Priests

The Year of the Priest .

And I will give you pastors according to my own heart, and they shall feed you with knowledge and doctrine. Jeremiah 3:15 Douay-Rheims Bible

I was thinking of having the kids read the letter above..and then read about St John Vianney , the Curé d'Ars.

I was thinking of how and why we need our priests.. promptly being reminded of a paragraph from the book I recently finished reading...I've talked about it here, before..Grandmother and the Priests by Taylor Caldwell.

Father O'Connor had always known joy when he said the Mass, and his heart had always shaken in him when he consecrated the Bread, for he was forever awed and was forever wondering why God had chosen him, a starveling young man born in Darcy, to elevate the sacred Host, and to offer It to the Most High in sacrifice. But on this morning his joy and his wonder and his awe almost blinded him with tears and his hands trembled and his heart was one fire of rapture. He kissed the altar and said, "Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus," and all his soul was in his words and all his worship.

Don't these words move you?

I wrote before, in this post about the importance of the Eucharist, of Holy Mass, of liturgy, of reverence and awe in liturgy. Of the necessity for priests in our Church, and of how we should support our priests . And religious. Of the blessings we have, in the form of the friars in our parish.

But some of this bears repeating. For me, anyway!

...we should treat our priests and religious with extra courtesy.....

*Promote vocations .

*Pray, pray for priests and religious.

*Sacrifice for priests. A priest is one who is to sacrifice. The hard part of the priesthood is not the offering of the sacrifice of the Mass. It is the self-sacrifice that a priest is called upon to make and the more priestly a priest is the more the people of God will use him, will wear him out. Priests need the merits of our sacrifices.

*Assist priests.Help, assist, provide services. Help your parish.

*Encourage priests and religious. Our parish women's group has committed to pray daily for the friars in our parish and we hope to encourage them in their vocation by our talk and by our deeds. Don't you love it when someone notices something you have done, gives you a gift or says something nice, helps you when you need it or when you are feeling less than happy? How nice to do that for others..