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A new book by Cardinal Robert SARAH on the priest in Italian, soon to be translated into French and other languages... In the service of the truth - Priesthood and ascetic life

Author's intention:

"I am convinced that at the heart of the crisis of the Church is a crisis of the priesthood. Priests have been stripped of their identity. They have been made to believe that they should be efficient men. But a priest is fundamentally a continuator among us of the presence of Christ. He should not be defined by what he does, but by what he is: ipse Christus, Christ himself...In this book (Le soir approche et déjà le jour baisse), I wanted to encourage priests. I wanted to tell them: love your priesthood! Be proud to be crucified with Christ! Do not be afraid of the hatred of the world! I wanted to say my affection as a father and brother for the priests of the whole world!...All of you, priests and religious, hidden and forgotten, you whom society sometimes despises, you who are faithful to the promises of your ordination, you make the powers of this world tremble! You remind them that nothing resists the strength of the gift of your life for the Truth. Your presence is unbearable for the Prince of lies. You are not the defenders of an abstract truth or of a party. You have decided to suffer for love of the Truth, for Jesus Christ.
Cardinal Robert Sarah - Excerpts from the presentation of the book : The evening is approaching and already the day is dwindling - French Institute-St. Louis Center of France - Rome- Monday, May 14, 2019

SITE: La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana

Zealous, generous, virile: what Cardinal Sarah wants to say to priests

10-06-2021

"He does not delegate his formation to social networks, he does not laze in bed until 11 a.m., he does good reading, he increases his faith, he is interested in the eternal destiny of his children, he defends his wife, the Church, against attacks with virility, He doesn't let himself be used as a puppet on talk shows, he preserves the liturgy and doesn't invent it because he knows that his task is to reproduce the liturgy that exists in Heaven and he calls himself a "gift" because he exercises a responsibility. And from time to time he empties his bank account to experience Providence, to help the poor and to feel like a family every 27th of the month. The identity of the true priest according to Cardinal Sarah. His latest book, "At the Service of Truth", is released today.

What must a priest have to be a true man of God? The question is not insignificant, because we are living in times of profound crisis of the priesthood, caught between the risk of functionalism and the temptations of the world. According to Cardinal Robert Sarah, zeal for souls cannot fail a consecrated person. What is zeal? The Prefect Emeritus of Divine Worship himself explained it during the spiritual exercises of the Summorum Pontificum priestly fraternity held in February 2020, shortly before the lockdown disrupted the lives of priests: "Zeal is interest. A person is only as zealous as someone or something that really interests him. Zeal for souls, then, is the interest that the pastor must have in the eternal salvation of the sheep entrusted to his care."

With such a criterion, it would be enough to sketch out one's pastor or confessor: is this man really interested in me and my eternal salvation?

Sarah's words to the priests of MS Friendship have become a book that is being released today by Fede & Cultura. At the Service of Truth. Priesthood and ascetic life, is the title of the book that collects the meditations made by the former prefect to the priestly sodality who edited, through Father Vincenzo Nuara, the introduction. (HERE to order)

It is a book on the priesthood, or rather, a guide to the priesthood. Intended for priests, but also suitable for lay people, so that they can recognize if something is missing in their priests, or what aspect they would like to see better developed in them. Or even to help them work their way through what might be the modern temptations of parish priests.

Sarah lists some of them with insight and knowledge of the subject: first of all, there is the education received because "priests often did not receive a solid human, affective and religious education in the family, they were not educated in faith or in the value of renunciation and sacrifice and this often has repercussions in many aspects of the ministry.

The second temptation is organization: "There are priests who get up at 11 a.m. and close the church in the morning, others who stay up late at night, and still others who waste their time. The third is the haphazard use of the internet: "If we allow the internet to replace our thinking and responsibility for discernment, then we become automatons in the hands of others." The danger, according to Sarah, "is that the net will destroy our brains and make us someone else's puppets."

A fourth temptation to sin for the priest is his insufficient or unhealthy theological and doctrinal preparation: "Sound doctrine is necessary and greatly helps the priest to avoid occasions of sin. It is the duty of the priest to read and study, but to read and study good books, books that help him."

