68 — THE PRIESTHOOD

Presence of God. — O Lord, grant holy priests to Your Church.

Meditation

1 — The Church, Mystical Body of Christ, must not be considered as a purely spiritual thing that cannot be reached or seen; she is a concrete body, perceptible in her members, who are the faithful gathered under the guidance of pastors. “As in one body we have various members and the members do not all have the same function” (Rom. 12, 4), so in the Church there are members of different importance and having different offices: there are the faithful and there are the pastors, that is, the priests set over souls by Christ. To say that Jesus sanctifies and governs us through the Church is equivalent to saying that He sanctifies and governs us through the priesthood headed by Bishops and the Pope. All the powers Jesus gave to His Church, He placed in the hands of priests, chosen by Him and taken from among the people to constitute them His ministers: “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you... Whoever listens to you listens to Me, and whoever despises you despises Me” (Jn. 20, 21; Lk. 10, 16). All the value and preciousness of the priest lies in this investiture by Christ, in this office of His representative and minister. The Lord’s chosen ones must be aware of it, in order to live up to their vocation. “Priests,” says St. Pius X, “must be holy in their quality as friends and representatives of a holy God.” The faithful too must be aware of it, so as to consider and venerate in priests the very person of Christ. “We are ambassadors for Christ, as if God Himself were exhorting through us,” St. Paul wrote to the Christians of Corinth (II, 5, 20), giving them the exact sense of his priestly authority. And St. Catherine of Siena exhorted her disciples to want to consider in priests nothing other than their quality as “dispensers of the Blood of the humble and immaculate Lamb,” without fixing their eyes on defects they might find in them. The priest always remains a fallible man, capable of error, but this does not remove the fact that he is the Lord’s Anointed, marked forever with His seal, having power to consecrate Christ’s Body, administer the sacraments, and speak to the people in God’s name.

2 — Without priesthood we would not have the Eucharist, we would not have the ineffable consolation of hearing said in God’s name: “Your sins are forgiven” (Mt. 9, 2). Without priesthood, churches would be deserted, schools secularized, spouses deprived of God’s blessing, the dying deprived of final comforts, children abandoned to evil, all humanity immersed in misery with no one laboring to raise it up, to lead it to God, to implore God in its name and for its benefit. But Jesus, unique Mediator between God and men, willed to institute priesthood precisely so that His work of mediation, salvation, sanctification might be perpetuated visibly among us. The priest accompanies us at all stages of our life: he receives us as newborns at the baptismal font, administers the sacraments to us, initiates us into understanding God’s things, points out the way of good, blesses our ideals, sustains our steps, comforts us in final agony. A work often hidden in shadow, often unrecognized, never appreciated enough, and yet so precious and indispensable. The duty of gratitude for the gift of priesthood is imposed on every Christian: duty of gratitude first of all toward Jesus who instituted it, but then also toward those who fulfill its sublime offices. This gratitude must express itself not only in reverent respect and filial docility to God’s minister, but also in prayer and assiduous work in favor of priesthood. Jesus Himself taught us this: “pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into His harvest” (Mt. 9, 38). “What prayer,” comments Pius XI, “can be more pleasing to the Redeemer’s Most Holy Heart?... Ask and you shall receive: ask for good and holy priests and the Lord will not deny them to His Church” (Ad Catholici Sacerdotii). To prayer we must add works that “aim to preserve, promote, help priestly vocations” (ibid.). Blessed are the families granted the honor of giving God a priest; blessed are all those who by prayer, sacrifice, and works contribute to the formation of holy priests.

Colloquy

“My Lord, do not look at my sins, but hear Your servant by the clemency of Your inestimable charity. You, when You departed from us, did not leave us orphans, but left us Your Vicar and Your ministers who give us the baptism of the Holy Spirit; and not only once, but always, by Your holy power, they wash our souls from sins.

“Grant, therefore, O eternal Mercy, that Your Vicar and Your ministers may have hunger for souls, burning with holy desire for Your honor and drawing near to You alone, because You are high and eternal goodness.

“Further, eternal God, sanctify these Your servants, that they may follow You alone with simple heart and perfect will, and look not upon my misery, but plant them in the garden of Your will.

“I confess, eternal God, that Your arm is powerful and strong to free the Church and Your people, to draw it from the devil’s hands, and to make persecutions against holy Church cease. I confess that the wisdom of Your Son, who is one thing with You, can enlighten the eye of my intellect, that of Your people, and remove darkness from Your sweet Bride, the Church.

“Therefore I supplicate and entreat Your power, O Father, the wisdom of Your only-begotten Son, and the clemency of the Holy Spirit, fire and abyss of charity, that mercy may be shown to the world and that the warmth of charity be restored to it with peace and union in holy Church. Alas, I do not want You to delay any longer: I pray that Your infinite goodness constrain You not to close the eye of Your mercy over Your holy Bride. Sweet Jesus, Jesus love” (St. Catherine of Siena).