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"Active life, with all its labor and fatigues endured for the sake of Christ whom we serve in our neighbor, is very meritorious; "happy, however is the home where Mary causes the complaint of Martha" and refuses to take away from prayer a life which ordinary occupations might appear to claim.

God is indeed the author of all grace and wishes to be recognized as such; and contemplative life, which puts souls in direct contact with him, assures their personal sanctification more fully and obtains more efficaciously the graces by which a Christian apostleship becomes fruitful.

Let us esteem at its just value the position that Jesus reserves to Mary, and if He calls us to share in Martha's solicitude, let us endeavor like the Saints, to make up by the spirit of prayer, for what is wanting in active life."

Source: Daily Missal with Vespers for Sundays & Feasts By Gaspar Lefebvre · 1925

Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Raleigh NC

"The priest is a man of the people, a father, a friend, a guide, a defender. It is his duty to commend good, to denounce evil, to lead the people into virtue, to keep them from vice, to guard the fold from the ravening wolves, to feed the sheep with life-giving food, to train them in the ways that lead to strength and beauty of goodness.

What a work the Christian priesthood had done in the history of the world! It preached the Gospel to pagan Rome and Jewish Palestine, it converted Constantine and his empire; and evangelized the barbarians; it brought the Gospel of Christ to every nation; it built the Christian altar by the running brook, on the hillside and in the mountain fastness, that everywhere the people might have salvation; near the altar; it built the Christian school; it preserved letters and science, and civilized the world.

The saints of old, who taught men morality, established Christianity and ruled the Christian Church, were priests. The missionaries, who gave up life and its ambitions to consecrate themselves to the service of God, were saintly priests of the Christian Church. They built the Church of God into the life of every nation; they have brought the Church to this land and to our day. We are the successors to that same priesthood, and upon us falls the same responsibility.

The priest of today must be prepared to meet the exigencies of the times; he must have the spirit of his vocation and courage of his convictions, manfully and fearlessly standing for the truth. He is called to be a leader."

Source: Our Church, Her Children and Institutions, 1908 By Rt. Rev. Thomas. J. Conaty, D.D.

Prayer for Spiritual Fathers

Most gracious Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for thou faithful priests and bishops, whose spiritual fatherhood and example of fidelity, self-sacrifice, and devotion is so vital to the faith of your people. May our spiritual fathers be guided by the example of St. John Vianney. Give them valiant faith in the face of confusion and conflict, hope in time of trouble and sorrow, and steadfast love for Thee, for their families, and for all Thou people throughout the world.

May the light of Thy Truth shine through their lives and their good works. Assist all spiritual fathers, that through Thy Grace they may steadily grow in holiness and in knowledge and understanding of Thy Truth. May they generously impart this knowledge to those who rely on them, Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

Source: CAPG Faithfulness of Christ, Faithfulness of Priests: Curé of Ars St. John Marie Vianney, a true example of a pastor at the service of Christ's flock.

"The Pope had very special and peculiar difficulty in dealing with the Catholic Modernists; for Modernism was very insidious in its methods. The Modernists said: there may be difficulties about the dogmas of faith from the point of view of philosophy and historical criticism; they may not be philosophically and historically true; but, even so, their religious value remains, for they can be believed by faith. To the ordinary faithful Faith meant intellectual assent to truths on the authority of the word of God. It seemed, then, as if the Catholic Modernists were not impugning the intellectual truth of the dogmas of faith. But the Modernists meant by Faith the use of dogmas as rules of action; we should live and act, they said, as if Christ were God, as if He had arisen from the dead, as if He were really present in the Blessed Eucharist. There was then an equivocal use of the word "faith".

The true faith of the Church was being undermined. Intellectual assent to the dogmas of faith on the authority of God would be impossible if the dogmas themselves were philosophically or historically false. Thus Modernism was a formula or prescription for an easy imperceptible death to Christianity. But Pope Pius X. intervened, and saved his people from the poisoned prescriptions of the Modernists." The Catholic Book Bulletin, Vol 1 P33-34 1911, Modernism and the Old Faith by Very Rev. Fr. Daniel Goghlan, D.D.

Prayer to the Holy Angels for Parishes
All you legions and choirs of Angels, please make haste to come to the aid and defense of our One Holy Roman Catholic Church. Led by St. Michael, may She be protected from destruction within by all modernistic attempts that try to diminish the true presence of God and take away His proper and due respect! In particular, come to the aid of my parish (name your parish) that it may remain or be remade to be a place of reverence and a stronghold from which the One True Triune God may continue to lead and strengthen us. Amen.

 What would happen to a priest already sharing in the priesthood of Christ by reason of his ordination, if he refused to share in Christ’s condition of victim? He would certainly be falling away from the priestly ideal: his life would become disordered, disturbed, and confused. He would remain a minister of Christ but without a sincere love for his affectionate Master. No longer a man of God but a man of the world, a man whose life has become vain, superficial, barren. This deplorable state of sterility reveals in an even better light the fruitfulness of a genuine apostolate, just as it is easier to appreciate the value of justice when we see the suffering resulting from injustice. Every priest should ask for the grace to be a victim in the way God wants him to be, to suffer patiently whatever God has willed for him from all eternity, so that he takes up his cross each day not simply as a faithful follower of Christ but as a priest standing in the place of Christ himself. He must undergo a mystical death before his physical death.


Source: The Priest in Union with Christ, Father Reginal Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

"Ah, yes! "It is the Mass that matters" for us Catholics; and herein lies the explanation of the sinister efforts of the enemies of our holy Faith to render the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice impossible. For, says St. Bonaventure, "take away the Sacrament, and what will there be left in the world but error and infidelity?"
(...)
"But by this Sacrament," continues the Saint, "the Church stands, faith is confirmed, the Christian religion and Divine worship flourish." (On the Preparation for Mass, I i 3)"

Source: The psychology of Practical Godlessness The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Volume 47 edited by James Andrew Corcoran, Patrick John Ryan, Edmond Francis Prendergast