Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, Friday, June 15th, 2007
There is excitement in the air when you reread June 8th to June 14th of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s Book, Co-Workers of the Truth, - Meditations for Every Day of the Year. A lot of times you are not even aware of it, and you take him for granted. Guess who is on the pedestal?
The Holy Priesthood
June 8th: “'Are you prepared to unite yourself daily more closely with Christ our High Priest, and to become with him a sacrificial offering for the glory of God and salvation of mankind.' Although it is not expressly stated, the concept of the Eucharistic ministry as the center of the priest’s existence is at the root of this question…. The first and main requirement is that the priest make himself the servant of the God who is greater than he is, that he learn to transcend himself and for which we are all waiting; … we all long to transcend the works of our own spirit, our own hands, and to receive the festive gift….
June 9th: “For him ((In his autobiographical reflections, the French theologian Marc Oraison), becoming a priest did not mean bidding farewell to all he had hoped to accomplish as a doctor, but it was only in the priesthood that he saw the definitive and complete answer to death: the Resurrection. To make present Christ’s Resurrection and our own – that can be accomplished only through the power of the priestly ministry ….For that reason, the innermost center of the priestly ministry is and will always be to celebrate the Eucharist of the Lord, to ratify among us, in the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, his death and victory of love….
June 10th: “The great and always necessary role of the priest consists in this: that, in a world fragmented by specialization and therefore sick and suffering and disintegrated, the priest continues to be someone who is there for everyone who hold humanity together from within…. despite all the training necessitated by his priesthood, he is, in the last analysis, not just one specialist among many, but a servant of all creatures, of all humans, who guides us over the rough places of life into God’s merciful love, into the unity of the body of Christ.
June 12th: “He (the priest) strengthens the others in their faith, but he also always receives faith from them…. Faith and prayer belong inseparably together. The time a priest spends in prayer and in hearing the word of God is never at the expense of his pastoral duties to the souls confided to his care. People can tell if the words and actions of their pastor have their origin in his prayer of only at the writing table….
June 13th: “Recently I had occasion to speak with a person who holds an important public office and who said to me. ‘And you priests have really only one task: to present Jesus to all people in such a way that they see him and learn to love him. Then everything that faith teaches will be self-evident.’
June 14th: “The priestly ministry is a ministry of reconciliation…. It is the priest’s role to make God’s gifts present to us and to associate us with these gifts in such a way that, as the Canon of the Mass puts it, we ourselves become a gift together with him. It is he who is permitted to offer the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in which the things of this world become a glorification of God and a new life arises from this sacrifice. He is called not only to speak of God, but to speak with him for all of us and to open to us the highest of all possibilities of human speech – that our words become a conversation with the living God….”
George H. Kubeck, Duplicate and or translate into Spanish.
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