What Are You Doing to Celebrate the Year For Priests?
March 3, 2010 by O'Meara Ferguson
Filed under Daniel Conway, Good Steward Newsletter, spirituality
From Dan Conway’s The Good Steward, February 2010
Last summer at a prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Benedict XVI formally opened the Year for Priests. “The Church needs priests who are holy, ministers who help the faithful experience the merciful love of the Lord and who are convinced witnesses of that love,” the Holy Father said.
The Year for Priests coincides with the 150th anniversary of the death of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests. It is an opportunity to reflect on the blessings of priestly ministry — an especially important witness at a time when the image of the priest has been tarnished by scandal.
Pope Benedict reminded the world’s priests (more than 400,000 worldwide) that they have been consecrated to “serve, humbly and with authority, the common priesthood of the faithful.” He also warned that “nothing makes the Church and the Body of Christ suffer so much as the sins of its pastors.”
“Ours is an indispensable mission for the Church and for the world which demands full fidelity to Christ and unceasing union with him,” the pope said. “It demands, therefore, that we tend constantly to sanctity, as St. John Vianney did.” …
