Recently in Thursdays of Adoration and Reparation for Priests Category

For the Year of the Priest: a painting of Saint John Mary Vianney with his friend, Saint Peter Julian Eymard

Saint Peter Julian Eymard is one of the principal patrons of the work of the Cenacle here in Tulsa. On the feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1857 Saint Peter Julian Eymard inaugurated the solemn exposition of the Most Blessed Sacrament by which the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament came to life. This week's move to a leased house in Tulsa better suited to a life of prayer and hospitality, and the need for funds to build the new Monastery of Our Lady of the Cenacle, dedicated to Eucharistic adoration for the sanctification of priests, compel me once again to propose the following novena for those who care to make it with me from January 6-14. It would be grand if those making the novena would leave a word in the comment box letting me know it!

Some readers of Vultus Christi may recall that on October 26, 2007 I wrote:

The desire of the Heart of Jesus is that there should be priest adorers and reparators: priests who will adore for those who do not adore, priests who will make reparation for those who do not. Our Lord asks me -- and will ask other priests as well -- to remain in adoration before His Eucharistic Face, offering all the priests of the Church to His Open Heart present in the Sacrament of His Love.

This inspiration was confirmed by the splendid letter of Cardinal Hummes, published on December 7, 2007, inviting to adoration and reparation for priests.

A Daunting Proposition

The Church is blessed with any number of communities of fervent Benedictines, who glorify Our Lord according to the gifts imparted to them, but nowhere does Our Lord find a house of priest-adorers to keep Him company in the Sacrament of His Love, and to offer themselves for their brother priests. The establishment of a new monastery is a daunting proposition. I might be tempted to lose heart, were it not for Our Lord's assurance that the measure of one's weakness is the measure of the deployment of His grace.

The Gospel tells us: God is the highest priority. If anything in our life deserves haste without delay, then, it is God's work alone. The Rule of Saint Benedict contains this teaching: "Place nothing at all before the work of God (i.e. the divine office)". For monks, the Liturgy is the first priority. Everything else comes later. In its essence, though, this saying applies to everyone. (Pope Benedict XVI, Christmas 2009)

Work for Priests

The traditional Benedictine framework and the commitment to the choral liturgy will protect the life of adoration and the work for priests: the interior work of self-oblation in all things, and the exterior works of hospitality, spiritual counsel, and availability to priests in their times of need and inner darkness.

Assent to the Divine Friendship

At the heart of this special vocation is the assent to Our Lord's Divine Friendship, the "yes" to His merciful love uttered on behalf of all priests through a prolonged daily presence in adoration before His Eucharistic Face.

Our Lord desires with an immense desire to purify, and heal, and sanctify His priests. This He does, and will do, by drawing them into the radiance of His Eucharistic Face and the warmth of His Eucharistic Heart. We priests all too easily forget that Our Lord Jesus Christ is present in the Sacrament of His Love to offer us all the good things that come from friendship: companionship, conversation, joy, comfort, hospitality, strength and, above all, love.

Friends of His Heart

Our Lord is hidden in the Blessed Sacrament; His Face is veiled by the sacramental species and His Heart, too, is hidden. He is, nonetheless, really present as True God and True Man, alive, seeing all, knowing all, and burning with desire that all should come to His tabernacles but, first of all, the priests whom He has chosen to be His intimate friends, the friends of His Heart.

A priest who, in adoration, assents to the friendship of Christ, will want for nothing and will make great strides along the path of holiness. Virtue is not difficult for one who abides in the friendship of Christ. The friendship of Jesus for His priests needs to become the subject of conversations, of reflection, of study, and of preaching; more than anything else it needs to become the lived experience of every priest.

Our Lady and Saint John

A priest who abides in the friendship of Christ will accomplish great and wonderful works for souls. This is the secret of a fruitful priesthood. From her place in heaven, Our Blessed Lady is entirely devoted to keeping priests faithful to the Divine Friendship. Saint John, the Beloved Disciple, also intercedes for priests, that they might persevere in the way of friendship with Our Lord and find their joy in the love of His Heart.

