Favorite Prayers for Priests?

[Aurelio]

Hello!

How many of us have a favorite prayer for priests? I guess when you stop and really think about it, humanly speaking, being a priest must easily be one of the least of the so-called rewarding jobs in the world.

The other night our own whimsical pastor, who we will call Padre Fulano, laid this one on us at the 5:15 pm daily mass:

“Anytime anybody sees a priest going out to dinner with a woman, the reaction will be like Uh-huh! Thought so! Wow! And openly, too!. And if it’s another male, whether priest or layman? Yeah, that’s right! You know, I’ve always wondered if he was gay, and as of now we all know he is! And as for going out to a nice quiet dinner just by himself? Oh, my! Cousin Wilma studied psychology, and she said, this is all in confidence, o.k.? That any priest so anti-social as to go out to dinner alone is a walking time bomb. Worse! He may even be suffering from some mental health issue not yet adequately addressed”

By this time we were all laughing so hard you wouldn’t believe it. Father really hit the nail on the head!

Such being the case, I thought it would be nice to share this little prayer, called simply A Prayer for Priests. I’m not exactly sure where it came from, nor who wrote it originally, but here it is:

**A PRAYER FOR PRIESTS

*O Jesus, I implore your divine assistance for your faithful and fervent priests; for your unfaithful and tepid priests; for your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields; for your tempted priests; for your lonely and desolate priests; for your young priests, for your dying priests; for the souls of your priests in purgatory.

But above all I commend to you the priests dearest to me:

The priest who baptized me; the priest who absolved me from my sins; the priests at whose Masses I assisted, and who gave me your Body and Blood in Holy Communion; the priests who taught and instructed me; all the preists to whom I am indebted in any other way.

O, Jesus, keep them all close to your Sacred Heart, and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity.

Amen!***

Aurelio

 

[Annunciata]

I like this one:

Prayer for Priests

by St. Therese of Lisieux

**O Jesus, eternal Priest, **

**keep your priests within the shelter of Your Sacred Heart, **

**where none may touch them. **

Keep unstained their anointed hands,

**which daily touch Your Sacred Body. **

**Keep unsullied their lips, **

**daily purpled with your Precious Blood. **

**Keep pure and unearthly their hearts, **

**sealed with the sublime mark of the priesthood. **

**Let Your holy love surround them and **

**shield them from the world’s contagion. **

**Bless their labors with abundant fruit and **

may the souls to whom they minister be their joy and consolation here and in heaven their beautiful and

everlasting crown. Amen.

 

[jpjd]

I appreciate you posting prayers for priests, but I disagree with your comment that “being a priest must easily be one of the least of the so-called rewarding jobs in the world.”

I personally know two priests who love being priests, and it shows. I think being a priest would be very fulfilling. You get to administer sacraments that impart God’s saving grace to people’s souls; you get to preach and teach God’s word; you get to help parishoners with their problems and help the needy of the community. Overall, you help bring salvation to people and help them live a life worthy of a child of God. To me, that would be extremely rewarding.

May we all pray for our priests, and for an increase in vocations to the priesthood.

 

[thistle]

**The Beautiful Hands of a Priest

We need them in life’s early morning,
We need them again at its close;
We feel their warm clasp of true friendship,
We seek them when tasting life’s woes.
At the altar each day we behold them,
And the hands of a king on his throne
Are not equal to them in their greatness;
Their dignity stands all alone;
And when we are tempted and wander,
To pathways of shame and of sin,
It’s the hand of a priest that will absolve us–
Not once, but again and again.
And when we are taking life’s partner,
Other hands may prepare us a feast,
But the hand that will bless and unite us–
Is the beautiful hand of a priest.
God bless them and keep them all holy,
For the Host which their fingers caress;
When can a poor sinner do better,
Than to ask Him to guide thee and bless?
When the hour of death comes upon us,
May our courage and strength be increased,
By seeing raised over us in blessing–
The beautiful hands of a priest.
**

 

[Aurelio]

Hi!

I guess that’s why we used the phrase, “humanly speaking.”

Because in the “eyes of humanists,” there’s not much reason to sacrifice so much “for some god who cannot possibly exist.”

Nor is this attitude new, if the Cistercian author of the book, The Family that Overtook Chirst did his homework, which I guess he did.

He tells us of a visit made in around 1150 AD or so, to an ex-knight turned monastery porter by a former peer nicknamed “Charles the Deceiver,” who asks the porter a sneering question more or less along these lines:

“How does it feel to be approaching your fiftieth birthday, aware that the last thrity odd years of your life have been wasted in living an illusion?”

The “porter” takes this all in stride and wastes no time in demolishing “Sir Charles the Deceiver’s” fakey wisdom.

Otherwise I agree with you: there is indeed a bunch of priests today who are in the priesthood it for the duration, and more coming up on the firing line practically every day.

Take the religious order priests, for example, as summarized in the annual Catholic Almanac : three years ago, there were already around 11,000 Salesians and maybe 14,000 Jesuits, world wide.

The combined works of Popes Paul VI, John Paul I and II, and now Pope Benedict XVI are bearing fruit and the fruit is very good!

See ya!

Aurelio