Gratitude

​On the Thursday before Holy Week the Sisters attended the annual Chrism Mass celebrated by our Bishop and over fifty of our diocesan priests. We witnessed these men renew their promises made at their ordinations, and our Bishop blessed the Sacred Oils which will be used throughout the Churches of our diocese to administer the Sacraments in the coming year. The Mass was a beautiful reminder that we need our priests and we need the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist. 

​Why do we need our priests? Their priesthood is a fulfillment of the priesthood we see in the Old Testament – beginning with Adam, the priestly custodian of the Garden of Eden; continuing with Melchizedek, the priest-king who offered a sacrifice of bread and wine; and finally the priesthood of the Levites, who offered the prescribed sacrifices in reparation for their sins and the sins of God’s chosen people. 

​​Even more importantly, our priests today share in the priesthood of Jesus Christ, the Eternal High Priest and fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies and types. Our priests promise to live their lives in imitation of Him Who, though God, clothed Himself in our human nature in everything except sin so that He might 

make a perfect and eternal reparation for the offences of men. Our priests are for us icons of God the Father in their pastoral care for souls, of Jesus Christ the Son in their total self-gift to the Church, and of the Holy Spirit in their preaching and attentiveness to their parishioners’ needs and God’s providence for them. 

​Why do we need the Sacraments? They are for us the means by which our loving relationship with God is initiated, strengthened, and restored. The stain of original sin is washed away and we are anointed with Chrism as God’s beloved in Baptism. Any sins following our Baptism are forgiven in the Sacrament of Confession, restoring our souls to their Baptismal purity. Our anointing is sealed in our Confirmation. The Sacrament of Marriage makes sacred the life, love, and fruitfulness God ordained for a man and a woman in their gift of self to the other. Anointing of the Sick brings strength to those in danger of death and the final temptations that assault us. Some men are called to Holy Orders, anointed in a special way to be imitators of Christ to the point of standing in persona Christi, “in the person of Christ”. Ultimately there is the Eucharist, God-with-us – Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity – by which, when worthily received and adored, we are conformed to Christ and divinized. 

​It is our priests who are the ministers and mediators of these sacraments. They stand in the person of Christ, bridging the distance between man and God, and by their priestly life bring us to God and God to us. Nowhere is this more clear than in the Sacrifice of the Mass where Jesus Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection is made present in the Eucharist and offered to all who will receive it. 

​This Holy Week let us renew our gratitude to God for His priests, and for His Real Presence in the Eucharist given to us by His priests! 

​Jesus,
Eternal High Priest,
have mercy on Thy priests!

Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!