The Remedy

Priests who come to adore the Eucharistic Face of Jesus will quickly discover His Heart and, in His Heart they will discover the friendship for which He created them and to which He calls them. The single greatest deficiency of the clergy is that so many priests are ignorant of the tenderness and strength and fidelity of Our Lord's friendship for them. How can this deficiency be remedied? By adoration before the Eucharistic Face of Christ. This is the raison d'être of my work in the Diocese of Tulsa. Pray, then, that the radiance of the Eucharistic Face of Jesus will reach an ever greater number of priests, until, in all the Church, the Priesthood of Christ shines with all the splendour of His own holiness.

Recited after Lauds:

Antiphon: And when they were come into the house,
they found the Child with Mary His Mother,
and fell down and adored Him.

V. Arise, shine, O Jerusalem, for thy light is come.
R. And the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.

Let us pray.

O God, who by the leading of a star,
didst manifest Thine Only-Begotten Son to the Gentiles,
mercifully grant that we,
having been led unto Him by the light of faith,
may, with grateful hearts,
ceaselessly adore Him present in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar,
Who is our Mighty King, our Great High Priest, and our Immaculate Victim,
and Who liveth and reigneth with Thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, world without end.
Amen.

Recited after Vespers:

Antiphon: The Priests shall be holy;
for the offerings of the Lord made by fire,
and the bread of their God, they do offer,
therefore they shall be holy.

V. Pray for us, Saint Peter Julian.
R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Let us pray.

O God, Who through the preaching and example of Saint Peter Julian Eymard,
didst renew the priesthood of Thy Church in holiness
and inflame many souls with zeal
for the adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar;
we beseech Thee, through his intercession,
to gather priests of one mind and one heart,
from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof,
to keep watch in adoration before the Eucharistic Face
of Thine Only-Begotten Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ
and to abide before His Open Heart,
in reparation for those who forsake Him, hidden in the tabernacles of the world,
and in thanksgiving for the mercies that ever stream
from the Sacred Mysteries of His Body and Blood.
Who liveth and reigneth with Thee
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, world without end.
Amen.

His Eminence, Claudio Cardinal Hummes, addressed the following letter to priests for the month of December in this Year of the Priest. My own comments are in italics.

Dear Priests,

Prayer necessarily occupies a central place in the life of the priest. This is not hard to understand, since prayer fosters the disciple's intimacy with his Master, Jesus Christ. We all know that when prayer lessens, faith is weakened and the ministry loses content and meaning. The essential consequence of this is that the priest will have less joy and less happiness in his daily ministry. It is as if, following Jesus along the road, the priest, who walks along with many others, were to begin to lag behind bit by bit and so distance himself from the Master, even losing sight of him on the horizon. From that moment he will find himself lost and uncertain.

Yes, a priest who neglects prayer will become weak in faith, joyless, and uncertain of the very things that should be life giving for him. At the origin of every crisis in the life of a priest is a lack of prayer, that is, of conscious surrender to the Friendship of Christ. Nowhere can a priest experience the Friendship of Christ more effectively than in the radiance of His Eucharistic Face. Priests who pray daily, for one hour, before the Blessed Sacrament attest to the purifying, healing, and transforming effect of such prayer on their lives.

St. John Chrysostom, in a homily commenting on the First Letter of St. Paul to Timothy, observes wisely: "The devil attacks the shepherd. In fact, if by killing the sheep the flock is reduced, by instead eliminating the shepherd he will destroy the entire flock." This statement makes one think about many contemporary situations. Chrysostom warns us that the lessening of the shepherds will and does make the number of the faithful and of communities decrease. Without shepherds our communities will be destroyed!

