Year For priests (reflection)
1. This Year For Priests (June 2009 to June 2010) allows us to get a deeper awareness of what the priest is, this mediator between God and us, between us and God.
2. This Year For Priests is for us a fine occasion to rediscover our need of the priest:
and members of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church,
and we have been marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit;
2.2 the Priest visits us with the sacrament of unction when we are sick or dying;
2.3 the priest is the official witness when we make our wedding vows;
2.4 the priest teaches us the way of the Gospel;
2.5 the priest offers us the bread of the Word of God and the bread of the Holy Eucharist;
2.6 the priest offers us God’s forgiveness;
2.7 the priest presides the Eucharist and other forms of prayer.
3. This Year of Priests reminds us that the priest has a difficult and complex ministry:
the priest is treated by many people with apathy, indifference, even hostility;
the priest is considered by many as being useless and not needed in our world.
4. This Year for Priests reminds us that the priest needs us, needs our prayer, needs our spiritual support for the fruitfulness of his apostolate and for his spiritual life.
5. This Year for Priests reminds us that the priest in developing countries (Latin America, Africa, Asia, Oceania) needs not only our spiritual support through prayer but also our financial support:
mass stipends (often his daily survival);
building of chapels, churches, schools, hospitals;
means of transportation such as a bicycle, a motorcycle, a car, a boat…
6. This Year For Priests reminds us that the parish priest needs cooperation in different ways:
maintenance of his residence;
meals preparation;
at the reception desk, secretaries;
to maintain the accounting books;
to animate celebrations, to prepare baptism, confirmation, marriages;
pastoral workers;
catechists;
people to help youth, sport groups, theatre playing, singing, and so on.
7. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest experiences loneliness. He will appreciate to receive sometimes a phone call for the sake of friendship or encouragement and to eat a meal in a family surroundings.
8. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest counts on our comprehension and our sympathy.
9. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest is at our service, at the service of the Church and of humanity.
10. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest seeks to sanctify himself and wishes to help us to become saints.
11. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest, by vocation, is a man of prayer. He prays at the Eucharist, at the Liturgy of Hours (breviary), in Bible reading, in meditation and other forms of prayer. He prays for his parishioners or the people entrusted to his charge and for those who recommend themselves to him.
12. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest tells us that God is in our deepest selves.
13. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest really wants to help us to live the most noble values.
14. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest takes life serious and defends it.
15. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest is, like we, a seeker of truth and love, a seeker of beauty and peace, and, also like we, a bearer of the Cross.
16. This Year For Priests reminds us that, if we need priests in our churches, we need first to have seminarians. Vocations begin in our families.
17. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest is our spiritual leader. He therefore has the right to our respect and obedience.
18. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest is a human being like we are, with his weaknesses, his limitations, his incapacities, his temptations.
19. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest needs love: to love and to be loved.
20. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest gladly gives a blessing on behalf of God Trinity to anyone who asks him for it.
21. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest, just like we do, invokes Mary, prays to the saints, and listens to his guardian angel.
22. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest is God’s choice to guide humanity on its spiritual pilgrimage.
23. This Year For Priests reminds us that we all, priests and faithful, ought to respect the sacredness of the priest in our secularised world.
24. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest is an instrument of joy and hope.
25. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest is a hyphen between earth and heaven.
26. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest is a telescope on eternity.
27. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest is a lightning conductor against the evil one.
28. This Year For priests reminds us that the priest is a pillar to maintain our Catholic faith today.
29. This Year For Priests reminds us that the priest is a fearsome power house against the paganism in our current world.
30. This Year For Priests reminds us that the immaculate Virgin Mary is for the priest a source of inspiration. Like Mary, the priest can proclaim that God is great (cf. Luke 1:46).
31. This Year For Priests reminds us of the words of Catherine de Hueck Doherty: "Nothing can be greater in this world than a priest, nothing but God himself" (Dear Father, page 12.Combermere, ON, Madonna House Publications, 1988, 2001).
32. This Year For Priests reminds us also of the words of Saint John Mary Vianny, the curé of Ars: "After God, the priest is everything. Only in heaven will the priest fully realize what he is" (Father Bernard Nodet, Le curé d’Ars, sa pensée, son cœur, page 98-99. Éditions Xavier Mappus, Foi vivante, 1966; quoted by Pope Benedict XVI in his Letter to the priests at the occasion of the opening of the Year For Priests,number 5, dated on 16 June 2009:
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/letters/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20090616_anno-sacerdotale_en.html).
33. This Year For Priests encourages me to pray for the priest.
Français: Année sacerdotale (réflexion)
Nederlands: Priesterjaar (overweging)
Francis de Ruijte, Sorel-Tracy, 2009 October 22 – December 11.
Document created : 2009 October 22.
Latest update: 2009 December 22.