The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests)
O my Jesus, I beg you on behalf of the whole Church:
Grant it love and the light of your Spirit, and give power to the words of priests so that hardened hearts might be brought to repentance and return to you, O Lord.
Lord, give us holy priests; you yourself maintain them in holiness.
O Divine and Great High Priest, may the power of your mercy accompany them everywhere and protect them from the devil’s traps and snares which are continually being set for the souls of priests.
May the power of your mercy, O Lord, shatter and bring to naught all that might tarnish the sanctity of priests, for you can do all things. (Diary of St. Faustina, 1052)
Today the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and in the whole church, we will pray for the Sanctification of the Priests. Today let us contemplate the gift of priesthood in a special way and pray for new, holy vocations of priests, religious and missionaries.
As joining these three vocations in my ministry, I would like to share my reflection on the sacrament of priesthood and my life path in it.
In his Holy Thursday homily on April 9, 2020, Pope Francis reminded priests that in order to serve others, they must first allow themselves to be served by Christ. Just like Saint Peter, priests must be willing to be washed by Christ, forgiven by Christ, and loved by Christ so that they, in turn, may be dispensers of divine forgiveness and love to others. The Holy Father also remembered those courageous priests in hospital ministry who have died in service to their brothers and sisters suffering from coronavirus. He also commended those priests who serve prisoners and those ministering in remote parts of the world.
The priest represents Christ
St. Gregory of Nazianzus wrote: "The priest the defender of the truth, who is to take his stand with Angels, and give glory with with archangels, makes sacrifices on the altar, participates in the priesthood of Christ, renews creatures, restores God's image and brings them to the higher world." Several centuries later, Saint. Jan Maria Vianney, a priest from Ars, added: "If one understood correctly who the priest on earth is, one could die, not out of fear, but out of love. The priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus. "
We are all born in the Church thanks to the priest's mediation. He, in God's name, receives us into the community of believers, he participates in all the sacraments since baptism for the sacrament of the sick - by penance, the Eucharist, confirmation and marriage. He is present in our lives all the time, he is a witness to our joys, successes, all failures in life, he gives us advice and, if necessary, also rebuke us. In all the moments of our life, Christ comes to us through the priest. Each priest represents Christ by acting "in persona Christi".
It is in the priest's hands that a real miracle takes place when Jesus transforms bread into his body. A living and true Christ is present on the altar and presides the Eucharist as the Invisible in the visible priest. Jesus Christ, establishing the sacraments of the Eucharist and priesthood on Holy Thursday, inseparably connected them. He could administer the Eucharist and other sacraments only in the hands of a man chosen and appointed by him - a priest. This is how the Holy Church was born and so the Church has understood and understands the relationship between the priesthood and the Eucharist over the centuries.
For "this man" to administer the sacraments, he must first be called and chosen. It is Christ himself who chooses and "calls out from the crowd." Sometimes his call is sudden and decisive, but most often he simply calls, step by step, through a series of many life experiences, events and signs.
For the Saint John Paul II, the calling was a gift and mystery. " At its deepest level, every vocation to the priesthood is a great mystery; it is a gift which infinitely transcends the individual. Every priest experiences this clearly throughout the course of his life. Faced with the greatness of this gift, we sense our own inadequacy. A vocation is a mystery of divine election: It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that fruit should abide” (Jn 15:16”)” (John Paul II, Gift and Mystery, page 3)
Indeed, the priesthood is a secret. A mystery that requires not only one-time discovery, but also constant, continuous, deep and "inner discovery". This discovery is for the priest a source of strength, thanks to which he constantly relives his own calling. Sharing the secret of his calling is not easy. It is difficult to embrace this with a defective human word, it is difficult to talk and write about it.
The priest shows the way to God
The priesthood is a great gift, a pleaded gift, a prayed gift. A gift for the priest himself, his parents, family and friends, but above all a gift for the whole community of believers. A gift so often neglected and ridiculed today. One would like to ask: Do we still need priests today? Does a man need a priest? Sometimes you hear: "I believe in God, but I don't recognize the Church and priests." Interesting case: I drink water from the Source of Life, but I don't accept the well, where do I get this water from?
