Heavenly Father, for love of Jesus, please give wisdom and unconditional love to those who respond to Your call to devote themselves to serve others. Grant them numerous occasions of grace and growth in human wholeness. Let them learn that each person is Your favourite, and that You work out our salvation within our actual selves in the ordinary framework of our lives.
Let moments of grace and trial lead them from selfishness to God’s unconditional love of others. Let doubt, boredom and difficulty trigger renewed inspiration to love You and others in realistic humility and optimism.
Help them to cope wisely with their own personality and needs in the face of weariness or stress, or in confronting others’ crises and emotional outbursts. Help them to deal with misunderstanding, cynicism, and failure despite their careful tending and generosity. Prepare them to contend astutely with attempts to manipulate and seduce them to worldliness, error, or sin.
Habituate them to acknowledge the goodness and beauty of others while compassionately recognising flaws that may need guidance and prayer to overcome.
Grant that anyone assisting in formation of Your chosen ones will seek the Spirit’s guidance and wisdom rather than to impose their own opinions and preferences.
Let Your chosen ones be instructed according to the correct entirety of ecclesiastical and divine revelation, receiving it with obedience, yet intelligent openness that allows questioning of those restrictions that Jesus Himself would loose. Where formation is deficient or misguided, others’ souls will also be deprived of right counsel.
Foster fraternity amongst Your chosen ones, our God, so that they witness the gospel love of unity and mutual service. Let no one regard their spiritual formation as complete when they are professed, ordained, or experienced, but let them seek continual conversion. Let Your love constitute their continuing formation in human wholeness and witness.
If You appear to favour those You call to priesthood more than you favour others, it is because You choose them in order more richly to serve others. Let them never betray this commission, or fail to revive it, but continue to grow in love and witness of Jesus to others.
In calling them to serve as priests, You have entrusted to them the guidance of souls in the Truth and the Sacraments of healing and grace. Let them never betray this commission, or fail to revive it, but continue to grow in love and witness of Jesus to others.
