A month ago, Father Gabriel O’Donnell, O.P., one of my colleagues at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., asked if I had seen the new “Message of Pope Leo XIV to Priests” released on the Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests, which coincides with the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, this year June 12.
I hadn’t, but I was very interested. Easily found on the website of the Holy See (vatican.va), this message encourages priests to draw closer to Christ and revisits the truth taught throughout history concerning the love of Jesus for his brother priests and his aspirations for them.
The Holy Father writes, “Holiness is neither one option among many nor an abstract ideal, for it involves the very identity of every person who wishes to share in the life of the risen One.” God especially calls his ordained priests to a holiness that “is a trustful abandonment, allowing ourselves to be transformed by the Holy Spirit. Yet it is precisely here that the great paradox of our priestly life emerges. We are called to share in God’s own holiness, but we carry this treasure in earthen vessels (2 Cor. 4:7). We are limited and imperfect, often weak and weary, and at times wounded. How can such a vulnerable human heart respond to such a high calling? The priest lives this tension. Yet at the same time, he must recognize that he finds peace in the open side of the Lord Jesus.”
Pope Leo issues a paternal challenge to priests everywhere. “Dear brothers, by our ordination we have been configured to Christ, yet we must always renew within ourselves the gift of grace through our daily celebration of the Eucharist, prayer, meditation on the word of God and humble service to our brothers and sisters. Let us remain united to Christ in everything — in all that we do and in all that happens to us every day. Then the holiness that we have sought in vain through isolated efforts will reveal itself for what it is: a response to the grace that precedes, sustains and transforms us. Indeed, our humanity is not compartmentalized. Prayer, ministry, relationships, weariness, joys and failures — even time or love that apparently seems wasted — all become privileged places where God reveals himself and his infinite love.”
In what does the reply of priests to the Lord’s summons to sanctity consist? “The response to the call to holiness lies not so much in works of asceticism or striving for perfection — though these are necessary — but in trusting adherence to the love revealed in Jesus’ pierced Heart. The Apostle John invites us to contemplate the open side of the crucified One (Jn 19:34), in which God definitively shows us what holiness is: not an inaccessibly distant or detached perfection, but a love that gives itself even to the point of being wounded and so can become a source of mercy and life. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is an exemplary image of the surpassing love of God. It is an all-powerful love precisely because it is capable of being vulnerable and of transforming sorrow into grace and suffering into hope.”
Priests must “seek one another, listen to one another and support one another. The priest who isolates himself slowly fades away; the priest who walks alongside his brothers grows. Saint Augustine reminds us of this when he says: ‘How shall we avoid finding ourselves in darkness? By loving our brothers. What is the proof that we love our brothers? This: that we do not fracture unity and that we practice charity’ (“In Epist. Io. ad Parthos” II, 3).”
Pope Leo reminds his readers that Pope Benedict XVI mentioned that St. John Vianney described the priesthood as “the love of the Heart of Jesus,” and that Our Lady — the Mother of Priests — will “teach us to keep alive and make the Heart of Christ, Savior of the world, beat within us.”
Msgr. Mangan is on the faculty of Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md.