The Evil One hates the priests of Jesus Christ, and will do everything in his power to drag or push them into patterns of sin, to confuse their thinking, to corrupt their hearts, and to destroy their confidence in the Mercy of God. Who then, among priests, can be saved? The priest who takes refuge beneath the mantle of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, his Mother and his Advocate. The priest who cherishes Mary with a love that is at once filial and spousal. Mary's most precious gift to her priests is a gentle, but compelling, inclination to prayer. Saint Benedict speaks in the Holy Rule of "falling frequently to prayer." This is, I think, a distinctively Marian grace.

But here I would like above all to talk about the needfulness of prayer so that, as Chrysostom might say, the shepherds can defeat the devil and so that they are not lessened. Truly, without the vital food of prayer the priest becomes sick, the disciple does not find the strength to follow the Master, and thus dies of hunger. As a consequence his flock is scattered, and dies in its own turn.

Priests who pray generate communities that pray. A prayerful priest will generate a praying parish. Where priest and people persevere together in prayer, with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, the Holy Spirit is poured out in abundance, quickening the life of the Church, and causing the face of the Church to shine with joy even in the midst of great sufferings.

In fact every priest finds an essential reference point in the ecclesial community. He is a very special disciple of the Lord who called him and who, by the sacrament of Order, configured him to Himself as Head and Shepherd of the Church. Christ is the one Shepherd, but he has deigned to make the Twelve and their Successors partake in His Ministry, amongst whom Priests also participate in this sacrament, albeit in a lower grade, in such a way that they also take part in the ministry of Christ, Head and Shepherd. This carries with it an essential bond between the priest and the ecclesial community. He cannot do any less than his duty, since without a shepherd the community withers. Rather, following the example of Moses, he must be found with his arms raised to Heaven in prayer so that the people will not perish.

This paragraph causes me to think, not only of Saint Jean-Marie Vianney, but also of Saint Gaetano Catanoso, and of the vast brotherhood of parish priests who, though uncanonised and unsung, prayed their flocks into a great holiness. I am reminded of the example of Father Edgar J. Farrell, whose Mass I often served as a boy; he would prepare for Holy Mass with prayer, kneeling at his prie-dieu in the sacristy, and prolong his thanksgiving after Mass. In recent years, the "Protestant" custom of greeting the faithful at the door of the church after Holy Mass has become widespread. We ought to recover, it seems to me, the paradigm of the recollected priest, intent on making his thanksgiving after Mass in the sanctuary, in view of his people. How much more fruitful would this be than the banal greeting and trivial remarks at the door of the church.

It is for this reason that the priest, if he is to remain faithful to Christ and faithful to the community, must be a man of prayer, a man who lives close to the Lord. Moreover, he needs to be strengthened by the prayer of the Church and of every Christian. Let the sheep pray for their shepherd! When the shepherd becomes aware that his life of prayer is weakening, it is time for him to turn to the Holy Spirit and to beseech like the poor of heart. The Spirit will rekindle the fire in his heart. He will rekindle the passion and the enchantment of the Lord, who is ever present and wishes to eat with him.

Surrounding every priest who prays is a community that prays for him and with him. The criticism of priests often leads to sins of rash judgment, defamation, and slander. The temptation to speak ill of a priest can become, in effect, an invitation to pray for him, to fast for him, and to represent him before the Eucharistic Face of Jesus, close to His Open Heart.

We wish to pray with and for priests in this Year for Priests with perseverance and great love. To this end, the Congregation for the Clergy celebrates a Eucharistic-Marian Hour for and with priests, at 4 p.m. in the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, Rome, each first Thursday of the month during the Year for Priests. Many people joyfully come to pray with us.

The Spiritual Mothers of the Diocese of Tulsa have taken a similar initiative and, in our embryonic monastery, Brother Juan Diego and I dedicate each Thursday, in a special way, to adoration and reparation for priests.

