On PRIESTS...

This is my dedication to all the Priests of all orders, of all ranks and of all times!...

In the presence of Priests I have always felt and known that I am on Holy Ground. Every time, I feel a joy that comes from the heart. I know I am with Jesus. I write as I am learning myself of all the things that come to me. These days, the struggles have been terrible and in my struggles I have always known that Heaven is right here.

786 is one of the numbers that I see frequently and the number on my Bible that refers to Abraham. I see numbers all the time and I believe they indicate a message. What the Saints have mentioned here on Priests is my feelings too, I feel the same way.

The Priests-in the words of the Saints--Priesthood by St. John Vianney (A.D. 1786-1859)

And the priest is the “man of God” 2 Timothy 3:17. It is God alone Who chooses him and calls him from among men for a very special vocation. A priest is a man who is invested with all the powers of God. "When the priest remits sins, he does not say, "God pardons you"; he says, "I absolve you." At the Consecration, he does not say, "This is the Body of Our Lord;" he says, "This is My Body."

At the confessions the Blessed Virgin, or an Angel; they cannot absolve us. The Holy Virgin cannot make her Divine Son descend into the Host. A priest, however simple he may be, can do it; "Go in peace; I pardon you." Oh, how great is a priest! Without the priest, the Death and Passion of Our Lord would be of no avail.

"The food of our souls - The precious Body and Blood of Our Lord." See the power of the priest; out of a piece of bread the word of a priest makes a God. It is more than creating the world.

St. Teresa kissed the ground where a priest had passed. When you see a priest, you should say, “There is he who made me a child of God, and opened Heaven to me by holy Baptism; he who purified me after I had sinned; who gives nourishment to my soul.”

The priesthood is the love of the Heart of Jesus.

St. John Chrysostom (A.D. 347-407)

The priest holds the place of the Savior Himself, when, he absolves from sin. This great power, which Jesus Christ has received from His eternal Father, He has communicated to His priests. Consider how great a honour the grace of the Spirit has vouchsafed to priests. For it has been said to them, "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven." They who rule on Earth have indeed authority to bind, but only the body: whereas this binding lays hold of the soul and penetrates the heavens; and what Priests do here below God ratifies above. To pardon a single sin requires all the omnipotence of God. Hence, when they heard that Jesus Christ pardoned the sins of the paralytic, the Jews justly said: Who can forgive sins but God alone. Hence, in giving priests the power of absolving from sin, the Redeemer breathed on them, and said to them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: "Whose sins ye remit they are remitted, and whose sins ye retain they are retained?" What authority could be greater than this? "The Father hath committed all judgment to the Son?" He gave them His own Spirit, and thus made them, His own co-adjutors.

The Dignity of the Priest by St. Alphonsus Liguori

St. John Chrysostom says, that "he who honours a priest, honours Christ, and he who insults a priest, insults Christ." St. Mary of Oignies used to kiss the ground on which a priest had walked.

By a single Mass, the Priest gives greater honour to God than all the Angels and Saints, along with the Blessed Virgin Mary, have given or shall give to Him.

Jesus - a victim altogether holy and immaculate, capable of (by His death on the Cross) giving to God an honour worthy of God. Giving to God an infinite honour like that which a priest offers to Him by a single Mass.
 

On the day the Lord gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel:

“Sun, stand still over Gibeon,
 and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.” So the sun stood still,
 and the moon stopped,
 till the nation avenged itself on its enemies. 

The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a human being. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel! Joshua 10:12-14

We are struck with wonder when we hear that God obeyed the voice of Joshua. In obedience to the words of His priests God Himself descends on the altar and places Himself in their hands. St. Laurence Justinian (birthday 1 July), says "A word falls from their lips and the body of Christ is there substantially formed from the matter of bread, and the Incarnate Word descended from Heaven, is found really present on the table of the altar! The Angels abide by the order of God, but the priests take Him in their hands, distribute Him to the faithful, and partake of Him as food for themselves."

In the Council of Nice, the Emperor Constantine wished to sit in the last place, after all the priests, and on a seat lower than that which they occupied; he would not even sit down without their permission. The holy king St. Boleslans had so great a veneration for priests that he would not dare to sit in their presence.

St. Francis of Assisi used to say, "If I saw an Angel and a priest, I would bend my knee first to the priest and then to the Angel." 
Pope John Paul II modifies the position of Bernadine of Sienna, and places Mary on a level with the Roman priesthood. Mary conceived the "Eucharist;" the priests claim to transform the "bread" into the "incarnate God." "O wonderful dignity of the priests," cries out St. Augustine; "in their hands, as in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, the Son of God becomes incarnate."

"The power of the priest," says St. Bernardine of Sienna, "is the power of the Divine person; for the transubstantiation of the bread requires as much power as the creation of the world." And St. Augustine has written, "O venerable sanctity of the hands! O happy function of the priest! He that created [if I may say so] gave me the power to create Him; and He that created me without me is Himself created by me!" "As the Word of God created Heaven and earth, so," says St. Jerome, "the words of the priest create Jesus Christ."