It is the priest who leads the man from baptism to the cross on the grave, through the sacrament of penance, the Eucharist, the anointing of the sick, and shows us the way to God. We should support every priest and pray for him. Every priest, on the day of his priestly first fruits, that is during the first Mass, gives us a special, occasional picture, which usually has the words: "Bless and ask for prayer ...". Such a picture is a souvenir and a gift for those who participated in his first Mass, but also obliging us to pray for this priest. Jesus Christ Himself says: I need You, Your lips, Your hands, Your heart, Your strength and smile - for the weak, hurt and suffering ... So the priesthood requires sacrifice, effort and suffering, because the priest is the second Christ. Fr. Jan Twardowski wrote: "wash the feet of people, do not stretch yours so that they will be not confuse and wash your feet...".
Living the priesthood
The priesthood is not always simple and easy ... and the priest has his conscience, or his “value." It can happen that sometimes his conscience needs to be repaired. Just as a doctor helps other patients, even when he is sick, the priest can repair thousands, even if his value (Personality) is broken. He can even do his service well, praising others, because he does not perform according to his conscience, but according to God's commandments and will. Let us sometimes look at such a priest as a man who, like all of us, strives and cares to keep God's law. He does not always succeed and then he goes alone with his conscience, as with "weight", to another priest – trusted and friend - and asks for correction.
Each of the believers, kind, persistent in the Church's community and correctly reading the charisma of the priesthood is not surprised by this that the priest falls like every sinful man. When this priest, however, exhorts in the name of the Decalogue, he proclaims God's unchanging truths of faith, leads us not to himself, but points us to a true, good and straight path to God. We come not to the priestly measure, but to the Model - to God's Measure, and this is always the Ideal. That is why Christ, bearing in mind teachers of faith and God's law keepers, clearly said: "... keep all that they command you, but do not imitate them (Mt 23: 3).
Meeting a priest who has his perfect conscience is a great gift, but - as with any ideal state - very rare in life. A more difficult experience is the meeting of a priest who must fight for faithfulness to his vows, who errs in the pursuit of holiness and sometimes falls. What is important is the fight he fights with his weaknesses, the fight to save his calling, and to return to God. The most important is the path that comes back to Christ. The path he reveals to others.
The priesthood, therefore, being a special gift, is also a special burden which man by himself cannot bear. Hence the sense of human anxiety that Fr. Twardowski poignantly wrote: "I'm afraid of my own priesthood, I'm afraid of my own priesthood and I fall into dust before my priesthood and I'm kneeling before my priesthood."
Priestly "yes"
The most important is therefore the YES, spoken by the priest to his own priesthood and to Christ. YES repeated in moments of pain, doubt and loneliness. YES, which Michel Quoist said in "Prayer for Sunday Evening": "Lord, when everything is silent and when in my heart I feel a painful bite of loneliness (...) When people devour my soul and I feel unable to saturate them. When the whole world weighs on my shoulders with its weight of misery and sin, I repeat to you my YES, not in a burst of pride and joy, but slowly, quietly, consciously and humbly, lonely Lord before You - YES. "
This humble YES changes the priest and is his consent to receive the "eternal seal" I encourage all you my Sisters and Brothers to pray for priests, especially today in a special and zealous way.
Let us Pray
O Jesus, I pray for Your faithful and fervent priests; for Your unfaithful and tepid priests; for Your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields; for Your tempted priests; for Your lonely and desolate priest; for Your young priests; for Your dying priests; for the souls of Your priests in purgatory. But above all I recommend to You the priests dearest to me; the priest who baptized me; the priests who absolved me from my sins; the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Your Body and Blood in Holy communion; the priests who taught and instructed me; all the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way. O Jesus, keep them all close to Your heart, and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity. Amen.
Until Tomorrow
fr.george