Editor's Desk: Pray for Priests

By Michael F. Flach
Herald Editor
(From the issue of 5/2/02)

The Catholic priesthood has come under tremendous attack these past few months. Many faithful priests who toil in the vineyard day after day, year after year, have never felt so isolated. Some refuse to wear their clerical collars in public for fear of being ridiculed or worse.

For the Church to be renewed at this time, "there must be greater closeness between families and their priests, not less," said Carl A. Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus.

The Knights have always taken great pride in being called the "strong right arm of the Church," he said. "Now we must be its steel spine. This means the Knights will stand shoulder to shoulder with our priests throughout the crisis and also increase their efforts to promote vocations to the priesthood."

The Knights donate millions of dollars annually for scholarships and other financial aid to seminarians. They donated $100,000 to help support the Third Continental Congress on Vocations, held recently in Montreal, Canada. Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde and Father Curtis Clark, diocesan vocations director, attended this historic event.

The ordination season is approaching. Bishop Loverde will be ordaining four men to the diocesan priesthood on June 8 at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More. Many other priests will be celebrating special anniversaries this year, including Fathers Jerome Fasano and Steve Roszel, who will mark their silver jubilees. Msgr. Thomas Scannell’s 65^th anniversary was March 19.

It is good to keep in mind that our priests always need our prayers, especially at this junction in history. Barbara Meng, the mother of Father David Meng of St. Matthew Parish in Chancellorsville, has been reciting a daily prayer for priests for over 30 years. She wants to share this prayer with HERALD readers during this difficult time.

"O almighty and eternal God, look upon the face of Your Christ and for the love of Him who is the Eternal High Priest, have pity on your priests. Stir up in them the grace of their vocation which is in them by the imposition of the bishop’s hands. Keep them close to you, lest they enemy prevail against them, so that they may never do anything in the slightest degree unworthy of their sublime vocation.

"O Jesus, I pray to You for Your faithful and fervent priests, for Your unfaithful and tepid priests, for Your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields, for Your tempted priests, for Your lonely and desolate priests, for Your young priests, for Your aged priests, for Your sick priests, for Your dying priests, for the souls of Your priests in purgatory.

"But above all I commend to You the priests dearest to me: the priest who baptized me, the priests who absolved me from my sins, the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion, the priests who taught me and instructed me or helped me and encouraged me, all the priest to whom I am indebted in any other way.

"O Jesus, keep them all close to Your heart and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity. Amen."

For additional copies of this prayer card, write or call Catholic Faith Alive, 1910 Ventura Ave., Silver Spring, Md., 20902; 301/649-2037. Or visit the organization’s Web site at www.cfalive.org.

Copyright ©2002 Arlington Catholic Herald.  All rights reserved.