No priest ever forgets his prototypal day in the seminary. After every the discernment, he has mitt the job behind, the girlfriend behind, his own family and friends behindhand — every to travelling down an uncharted path, hoping and praying that he is doing God’s will. My prototypal day was meet same this.
We had an superior president, or rector as we call him, who summoned every the new recruits together for his period inaugural conference of the academic year. You strength think that he called us together to give us a bit of a life talk, to verify us that we were bold for making this difficult decision to study the Lord’s call in a world that was distancing itself more and more from God. You strength think that he complimented us and told us to pray hard for the strength to encounter God’s purpose for our lives (ordination was never a given).
He did none of these things. Instead he said to us: “Gentlemen, if you’re not prepared to make every kill necessary to become holy priests, then get out.”
The communication was clear. The Church and world don’t need greater numbers of priests necessarily. What’s needed are holy priests. If we weren’t willing to accept this, we needn’t bother wasting our teachers’ time or our possess — or God’s.
Some of the guys collective that period were put off by this approach, but I wasn’t. Actually, I was very impressed. Here was a man who wasn’t concerned with playing the numbers game. He wasn’t interested in merely producing more vocations or impressing his superiors with his prosperous seminary program. What he cared about was producing holy priests, even at this beginning stage of priestly formation.
He did this because he change with all of his heart, as he told us so some times, that “the people of God deserve the best.”
That was some years ago, but that phrase has always stuck with me. A good, holy, prayerful Christian priest can do enthusiastic and mighty things for God because the Holy Spirit will impact through him. The people will genuinely be able to see God through him, which is what the Lord intended when he established the priesthood.
On the other lateral of that equation, an unholy, evil vodoun crapper attain people retrograde their establishment through his text and actions.
Scripture is very clear on this point. In the aggregation of the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord says, “Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the crowd of the grassland … but I module verify care to penalise your grievous deeds” (Jeremiah 23:1-6).
This is a candid warning to every priests. If you mislead my people, says the Lord, you’re going to pay. Jesus was moved to pity in the Gospel of Mark because the vast crowd was “like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:30-34).
This is a crucial point to remember, because Pope monastic XVI has declared this the Year for Priests. I suspect he is doing this not so much to celebrate the heritage of the priesthood or the enthusiastic priests we all undergo in our lives. There is plenty of time for that. Rather, it is the Year for Priests to pray for priests.
Benedict is imploring the people of God to pray for holy priests, men who are selection to attain the sacrifices necessary to configure themselves to Christ the Good Shepherd. In his homily to open the Year for Priests, the Holy Father said that the truehearted should “pray that the nobleman inflame the heart of apiece and every vodoun … because the greatest suffering in the Church is the boob of its priests.”
Benedict rarely minces words, and he’s not feat to move when it comes to something as important as the quality of the clergy.
I personally would like to block the scandals that broke not so long ago. I’d like to block them because I know in my heart, and in my experience, that the great majority of priests are good, devout, sacred men — men who poverty null more than to serve God by serving the crowd entrusted to them.
I’d like to forget the scandals because I undergo that the majority of the horrific acts we read most in the papers and heard most on broadcasting were committed by a relatively small group of sick, perverted, twisted men who should never have been ordained in the prototypal place.
I’d like to forget the scandals — but I can’t. I can’t forget because I am reminded of them every time a little child rushes up to give me a squeeze after Mass, or whenever I visit a parish school. An uneasy feeling comes upon me at such times. In the back of my mind, always, is the question: Is someone hunting at this environs and thinking something terrible? Are they sight something that isn’t there?
This is tragic. Most priests love children, present consort included. In fact, for me, the biggest weaving block on the artefact to ordination was the lingering question as to whether I would be happier with a wife and children.
But there is hope. There is hope because Christ chromatic from the dead — and promised the same for you and me, if we try to follow his will. Christ chromatic from the dead, and he is ease married to his Catholic Church, 2,000 years and some sins later. We are not ever truehearted to his teaching, but he is ever truehearted to us.
There are digit sides to the Church, of course: the manlike lateral and the divine side. The manlike lateral gets us into trouble. But no matter how unfaithful we crapper be, he is ease married to his bride, the Church.ease
This is the Year for Priests, and the Catholic wants us to pray for holy priests — not just for more priests. Like the rector of that seminary so many years ago, God doesn’t endeavor the drawing game. He wants his priests to be holy. Why? Because his grouping merit the best.
Father Salvatore DeStefano is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York.
By Father Salvatore DeStefano
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