It's Worth Revisiting" Wednesday - May More of Our Priests Accept God's Invitation to Come Before His Eucharistic Face and Enter His Sacred Heart

Thanks to the generosity and encouragement of Allison Gingras and Elizabeth Riordan, an ever-expanding group of Catholic bloggers take the time each week to re-post their favorite articles on “It’s Worth Revisiting” Wednesdays.

Do yourself a favor: go there now (and every Wednesday) and let these authors bless and challenge you in your Faith journey.

During the rest of each week. visit Allison at  Reconciled To You and Elizabeth at Theology Is A Verb.  You will be pleased with what they share.

Here is what I am sharing this week:

May More of Our Priests Accept God's Invitation to Come Before His Eucharistic Face and Enter His Sacred Heart

(Originally posted July 9, 2012) 

In case you have not recently read Vultus Christi, Father Mark’s blog, make sure you read what follows and then share it with everyone you know, especially with as many priests as you can.  Recommend  Vultus Christi to your priests. 

We need to challenge our priests and they us. We must pray for their sanctification, as they pray for our holiness as well. 

The Friendship of Christ for His Priests

How it grieves My Heart when the unique love I offer a soul
is spurned, or ignored, or regarded with indifference.
I tell you this so that you may make reparation to My Heart
by accepting the love I have for you
and by living in My friendship.
Receive My gifts, My kindnesses, My attention, My mercies
for the sake of those who refuse what I so desire to give them.
Do this especially for My priests, your brothers.

I would fill each one of My priests with My merciful love,
I would take each one into the shelter of My wounded Side,
I would give to each one the delights of My Divine Friendship,
but so few of My priests accept what I desire to give them.
They flee from before My Face.
They remain at a distance from My open Heart.
They keep themselves apart from Me.
Their lives are compartmentalized.
They treat with Me only when duty obliges them to do so.
There is no gratuitous love,
no desire to be with Me for My own sake,
simply because I am there in the Sacrament of My Love,
waiting for the companionship and friendship of those
whom I have chosen and called from among millions of souls
to be My priests
and to be the special friends of My Sacred Heart.

Would that priests understood
that they are called not only to minister to souls in My Name,
but even more to cling to Me,
to abide in Me, to live in Me and for Me, and by Me and no other. . .

So many of My priests have never really heard and understood
the invitation to an exclusive and all-fulfilling friendship with Me.
And so, they feel alone in life.
They are driven to seek out in other places
and in creatures unworthy of the undivided love of their consecrated hearts,
the fullness of happiness, and hope, and peace that only I can give them.
So many go forward in bitterness and disappointment.
They seek to fill the emptiness within with vain pursuits,
with lust, with possessions, with food and drink.
They have Me, very often, near to them
in the Sacrament of My Love,
and they leave Me there alone,
day after day and night after night.

Oh, how My Heart longs to raise up
a company of priest-adorers
who will make reparation for their brother priests
by abiding before My Eucharistic Face.
I will pour out the treasures of My Eucharistic Heart upon them.
I want to renew the priesthood in My Church,
and I will do it beginning with a few priests
touched to the quick by My friendship,
and drawn into the radiance of My Eucharistic Face.
The graces stored up in My Heart for priests are inexhaustible,
but so few open themselves to receive them.

(From In Sinu Iesu, The Journal of a Priest)