PRAYER FOR PRIESTS

O Jesus, eternal High Priest, good Shepherd, Source of life! By the singular magnificence of Your most sweet Heart, You gave us our Priests to fulfill in us those designs of sanctification that Your grace inspires in our hearts. We beseech You to assist them with Your merciful help.

May faith, O Jesus, vivify their works; may hope be indestructible in their trials; may charity be ardent in their resolutions. May Your word, ray of eternal Wisdom, be, through continual meditation, the perennial nourishment of their interior life; may the examples of Your Life and Passion be renewed in their conduct and in their sufferings for our instruction, for light and encouragement in our hearts.

O Lord, grant that our priests, detached from all human interest and zealous only for your glory, may remain faithful to their duty, with a pure conscience, until their last breath.

And when, through the death of their bodies, they place their well-fulfilled task in your hands, may they find in you, Lord Jesus, who were their Master on earth, the eternal reward of the crown of justice in the splendor of the saints. Amen.

WHEN I SEE AN OLD PRIEST

"When I see an old priest, shabby in his dress and his speech, distracted like someone whose heart is elsewhere, deaf to the sounds of the earth and attentive to the voices that speak to him in dreams like those of Samuel, I think he's inviting me to sing a Te Deum, because he's a ship that has already weathered the storms of the seven seas.

When I see a young one, embarking on his voyage, impatient to sail the oceans, with too much confidence in the height of his masts, the polish of his hulls, and the grace of his canvas; who looks little to the sky to orient his course and much to the machines that men make, I fear for him.

And even more so if he's an artist; and even more so if he's eloquent; and much more so if he's naive and loves noise, and believes he lacks time and can leave this rubric today, this prayer tomorrow, this meditation later, be late for his Mass; be distracted in his  Breviary.

Oh! How many seas and how many reefs lie before its bow, and how far away the harbor!

Hugo Wast