Especially for Father Joseph Droessler: PRIEST AS MEDIATOR “The primacy of Christ makes the priest humble even while it frees him. It also points us in the right direction. It means that the priest must know in his heart that his place is on the side of the Church, of the people who stand outside before the Holy of Holies and rely on the intercession of him who alone can pass beyond the curtain . . . The objectivity of salvation must make the priest objective. He preaches, not himself, but the faith of the Church, and, in that faith, the Lord Jesus Christ . . . The holiness of the priest consists in this process of becoming spiritually poor, of decreasing before the other, of losing himself for the other, for Christ – and, in Christ, for others: for those who the Lord has entrusted to him . . . When I go to church, it is not to find there my own or anyone else’s innovations but what we have all received as the faith of the Church – the faith that spans the centuries and can support us all. Certainly, if it is to remain vital, the objective content of the Church’s faith needs the flesh and blood of human beings, the gift of our thinking and willing. But it must be a gift, not just the sacrifice of a moment. The priest always fails in his duty when he wants to stop being a servant: an emissary who knows that it does not depend on him but on what he himself can only receive. Only by letting himself become unimportant can he become truly important, because, in that way, he becomes the gateway of the Lord into this world – of him who is the true Mediator into the immediacy of everlasting Love.” --Pope Benedict XVI
Posted on: Mon, 19 May 2014 16:17:33 +0000
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