made priests in South Africa.

“Fun, interesting things happened after my ordination, but the persecution was also strong. I was verbally abused by people in public. And some people just didn’t know what to do with me,” she said.

“I was in the CBD when a beggar approached me. He saw my collar and said, ‘Father… No. Mother… No. Sister… Oh, I give up,’ and he walked away,” she said.

Now in her 11th year at St Paul’s, Pilet described her life as one devoted to prayer and relating to people.

“I have a passion for spirituality, for relating to God with the whole of my being. I get up at 5.30am and am grateful if I get to bed before midnight, six days a week. I find the only predictability is that there is none,” she said.

In addition to services and visiting the sick, Pilet heads up prayer groups and receives people for spiritual direction and counselling.

“Every day is a highlight because every day there’s a miracle of some sort. I wait for them with a sense of expectation. God uses us not because of our abilities, but because of our availability. This sticks with me in good times and bad.”

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