"Let the priest," says St. Laurence Justinian," approach the altar as another Christ."
According to St. Cyprian, a priest at the altar performs the office of Christ. St. Clement, then, had reason to say that the priest is, as it were, a God on earth. These gods are, according to St. Augustine, the Priests of God. Neither doth any man, says St. Paul, take the honour to himself, but he that is called by God, as Aaron was. For Christ did not glorify Himself that He might be made a high priest, but He that said unto Him: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee. Let no one, he says, dare to ascend to the priesthood, without first receiving, as Aaron did, the Divine call; for even Jesus Christ would not of Himself assume the honour of the Priesthood, but waited till His Father called Him to it. 

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI on Priests

St. Francis of Assisi was unwilling to become a priest because he considered himself unworthy of such a lofty vocation. He paid special veneration to the priest's hands, which he used to always kiss on his knees very devoutly. He used to even kiss a priest's feet and even the footprints where one had walked.

In his exclamation: “Let everyone be struck with fear, let the whole world tremble, and let the heavens exalt when Christ, the Son of the living God, is present on the altar in the hands of a priest!”
  

When you love you want to please the object of your affection by doing everything possible to give joy to your beloved. When you love you look with eyes of love - not only at the beloved, but also everything that relates to the beloved. St. Francis cultivated the highest expression of love for Eucharistic adoration and most especially for churches and for priests.

The Holy Mass, Communion, Eucharistic adoration, the loving care for altars in churches, the veneration of priestly ministers of the Eucharist: St. Francis is a model for us in all of this. One cannot love Jesus and at the same time neglect His resting place. He exhorted the ministers of the altar to be faithful in taking care of anything that dealt with the presentation of - or the reverence for – the Most Holy Sacrament. 

St. Francis would go to churches in the area and sweep them with a broom he carried with him.  

St. Francis - his Testament: “…the Lord gave me, and gives me still, such faith in priests who live according to the rite of the holy Roman Church because their orders that, were they to persecute me, I would still have recourse to them… And I desire to respect, love and honour them and all others as my lords.  And I do not want to consider any sin in them because I discern the ‘Son of God’ in them and they are my Lords.” VERRRYYY IMPPPPPPPP

Here is the supernatural vision of St. Francis regarding those consecrated in “Persona Christi”, the priests: “…in them I discern the Son of God…” “He wanted priests who handle the tremendous and greatest sacraments to be honoured uniquely by the brothers, so that whenever they met them, as they bowed their heads to them, they would kiss their hands.  And if they found them on horseback, he wanted them not only to kiss their hands, but, out of reverence for their power, even the hooves of the horses upon which they were riding”

He would often challenge the Priests in his own Order: “Be holy because He is holy. For your part love, revere and honour Him above all others”. To be known everywhere as the “presence of Christ” – to think, speak, and act “like Christ”.

St. Francis challenged them to recognize and honour the humility of Jesus who “each day He Himself comes to us, appearing humbly; upon the altar in the hands of a Priest”.

“Hold back nothing of yourselves for yourselves, that He who gives Himself totally to you may receive you totally”. To be one for another, to be one with another: is this not the meaning of the Divine words of the supreme love of Jesus: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him” John. 6:56  

If there were no priest, there would be no Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, or Holy Communion, or the Real Presence of Jesus in the Tabernacle. 

By his ordination the priest is consecrated in soul and body. The Holy Spirit makes the priest's soul a likeness of Jesus, empowering the priest - “the priest at the altar takes the personal part of Jesus” (St. Cyprian), and “has charge of all of God” (St. John Chrysostom). It is so great that “when the priest conducts the Divine Sacrifice, Angels station themselves about him and in a choir they chant a hymn of praise in honour of the Victim Who is sacrificed” (St. John Chrysostom). And this happens at every Mass! 

The more faith and love there is among the people, the more they will venture to kneel before the priest and kiss those “holy and venerable hands” (the Roman Canon), in which Jesus lovingly makes Himself present every day.

St. Paschal Baylon was a porter in a Monastery. Each time a priest arrived; the holy lay brother knelt and reverently kissed both his hands. He judged that those hands had power to ward off evils and draw down blessings for the one who would treat them with veneration, since they are hands that Jesus makes use of. 

Padre Pio of Pietrelcina would affectionately kiss a priest's hands, even suddenly seizing them unexpectedly? 

The "Curé d'Ars" remarked in a sermon, “Every time I see a priest, I think of Jesus.” St. Catherine of Siena used to kiss the floor or ground where a priest had passed. One day St. Veronica Giuliani saw the priest mount the stairway of the monastery to take Holy Communion to the sick, and she knelt at the foot of the stairs, and then climbed the steps on her knees, kissing each step and moistening it with tears that her love produced. If it were not for the priest, the Passion and Death of Jesus would not help us ... The priest has the key to the heavenly treasures ...” 

The mission of Jesus; “As the Father hath sent me, I also send you” John 20:21. It is a divine mission which overwhelms the mind when one thinks deeply on the love which inspires it. The priest is “likened unto the Son of God” Hebrews 7:3, and the "Curé d'Ars" used to say that “only in Heaven will we measure the full greatness of this. If we appreciated it here on earth we would die, not of fright but of love ... After God, the priest is all.” 


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Hail, 'Full of Grace.' 

On HUMILITY...