This leads to zeal, which is precisely that interest in the soul entrusted to him. Sarah asked participants in spiritual exercises, "Do we have zeal for souls? Are we interested in their eternal destiny? How sad it is that so many souls may be lost because of the coldness, the indifference of those who have been commissioned to cooperate with God in their salvation! We may not care about souls, but Christ does! For us, in fact, souls have cost nothing, but Christ has paid dearly for them!"

The zealous priest must put himself in the front line to defend his flock, and he "worries about whether the cultural and ideological currents of our time do not risk polluting the souls of his flock: especially the souls of the youngest."

But zeal is not born spontaneously, but only from faith. It is brought back to it. The book deals for many pages with the aspect of faith and what happens when the priest lacks it.

There is a passage that captures the idea of faith and Providence that a priest, according to Sarah, must have. It is a faith of total abandonment, which we often take for granted in a man of the Church, but which is not. To shake them up, Sarah even goes so far as to use significant hyperbole, which has nothing to do with pauperism, but is really an exercise in trust, borrowing the words heard from a bishop to his priests: "From time to time, reset your bank account to zero. Take whatever you have and give it to the poor or to repair the church or to buy dignified vestments and sacred vessels. Reset your bank account. You will experience what so many people do who live in hope that the 27th of the month will come soon, when their salary or pension will be paid. Thousands of families live this way and perhaps have a greater sense of Providence than many priests who keep quiet because they have a lot of money to spend.

Sarah denounces the "Protestant spirituality that has penetrated many priests" and the "emotionalism" that many need to "feel something," which leads them to distort and appropriate the liturgy. "This is a sentimental drift, while on the contrary, holiness is not a state of mind, but an objective fact" because "the liturgy is that: to give back to God the primacy and to adore him on our knees. An anthropocentric liturgy would be a decentralized liturgy, the task of divine worship is to reproduce on earth the heavenly liturgy of the angels and saints.

He then reminds us that a priest must have "manliness." "Manly psychology," he says, citing the example of St. Joseph, "consists in taking charge of a family and providing for it.

The priest "must be a father to his faithful, never a friend. Excessive familiarity of the priest with the faithful is always harmful," and in addition to defending his children, the faithful, he must also defend his spouse, the Church, "from the attacks she receives," he adds, warning priests invited to talk shows who "are useful puppets in the hands of those who run show business.

Authoritarian, but never authoritarian. Starting with the name. Sarah condemns the habit of many priests of not calling themselves "Don" or "Father" but only by their baptismal name: "In the midst of Christ's flock, once ordained, we no longer represent ourselves, but Him. To add "father" or "gift" to the name is not a worldly honor, but aims to indicate concretely this fundamental aspect. Thus, the faithful will implicitly remember who we are: ministers of God and of the Church. But not only them: we will also remember! To be called "Father" or "Don", or even to politely ask to be called so, is not a matter of vanity or a search for worldly honors. On the contrary, it is a call to responsibility.

The same is true of the habit of stripping off priestly vestments to put on more comfortable middle-class clothes: "The priest who does not wear the habit, what does he propose to do to approach the people? To evangelize them in order to bring them to Christ, or to blend in with the crowd? Beyond particular cases, we should always be recognized as fathers to our children and as ministers of God and of the Catholic Church to non-Catholics. This is not formalism, it is a matter of substance."

Source: Le forum Catholique

"When you meet very serious difficulties in the path of holiness and the exercise of your ministry, turn your eyes and your mind trustfully to her who is the Mother of the Eternal Priest and therefore the loving Mother of all Catholic priests. You are well aware of the goodness of this Mother. In many regions you have been the humble instruments of the mercy of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in wonderfully reviving the faith and charity of the Christian people.

Our Lady loves everyone with a most tender lover, but She has a particular predilection for priests who are the living image of Jesus Christ. Take comfort in the thought of the love of the Divine Mother for each of you, and you will find the labors of your sanctification and priestly ministry much easier.

To the Beloved Mother of God, mediatrix of heavenly graces, We entrust the priests of the whole world in order that, through her intercession, God will vouchsafe a general outpouring of His Spirit which will move all ministers of the altar to holiness and, through their ministry, will spiritually renew the face of the earth."

Source: Pope Pius XII in his exhortation Menti nostrae, issued on Sept. 23, 1950. The translation is from p46 of the NCWC edition. Mary and the Priest, The American Ecclesiastical Review. March 1951.