Wikipedia

"The ambition of men, who have no fear of God, rushes into high posts, and exalted office is now publicly known as the prize of impiety. The result is, that the worse a man blasphemes, the fitter the people think him to be a bishop. Clerical dignity is a thing of the past. There is a complete lack of men shepherding the Lord's flock with knowledge. Ambitious men are constantly throwing away the provision for the poor on their own enjoyment and the distribution of gifts. There is no precise knowledge of canons. There is complete immunity in sinning; for when men have been placed in office by the favour of men, they are obliged to return the favour by continually showing indulgence to offenders. Just judgment is a thing of the past; and everyone walks according to his heart's desire. Vice knows no bounds; the people know no restraint. Men in authority are afraid to speak, for those who have reached power by human interest are the slaves of those to whom they owe their advancement. And now the very vindication of orthodoxy is looked upon in some quarters as an opportunity for mutual attack; and men conceal their private ill-will and pretend that their hostility is all for the sake of the truth. Others, afraid of being convicted of disgraceful crimes, madden the people into fratricidal quarrels, that their own doings may be unnoticed in the general distress. Hence the war admits of no truce, for the doers of ill deeds are afraid of a peace, as being likely to lift the veil from their secret infamy. All the while unbelievers laugh; men of weak faith are shaken; faith is uncertain; souls are drenched in ignorance, because adulterators of the word imitate the truth. The mouths of true believers are dumb, while every blasphemous tongue wags free; holy things are trodden under foot; the better laity shun the churches as schools of impiety; and lift their hands in the deserts with sighs and tears to their Lord in heaven. Even you must have heard what is going on in most of our cities, how our people with wives and children and even our old men stream out before the walls, and offer their prayers in the open air, putting up with all the inconvenience of the weather with great patience, and waiting for help from the Lord.

3. What lamentation can match these woes? What springs of tears are sufficient for them? While, then, some men do seem to stand, while yet a trace of the old state of things is left, before utter shipwreck comes upon the Churches, hasten to us, hasten to us now, true brothers, we implore you; on our knees we implore you, hold out a helping hand. May your brotherly bowels be moved toward us; may tears of sympathy flow; do not see, unmoved, half the empire swallowed up by error; do not let the light of the faith be put out in the place where it shone first."

Source: ST. BASIL OF CAESAREA To the Italians and Gauls. letter 92

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.

"We must not be deterred by the idle reproach preferred by some that we are ever speaking of the Savior's Passion, that we exhibit the life and death of a Christian as an expiatory immolation. Now can we do otherwise? As ministers of the Gospel have we the right to preach anything but Jesus and Him crucified? Is other knowledge than this needed in the spiritual life of the faithful? If the Cross today is a scandal to the worldling and the sensualist, if it is only folly to the superficially brilliant and the proud, that is certainly no reason why the capital dogma of faith and salvation should be toned down or veiled to bring it into accord with an erroneous view.

We must preach this dogma, and in its entirety; the Cross prolonged in the Eucharist and touching the confines of heaven; the Cross the portion of the baptized, of the believer, of the communicant who must needs be sacrificed upon it, but only that he may live eternally; the Cross the loadstone of the ages, today more than ever sweetly drawing to itself privileged souls the nobles, the purest, the best, who become enamored of suffering in order to continue and complete the Passion of Jesus. Who can adequately tell the beauty, the fecundity of the Cross dominating as it does the Christian world?"

Source: The Priesthood in the Sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by J. Grimal SM

Sacred Heart, Notre Dame Catholic Church, Brittany France

Prayer for priests to the Sacred Heart
Remember, O most loving Heart of Jesus, that they for whom I pray are those for whom You prayed so earnestly the night before Your death. These are they to whom You look to continue with You in Your sorrows when others forsake You, who share Your griefs and have inherited your persecutions, according to Your word: That the servant is not greater than his Lord.

Remember, O Heart of Jesus, that they are the objects of the world's hatred and Satan's deadliest snares. Keep them then, 0 Jesus, in the safe citadel of Your Sacred Heart and there let them be sanctified in truth.

May they be one with you and one among themselves, and grant that multitudes may be brought through their word to believe in You and love You.

Amen.

From the Forum Catholique:

par Abbé Frédéric Roseau (FSSP)

Translate by CAPG:

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.

wikipedia

"Let the cause of schism be immediately cut off with the sword of St. Peter, that is, by a true confession of the faith in a synod, and the detestation and anathematisation of all heretics."

"The Roman Church admits to its communion none who impugn the Catholic faith."

Source: Publications of the Catholic Truth Society, Volume 10. Saint Columbanus (539-615) by the Rev. John Golden page1

"Nothing is done by the Church that is not for the salvation of souls. The Church is not rightly portrayed if it is shown as in any way, or at any time, or in any activity, cultural, social or disciplinary, opposed to or in competition with the salvation of souls. I do not say the salvation of some souls in the shortest possible time; I do not say the break-neck making of new converts. I say the salvation of the greatest number of souls before time ceases: that is the raison d'etre of the Church and of the missions. It is a mistake to try to distinguish between them."

Source: The American Ecclesiastical review.  January -  June 1951 .Patrick O'Connor, St. Columban's Tokyo Japan

"There is nothing so great as the Eucharist. If God had something more precious, He would have given it to us."

-- Saint Jean Vianney

Fr. Altier Homily: Darkness may have its hour, but God will have His day

My God, I believe in the sublime dignity of the priesthood-a dignity which St. Denis calls divine; a dignity which surpasses that of kings and angels, as St. Ambrose says. O My God! Thy priests are the leaders of Thy people, the guardians of Thy Church, the light of the world, (Matt. v. 14), the dispensers of the sacraments, the vicars of Jesus Christ, and His coadjutors in the work of salvation (1 Cor. III. 9). Grant, then, O Lord, to me and to all the faithful to have the same respect and submission toward the person, words, and counsels of Thy ministers as toward Thine own, since Thou Thyself didst say to them: “He that heareth you Heareth Me, and he that despiseth you despiseth Me"

I ask of Thee, my God, for all the priests in the world and specially for those who have done any good to my soul, by seeking to sanctify it, the grace of loving Thee much and making Thee to be loved by others, so that by their piety, their virtues, and the ardor of their zeal they may merit a place with Thy apostles and most faithful servants.

Divine Spirit! Influence all their thoughts, words, and deeds; take complete possession of their minds and hearts, so that they may live in Thee and Thou in them. Jesus, meek and gentle Lamb of God, let their lives resemble the life Thou Thyself didst lead upon earth!

Holy Mary, Mother of Jesus, do thou by thy intercession sanctify the souls of all our priests and second their efforts in the work of saving souls; shield them, and defend them as thine own. Pray for them that the peace of God may be always with them, and that they may attain to the everlasting blessedness of heaven. Amen.

Source: Blessed Sacrament Prayer Book