Dear Priests, the Nativity of Jesus Christ draws near. I wish to express my best and heartfelt good wishes to you for a Blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year 2010. The Child Jesus lying in the manger invites us to renew this closeness with him of a friend and disciple, so as to send us out again as his evangelizers.

Cardinal Cláudio Hummes

Archbishop Emeritus of São Paulo
Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy

[Translation distributed by the Congregation for Clergy]

At no time and in no place does the particular vocation of our little monastery come into focus more clearly than on Thursdays when we succeed each other in adoration and reparation before Our Lord's Eucharistic Face, repeating at the beginning of our watch:

Lord Jesus Christ, Priest and Victim,
behold, I kneel before Thy Eucharistic Face
on behalf of all Thy priests:
(Fathers N. and N.)
and especially those priests of Thine,
who at this moment are most in need
of Thy grace.
For them and in their place,
allow me to remain,
adoring and full of confidence,
close to Thy Open Heart,
hidden in this, the Sacrament of Thy Love.

Through the Sorrowful and Immaculate
Heart of Mary,
our Advocate and the Mediatrix of All Graces,
pour forth upon all the priests of Thy Church
that torrent of mercy that ever flows
from Thy pierced side:
to purify and heal them,
to refresh and sanctify them,
and, at the hour of their death,
to make them worthy of joining Thee
before the Father in the heavenly sanctuary
beyond the veil (Hb 6:19)
where Thou art always living
to make intercession
for us (Hb 7:25). Amen.

An adorer of the Eucharistic Face of Jesus is happy to take his place before the altar. He makes his own the psalmist's inspired words:

My heart hath said to thee: My face hath sought thee:
thy face, O Lord, will I still seek.
Turn not away thy face from me.
(Psalm 26: 8-9)

Behold, O God our protector: and look on the face of thy Christ.
For better is one day in thy courts above thousands.
(Psalm 83:9-10)

I am always with thee.
Thou hast held me by my right hand;
and by thy will thou hast conducted me, and with thy glory thou hast received me.
For what have I in heaven? and besides thee what do I desire upon earth?
For thee my flesh and my heart hath fainted away:
thou art the God of my heart, and the God that is my portion for ever.
For behold they that go far from thee shall perish:
thou hast destroyed all them that are disloyal to thee.
But it is good for me to adhere to my God, to put my hope in the Lord God:
That I may declare all thy praises, in the gates of the daughter of Sion.
(Psalm 72: 24-28)

An adorer of the Eucharistic Face of Jesus opens his inmost soul to the radiance of Our Lord's sacramental countenance. He exposes himself to the One who is exposed before his eyes, and asks to be wounded with the love of His Eucharistic Heart. Enboldened by the words of the Bridegroom in the Canticle, he dares to pray:

"Wound my heart with the love of the Eucharistic Heart.
Make me completely Thine.
Unite me to Thyself in the indestructible bond of Thy Divine Friendship.
Do for me, and in me, and through me,
all that Thou desirest to do for, and in, and through each one of Thy priests.
Let me offer myself to the Mercy which others refuse;
let me believe in the Love that others doubt;
let me accept the Friendship that others ignore
because I am a poor sinner amidst poor sinners,
and because I, even more than others,
have betrayed Thy Mercy, spurned Thy Love, and abused Thy Friendship.

My confidence is immense
because Thou art Love
and because Thou offerest the Friendship of Thy Heart
even to those sinners who have offended Thee most grievously.
Remove then from my soul every obstacle to Thy grace
and every resistance to Thy loving friendship,
until I am completely and forever Thine,
for Thy glory
and for the sake of Thy beloved priests.
Amen."

An adorer of the Eucharistic Face of Jesus prays as the Holy Spirit inspires him to pray: at times in an adoring silence, at times groaning and in tears, and at times in words as they are given him to utter.

Beloved Jesus,
Thou knowest all things and Thou searchest the hearts of men,
despising iniquity, and ready, at every moment,
to purify and heal tem
by a powerful and gentle infusion of Thy Mercy.

