"The Joy in Being a Priest": What A Priest Has to Say About His Own Priesthood

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Vulnerable human reality​

Jesus, You chose Your priests from amongst Your people, yet in the sacramental ‘laying of hands’ You do not perfect us. Like those we serve, we need pardon, healing, prayer and faith as we seek grace to become humble, genuine witnesses of Christ.

Through Sacrament and intercession, teaching and act, we encourage and instruct Your people as You call us in our personal human history and reality, to be instruments of Your grace for others.

By your honest expression of rightly directed human emotion, intelligence and personality, You witnessed the wholeness of our nature when creatively lived in God’s love. In Your authenticity as a vital human, You revealed that each person’s salvation is projected around reality, not around some ideal self. Wholeness is found in one’s actual situation with its limitations and advantages. It is offered within one’s true personality in its abilities and handicaps.

Allow us to recognise Your unique expression of love in each other person. Give us the gift of revealing to everyone we meet and serve—the image within him of the glorious, loving beauty of You amid his human frailties and strengths. We thus encourage his trust and affirm his hope in Your patient lifelong molding of him in the overwhelming love of Your personal plan for him.

In us, therefore—who are no less human than any other person—is manifest the wise charity and the gentle humility of Christ, to each person who comes before You in contrition, thankfulness, faith and joy. We thank and praise You Jesus, who shared all weakness of our nature except sin.

Help us to respect and encourage everyone, pardoning those who offend or inconvenience us. In liberty of spirit born of obedience, faith, and of freedom from undue attachments—we allow Your grace and witness to flow through us to others. We trust that You accomplish this even where there is no evidence of Your action.

Please sustain us as generous, inspired instruments of grace for Your continuing mission, as we alert others to the light of the Spirit in their lives. We glorify You, as we daily accept this joyful cross of our priestly ministry, while managing the challenges of our own vulnerable humanity! Thank You Jesus, Who throughout the ages lovingly uses Your imperfect creatures as instruments of love, service, and glory! 1982
 

Bless Your priests​

Remember God, that although we are consecrated into Christ’s priesthood, we retain our personal limitations and needs. Lest we ourselves become castaways, protect and give us wholeness. Nourish our prayer life and relationship with You. Nurture and enrich our entire human personalities so that we have stamina and love to serve each according to need.

Behold the endless stream of persons seeking assistance and guidance, with genuine need or with apparently trivial interruption! Behold all who pass by the periphery of our lives! Each one is an entire world, uniquely precious and sacred to You.

Grant us the particular teaching and grace required for each person in our care, for we perhaps cannot guess the true state and need of the child of God confronting us. Give us the gift of loving availability, so that no one is harmed or lost due to our lack of charity or wisdom.

Give wisdom to priests and pastoral leaders. Let us be open as the Spirit reveals truth through the Church—in Scripture and Tradition, through the Magisterium, through insight subject to Truth. Let us witness gospel truths with inspiration, clarity and power. Give us humility and discernment to teach appropriately and correctly, inviting Your action with humility and trust rather than to satisfy personal tastes. Direct us safely beyond misleading doctrine, error or possibility of scandal. Help us to avoid misleading devotions while remaining open to what is genuine.

Let us be inspirational, instructive, but succinct, lest we cause alienation and frustration by our homilies. These things cloud the light of Your love, and may appear to devalue our service.

Where our faith wavers, compassionately renew us, for we left much and came to follow You, willingly and hopefully. Please grant restoration and renewal of hope, courage and peace to ministers who falter before the endless demands of our vocation.

Refresh those discouraged by seeming spiritual failure in self or others.
Grant resolution to those enduring inner conflicts. Grant renewal of those in suffering depression or aridity. Let their fidelity free them into fullness of divine love, joy, hope, and service.

Thank You for many gifts and graces that are bestowed unasked. Yet because we are created with free will, You have made prayer conditional to the granting of some graces. Please imbue us with daily prayer, joy, discipline, and humility to accept in each moment the graces offered for growth of personal wholeness and for loving service of others.

Without continual conversion, we may drift from You, coming to depend upon human resources alone. We cannot persevere in our responsibility to the Church, to myriad individuals, if we remain utterly dependent on our own efforts and abilities.

Failure to trust in Your Spirit widens the gulf between our will and Yours. Our ministry, while achieving some social success, may then strain through formal practice or through humanism dressed as ‘enlightened modernism’.

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Rigidity of mind and heart may masquerade as righteousness. Self-will may figure as ‘courageous response to divine inspiration’ or as worldly wisdom.
Limited vision and personal bias may claim to be updated theology, yet result in hidden or overt revolt against the Holy Spirit within the Church.

Let us not betray the Christian vision and mission entrusted to us, lest anyone—finding no gentle, firm hand of Christ warmly extended from those who purport to serve in His name—instead draw back unsolaced. They may be confused or betrayed by guidance that has none of the divine Spirit’s knowledge of their true state and need. Conversely, they may be falsely confirmed in mistaken beliefs and practices that could damage Your life in them. Please ensure that they may find enlightenment and truth.

Lack of genuine ministry discredits the Church and Christ. Therefore, grant that the prayers and penance of fellow Christians obtain abundant blessing to redress their compromised mission so that their people may receive grace and inspiration otherwise perhaps denied them.

Bless the commitment and faith with which we approach and minister Your sacraments. Grant that Your people respond with true conversion to this loving action of the Holy Spirit in our service. Aware that the Sacraments draw life from Jesus in His Mystical Body, we ask that His presence shines through His ministers, and each Christian—for Your power transcends all failure and sin. Flood Your mercy upon anyone who does not wholeheartedly follow Christ, so that we may become one with each other in Him!

Grant to Your priests and all persons, a vibrant, loving communion in You in prayer and service focussed in the Sacramental life of Your Church. As we persevere in prayer and effort, please live, love and act in us continually, even when our limitations obscure to us the operation of Your grace. Thank You for Your love in our apostolate. Bless Your priests, and each of your followers, with the fullness of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. Glorify Yourself in us in everlasting crescendo!
 
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