CAPG's Blog 

Our Divine Savior, it is true, left all the splendors of Heaven. He became man in order that He, Who is life itself, might die to save us. He endured all the fury and barbarity of His enemies; He was torn, bleeding, abandoned by all on an infamous gibbet. Assuredly, this was too much, but it was not enough for His love to us. Hence it is that we behold Him in the Mass - this same God, again become a victim, giving Himself to us in perpetual sacrifice, in order thereby to apply forever to the souls of men the merits of His life and death.

What can we say - what can we do while contemplating these prodigies, save to humble ourselves with the angels, in endless adoration, thanksgiving and love!

Source: The Holy Mass: the Sacrifice for the living and the dead, the clean oblation offered up among the nations from the rising to the setting of the sun, Fr. Michael Muller 1881.

Thrones and scepters and crowns have withstood the hierarchy of the Church; but, immutable, like God, who laid its foundation, it is the firm, unshaken center round which the weal and woe of nations move - weal if they adhere to it - woe if they separate from it.

If the world takes from the Pope, the bishops, and priests of the Catholic Church, the cross of gold, they will bless the world with one of wood. If necessary, popes, bishops and priests can suffer and die for the welfare of the world, as Jesus suffered and died. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church is immortal.

Source: The Catholic Priest, Rev. Michael Muller C.S.S.R

The priest is a steward in charge of interests not his own. He is a servant, as servant of all work, expected to be helpful all round and all day long. He can work for nobody but his Master. His rule is that of our Lord himself.

Priests of God, you are not your own.

Source: Daily thoughts for priests by Fr. John Hogan 1899

We live in a country and in a period of restless activity, of advertising and being advertised,
of nervous anxiety for results almost at any cost. How sad to see priests caught up and carried
 away by the flood, losing the merit of their lives, not to say their very souls, while saving others!

Like those of whom Our Lord speaks, they prophesy by the earnestness of their preaching; they
 cast ou devils by the power of the sacraments; they work wonders of material construction and
organization; but they are sustained in it all and borne along chiefly by natural impulse, by
 exuberant activity, by the spirit of pride, by the desire to be talked of by their people and by
 their fellow priests, by all manner of human motives worthless in the sight of God.

 Only at the judgment of God - "on that day"- will they know, will the world know,
in what depths of spiritual poverty they have lived and died.

Source: Daily Thoughts for Priests, Fr. John B. Hogan

A priest without faith can form no idea of the sublime dignity of the priesthood, no idea of the perfection required of the priest!

Source: The Catholic Priesthood, Rev. Fr. Michael Muller, 1885

Our Savior in associating with Himself certain men to continue the work of redemption reserved to Himself the direct and immediate action on souls. He works through the priest, who is only His minister and instrument. If the instrument works according to the required conditions, its action is free and produces the desired effect. But if the instrument is corrupt and wicked, its action is impeded and produces no effect. 

Source:  Jesus Living in the Priest, The General Idea of the Priest by Rev. Fr. Jacques Millet

If you wish to know how much good a priest can accomplish in the Church, you have only to examine how far he is willing to give up self in order that the spirit of Jesus Christ may enter his heart and abide there.

Source:  Jesus Living in the Priest, The General Idea of the Priest by Rev. Fr. Jacques Millet

Whosoever knows Jesus Christ possesses all knowledge; whosoever knows Him not is ignorant of all things, even though he may have mastered all that is taught in the academies of the learned. 

The Word-made-flesh is the sun of truth and the light that enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world; He is the unutterable secret of His heavenly Father, the mystery of His love that lay hidden during the ages that precede His coming.

"If any one saith that Order, or sacred ordination, is not truly and properly a sacrament instituted by Christ the Lord; or that it is a kind of human figment devised by men unskilled in ecclesiastical matters; or that it is only a kind of rite for choosing ministers of the word of God and of the sacraments; let him be anathema..."

"If any one saith that, besides the priesthood, there are not in the Catholic Church other orders, both greater and minor, by which, as by certain steps, advance is made unto the priesthood; let him be anathema"