CAPG's Blog 

In priestly life it is a matter of principle to be punctual - in the services of the church, the Holy Mass, the confessional, attendance to the sick, to the schools, and to all appointments made. The love of God and the love of souls should ever be the priest's moving principle. If this be so, as soon as the duty is due, love prompts us to move. Caritas Christi Urget nos.

Source: A Spiritual Retreat By Fr. H. Reginald Buckler

Our Lord in His hidden home in the sanctuary is every with the priest. What a home of contemplative prayer the sanctuary should be. There are our Lord and the priest living and working together in the life of mutual love. The hidden, the active, the suffering life, are all there before us in this sacrament of love, which is the prolongation of our Lord's Incarnation in our midst. There, too, is the Fountain of living water, every-flowing to refresh and purify our souls. What a privilege of love is all this if we do but respond to it. It is a matter of forming a spiritual habit - the habit of enjoying the unseen world, the presence of our Lord and His angels, who are ever with us in the sanctuary.

"O God, my God, to Thee do I watch at break of day, for Thee my soul hath thirsted. So in the sanctuary have I come before Thee to see Thy power and Thy glory. " " In the sight of Thy angels I will praise Thee."

Source: A Spiritual Retreat By Fr. H. Reginald Buckler

In all the workings of the sacramental system our Lord is always the principal worker. He it is who baptizes, He who absolves, He who consecrates. Deus est agens principale. He is the head of angels and men, and angels and saints co-operate with Him in the workings of the Church on earth. "The Catholic religion is the coming of the unseen world into this. What we see here is as a screen, hiding from us God, and Christ, and the Angels, and the Saints." (Newman, Sermons)

But here it is, in these most Divine workings, that our Lord chooses His priests, and wills them to live and work with Him, with His angels and His saints "you are come to Mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the company of many thousands of angels: and to the Church of the first born, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Testament, and to the sprinkling of blood, which speaketh better than that of Abel." (2 Tim)

Saint Paul gives us the idea of what a priest should be his words to Timothy: "Carefully study to present thyself approved unto God - a workman that need not be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth... a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and profitable to the Lord... that the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work."

And Saint Thomas may be said to epitomise this when he describes the priestly life as being "midway between God and men; receiving from God in contemplation, and giving to the people by action."

Source: A Spiritual Retreat By Fr. H. Reginald Buckler

Ad Vos O Sacerdotes.

God's wondrous plan, both in nature and grace, is to work through the agency of His creature. He gives us life, but through our parents; light and heat, but through the sun; breath, but through the air; food and clothing, but through the hands of our fellow-creatures; knowledge, but through our teachers. So in the world of grace our Lord comes to us, but through a human mother. He gives His truth to the world, but through the Church; His grace, but through the Sacraments; His own very self, in His hidden Sacramental life, but through the hands of His priests.

O Veneranda sacerdotum dignitas

Source: A Spiritual Retreat By Fr. H. Reginald Buckler

Zeal for the salvation of souls is the outcome of the love of God overflowing to the love of our neighbor. It is a virtue for all Christians to cultivate, as belonging closely to Christian charity. It is a necessary part of religious, priestly, and spiritual life, for no one could love God truly without loving the souls for whom Christ died.

It is clear that with many their zeal for souls will have to be mainly affective, yet to some unknown degree effective by their prayers, as they have neither the ability not the call to work effectively. But prayer entreats God, and God lest Himself be entreated. 

Let all true lovers of God therefore associate themselves with our Lord and the priesthood of His Church; let them be in union with all the Masses and Divine offices of the Church going on night and day in the world; and let them offer all the toils and trials of daily life, too, for the conversion of souls to God - for the heathen, the heretics, and for bad Catholics; let them especially pray in all this union for the hundred thousand dying daily, and let them pray for the vast wants of the Church in her conflict with the world, and especially for the Holy Father, the bishops, and priests and all the religious of the world , that all may be men of God, and profitable in His hands for the salvation of souls. Let them extend their prayers and penances to the holy souls in Purgatory in the same spirit of love and zeal, looking to the glory of God and the blessedness of the spirits departed. Sometimes of course opportunities for effective charity will come, and then each one must be ready for caritas in actu, remembering that our progress is by love, and that our Lord tells us we are to be "rich towards God."

Source: A Spiritual Retreat By Fr. H. Reginald Buckler

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the representative Man, and the model and the perfect Man. It is only through Him and through conformity to Him that we can go to God. "No man cometh to the Father but by Me." "whom He foreknew, He predestined to be made conformable to the image of His Son." Let us learn from our Blessed Lord's life on earth the ways of "holiness, without which no man shall see God. "

First there are the marvels of our Lord's infant and hidden life on earth for thirty years, with lessons to all the world of humility, dependence, and obedience. How sweet a virtue humility must be before God, when we find that He, the God of all, empties Himself of the Majesty of His glory and becomes as nothing in the hands of men. Then the utter dependence in which He wills to be on His Blessed Mother, looking to her for everything. How can we ever realize the intense love He will have had for her, and the marvelous holiness He will have bestowed on her, for such Divine Ministrations? What a model to priests our Blessed Lady must every be, in the intensity of her devotion to the body of our Lord. And what a home of prayer, contemplation, and union with God must the holy house of Nazareth have been during those years of the hidden life. What must have been the sanctity of St. Joseph to have been the chosen guardian of the Word Incarnate and His Blessed Mother? The lowest of the three that he was, he is yet the official superior of the house. Who will not love obedience and subjection, even to those beneath us in power and dignity, from the examples of Jesus and Mary in subjection to Joseph?

The beauty and value of an ordinary, humble, homely, hidden life is here shown in all its power and perfection. We cannot doubt that during those thirty years our Lord was living and working for the glory of His Father, and for the regeneration and salvation of the world. Yet it was rather by the way of affective than effective love, at least as far as outer works were concerned. Our Lord would not go forth to evangelize the world until His hour had come. "My hour is not yet come." God Himself is the first Worker, and His will is the rule of life. He will know where to find us when He wants us. What a lesson to all young religious and aspirants to the priesthood is given to us by our Lord's long hidden life at Nazareth.  He had no need or preparation for His mission to the world. But He was the model man, and the model priest, and He willed to teach us that our first need, for God and for souls, is the life "hidden with Christ in God. "

Source: A Spiritual Retreat, Fr. H Reginald Buckler, O.P.