Sacrifice and Reparation
by VP
Posted on Tuesday March 05, 2019 at 12:00AM in Books
Given the fact that the deepest sorrows of Christ's Heart are the scandals that involve His "other selves," His priests whom He has so loved and has so desired to draw into the highest sanctity, "How then shall we respond?" It should be the response "that a son or daughter would make; would go over and take the mother's hand and say, "Never mind, mother, I'll make up for the one that has hurt you. I'll make reparation. I'll pay that bill. I'll take up that burden. I'll lighten your cross." In a word, the evidence of infidelity in priests should arouse in the hearts of Christ's faithful the wish to expiate.
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Why reparation? Because "this devil in the priestly heart is cast out only by prayer and fasting." Not by prayer alone, but by prayer and mortification. This need not mean extraordinary bodily austerities. But it does mean the patient endurance of whatever trials the Lord may send; or the withdrawal of the pleasures and satisfactions previously had; or the silent endurance of rejection and mistrust; or the quiet bearing up with a painful illness, disability or wasting disease. What form the mortification takes is secondary. What is primary is the will to expiate. And this will should become imperative: "Progressively and always with the restraint that is guided by humble obedience to spiritual direction and to superiors, way down deep we must develop a thirst for reparation; and it will come logically in the supernatural order, as we grow in the love of Jesus."
Source: A Prophet for the Priesthood, A Spiritual Biography of Father Gerald M.C. Fitzgerald. by Father John A. Hardon, S.J.