To all that Thou art and to all that Thou wouldst do in me,
I say "Yes."
I surrender entirely to the operations of Thy merciful Love
and to the action of the Holy Spirit.
I am all Thine,
and I abandon myself to Thy own burning desire to become my All.
Thou, O Jesus, art enough for me
for in Thee alone lies the happiness
for which Thou didst create me
and which Thou desirest to give me in this life
and in eternity. Amen."

This magnificent Face of Christ is a detail of the 12th century ivory crucifix of Canosa di Puglia, Italy. Of Byzantine origin, the crucifix is masterpiece of extraordinary beauty and theological significance. It presents the Cross, not as the gibbet, but rather as the royal throne of Love Crucified. The kingship of Christ shines through the Face marked by suffering and, yet, radiant. The eyes are closed, but the effect is one of majesty. The hair and beard are depicted with great attention. The halo bears the sign of the Cross.

Our little Benedictine monastery has a special "vocation within a vocation" to keep watch before the Eucharistic Face of Jesus and to console His priestly Heart. Every Thursday calls us to the Cenacle where Jesus, Priest and Victim, offered Himself to the Father and consecrated His Apostles into the mystery of His own victimal priesthood. We prolong our hours of adoration of Thursday by replacing one another before the altar where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed in the monstrance.

O my beloved Jesus,
I adore Thee and confess Thee truly present here before my eyes
in this, the Sacrament of Thy Love.
Let me adore Thee for those of Thy priests who do not adore Thee.
Let me believe in Thy real presence for those whose faith has grown weak.
Let me love Thee for those priests of Thine whose hearts have grown cold towards Thee in this Sacrament.
And let me hope in Thee for those whose lives are dark with hopelessness.

Turn upon them all, O Jesus, the light of Thy Eucharistic Face.
Let not a single priest of Thine remain in the outer darkness
where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Send to them Thy holy Angels to guide their steps to Thy sanctuaries
and to lead them to the foot of Thy tabernacles,
where Thou waitest for them,
ready to heal them,
to cleanse them of their sins,
and to grace them with the sweetness of Thy Eucharistic Friendship.

Though we are few, beloved Jesus,
receive our hours of adoration for the sake of all Thy priests,
and by the prayers of Thy Most Holy Mother,
deign to make fruitful the time Thou givest us to spend before Thy Eucharistic Face,
close to Thy Open Heart.

Take the little we offer Thee, Lord Jesus,
and multiply its effects for the sanctification of Thy priests,
for the joy of Thy Church,
and for the glory of Thy Father. Amen.

"O my God, I burn with desire for the sanctification of Thy priests."

On this feast of Saint Ignatius Loyola, I am pleased to offer a prayer by the saintly Irish Jesuit Father William Doyle. Those familiar with Father Willie's writings will recognize straightaway his distinctive blend of manly fervour and passion for the Most Holy Eucharist.

O my God, pour out in abundance Thy spirit of sacrifice upon Thy priests.
It is both their glory and their duty to become victims,
to be burnt up for souls,
to live without ordinary joys,
to be often the objects of distrust, injustice, and persecution.

The words they say every day at the altar,
"This is my Body, this is my Blood,"
grant them to apply to themselves:
"I am no longer myself, I am Jesus, Jesus crucified.
I am, like the bread and wine, a substance no longer itself,
but by consecration another."

O my God, I burn with desire for the sanctification of Thy priests.
I wish all the priestly hands which touch Thee were hands whose touch is gentle and pleasing to Thee,
that all the mouths uttering such sublime words at the altar should never descend to speaking trivialities.

Let priests in all their person stay at the level of their lofty functions,
let every man find them simple and great, like the Holy Eucharist,
accessible to all yet above the rest of men.
O my God, grant them to carry with them from the Mass of today,
a thirst for the Mass of tomorrow,
and grant them, ladened themselves with gifts,
to share these abundantly with their fellow men. Amen.