Dear brothers & sisters in Christ,
Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, has inaugurated a special Year for Priests, starting from the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus on 19 June 2009. Concluding on the same Solemnity on 11 June 2010, this year is in celebration of the 150th death anniversary of Saint John Mary Vianney, also known as the Curé of Ars, who is the patron saint of parish priests.
This special year is meant to encourage all priests in striving for spiritual perfection so as to enable them to witness more strongly and incisively to the Gospel in today’s world. First and foremost, it is also to help priests and us, the laity, to realise and appreciate the immense and indispensable gift which priests represent for the whole Church and the whole of humanity. As the Holy Father wrote in his letter proclaiming the Year for Priests dated 16 June 2009, “The Curé of Ars was very humble, yet as a priest he was conscious of being an immense gift to his people.” His Holiness quoted the Curé of Ars, “A good shepherd, a pastor after God’s heart, is the greatest treasure which the good Lord can grant to a parish, and one of the most precious gifts of divine mercy”.
And typical of our Holy Fathers who have great devotion to Our Lady, Pope Benedict XVI entrusts the Year for Priests and all the priests of the world to Our Lady, Mother of the Church. Indeed, our Blessed Mother has a very special relationship with priests. She is called the Mother of Priests, Queen of the Clergy, Queen of Apostles, Mother of the Eucharist. She loves us all, but in a special way, she loves the priests, whom she holds closest to her heart as she does her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. As Fr. Wolfgang Seitz wrote in his article “Mary and the Priesthood” on the Internet (website of The Work of the Holy Angels), our Blessed Mother’s maternal action and presence is uniquely inseparable from the life of priests. According to him, Pope John Paul II’s theology of the relationship between Mary’s divine motherhood and Christ’s priesthood taught us that to pray for priests means to turn to Mary.
Thus, it is no wonder that all the great priest saints have great devotion to Our Lady. Closest to us are our parish patron, St. Francis Xavier, and St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus which our Parish Pastors belong to. The Curé of Ars himself was greatly devoted to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, and has been known to consecrate his parish to her Immaculate Heart. So too Pope JPII, who often renewed the consecration of himself, the Church and the whole world to Her Immaculate Heart. Marian spirituality is never absent in religious orders of the Catholic Church.
Yesterday, on the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, we presented to you the prayer card Pray for our priests in response to our Holy Father’s call to pray specially for priests in this special year for them. In this coming six months, our Novena sharing will be based on the theme Year for Priests. Through them, we hope to share with you on our Blessed Mother’s relationship with priests, her special role in the priestly vocation, God’s gift of priests to us, about priest saints and Marian spirituality in religious orders. Where possible, we will invite esteemed guest sharers to enlighten on specific topics. With our humble but sincere efforts, we hope that the sharings will bring all of us to a deeper appreciation of God’s awesome gift of Grace to us in priests, who enable Christ to be really present in the world today.
In response to the call made by Pope Benedict XVI, let us pray specially for priests, that they will conform with the image of Christ and be men of truth, men of love, and men of God.
Amen.
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