Recently there was an article explaining that Pope Benedict XVI has called priests to be Saints. All of us are called to be Saints but the grace of priesthood is likely akin to the Scripture verse: “Whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required” (Luke 12:48). Part of this process begins with the laity restoring in their own hearts, minds and souls the dignity of priesthood. Certainly the scandals are part of the reason for the decline in trust and perhaps the secularization of our culture has also contributed. May we pray for our priests daily, and for our own peace of mind concerning the call on their lives from our Savior! Our Holy Father said that priests should be “men of intense prayer who cultivate a communion of love and life with the Lord.” May it be so! Here are some wonderful words from the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman:If there be those here present, my dear brethren, who will not believe that grace is effectual within the Church, because it does little outside of it, to them I do not speak: I speak to those who do not narrow their belief to their experience; I speak to those who admit that grace can make human nature what it is not; and such persons, I think, will feel it, not a cause of jealousy and suspicion, but a great gain, a great mercy, that those are sent to preach to them, to receive their confessions, and to advise them, who can sympathize with their sins, even though they have not known them.
Not a temptation, my brethren, can befall you, but what befalls all those who share your nature, though you may have yielded to it, and they may not have yielded. They can understand you, they can anticipate you, they can interpret you, though they have not kept pace with you in your course. They will be tender to you, they will “instruct you in the spirit of meekness” (cf. Galatians 6:1), as the Apostle says, “considering themselves lest they also be tempted” (ibid.).
Come then unto us, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and ye shall find rest to your souls; come unto us, who now stand to you in Christ’s stead, and who speak in Christ’s Name; for we too, like you, have been saved by Christ’s all-saving Blood. We too, like you, should be lost sinners, unless Christ had had mercy on us, unless His grace had cleansed us, unless His Church had received us, unless His Saints had interceded for us.
Be ye saved, as we have been saved; “come, listen, all ye that fear God, and we will tell you what He hath done for our souls” (cf. Psalm 65 [66]:16). Listen to our testimony; behold our joy of heart, and increase it by partaking in it yourselves. Choose that good part which we have chosen; join ye yourselves to our company; it will never repent you, take our word for it, who have a right to speak, it will never repent you to have sought pardon and peace from the Catholic Church; it will never repent you, though you go through trouble, though you have to give up much for her sake. It will never repent you, to have passed from the shadows of sense and time, and the deceptions of human feeling and false reason, to the glorious liberty of the sons of God.
And O, my brethren, when you have taken the great step, and stand in your blessed lot, as sinners reconciled to the Father you had offended, O then forget not those who have been the ministers of your reconciliation; and as they now pray you to make your peace with God, so do you, when reconciled, pray for them, that they may gain the great gift of perseverance, that they may continue to stand in the grace in which they trust they stand now, even till the hour of death, lest, perchance, after they have preached to others, they themselves become reprobate.
