Holiness in our Priests and in ourselves

My friend, Barb Reese, recently gave a wonderful talk on the Year for Priests and has given me permission to post some of it here.

"In regards to our prayer life, the Holy Father asks us to reflect on the ways each of us has shown an attitude of disregard for the true dignity of the priesthood and the effect these attitudes may have had on the spirit and attitude of priests, as well as on the promotion of vocations to the priesthood. (Great meat for EOC)
He also asks us to offer a prayer for the interior sanctification of the priests who serve in your parish and for all priests.
To highlight the importance of a priest’s holiness, we can turn to the passage from Soul of the Apostolate :
If the priest is a saint, the people will be fervent. If the priest is fervent, the people will be pious; if the priest is pious, the people will be at least decent. But if the priest is only decent, the people will be godless”…..
And the Holy Father responds by saying: “the sanctity of the priest can be positively influenced by the depth of sanctity of the people he serves. So, it can also be said…If the people strive to be saints, the priest will be drawn toward greater fervor. If the people tend toward fervor, the priest will gravitate toward piety. At the same time, if the spiritual sights of the people are set quite low then this can be a source of discouragement for the priest and cause him to set his sights even lower. Thus, if the people strive only for surface piety, then their priest will be content with decency. If the people are content with decency then they may actually prefer a godless priest.”
So, we must see that we don’t live in a vacuum- we are the body of Christ- we must help our priests persevere. We are challenged here by the Holy Father’s words to see the connection between our striving for holiness and that of the priest’s !

....In RomeReports.com on June 18 there is a reference to the Pope’s letter to all priests which I found really interesting…. he encourages them to follow the example of St John Vianney and “ to not be confined to their parishes but to also dedicate their time to the confession of people, visiting families, preparing feasts and taking care of the liturgical objects…. and also to the devout celebration of the Mass and the formation of people.”

This calls to mind the reality that without the priestly ministry, there would be no Eucharist, no mission and even no Church.
There are many roles that the laity are being asked to fill since the number of retiring priests increases, and we are still suffering from the decline in vocations in past decades.
However, as Catholic lay leaders we must be very sensitive to the tendency to devalue the priesthood as the laity is being promoted, so to speak.
Pope Benedict says “we must guard against this tendency and not allow any further diluting of the priestly ministry….. instead, we are called to provide a firm foundation for an authentic renewal of reverence and respect for the priestly office.”

Our challenge is to know who we are in relation to God and to his priest, and who we are not.
We can humbly serve God and the church in appropriate ways without ever forgetting our call to obedience and with great hopes that our prayers for vocations will soon return some of these areas of responsibility to the ordained and when that day comes, we humbly step aside again.

...I’d like to close with some interesting statistics that were reported in the NCR[Register] by Tim Drake in the June 14-20 issue :

The total number of Archdiocesan ordinants in the class of 2009 = 465 which was up from 401 last year.
The largest classes are in the Arch of Newark (13), Chicago (10) and DC (8)

The average age at ordination was 37 in 2006 and has been dropping since… and this year the median age was 32.

90% of all priests say they are happy in their vocation.

The only unfortunate statistic was that nearly 45% of priests who were ordained this year said that they had been discouraged from considering a vocation.
Of those, 60% said a parent or family member was the source of the discgment.
51% said a friend or classmate was the source of discouragement.
15% said a priest was the source.

The laity have a role to play, both contemplative and conquering, during this Year of the Priest to reelevate the dignity of the Priesthood to that during the time of St John Vianney, to help reinforce the internal strength of priests, and to renew their motivation and enthusiasm for their mission."