Year for Priests - Thoughts for the Week

YEAR FOR PRIESTS

Loving the Priesthood

To love the priesthood is to love one of the sacraments that Christ instituted for our sanctification and salvation. It is to love a most necessary sacrament, for without the priesthood, there would be no Eucharist, no sacramental forgiveness of sins.

Priests must love and reverence the priesthood that is theirs. The priest cannot give in to self-loathing, apologetically lamenting the fact that he is set apart and is positioned as teacher, sanctifier, and leader of those entrusted to his care.

As he loves the good work that Christ has begun in him, the priest must see that good work through to its completion. The consummation of Christ’s priesthood is His self-oblation on the cross, where He willingly laid down His life that we might have new life through His death.

By conforming himself to Christ the Victim, the priest has a spiritual remedy against any temptation to lord it over the others. By freely dying to himself, the priest stirs up in his soul the sacramental grace of his ordination, which then frees him to love and to live as one who has come to serve and not be served.

While no priest is perfect, while the man may be lacking in some respect, the sacred office - -the sacramental dignity that is his - - is always there. It is precisely this that we venerate in the priest, that he has been marked by Christ for all eternity.

To love the priesthood we must respect the priest. And if we are to love the priest, we must venerate his priesthood.

Fr. Joshua Guillory