Priest,
what a honour you received by the Lord: to have been selected among His Elected, raised to the Altar as your brothers’ teacher!
What is the meaning of all that? Because it was established by the Father, from eternity as for Jesus too, the Emmanuel.
You are an other Christ because of the skills you were grant for your brothers. Hence, You have to be the Lord’s work continuer in this exile, to keep on with it in Heaven with the eternal Judge, Christ our eldest Brother. You have nothing but copy this Model of life in all His love’s shades. This is my Body, this is my Blood, do this in remembrance of me (cfr. Mt 26,26-27).
The Divine Sacrifice must be, therefore, not only the renovation of Christ’s Passion, but also your daily immolation in a total renovation, in a concrete purification, a radical dispossession to be really one thing with that Body and Blood you raise in your hands and humbles himself up to become one with you.
Dearest priest, your first mission must be that of annihilation of yourself by changing your failings into many virtues, the same ones of the Divine Teacher. How can you present yourself with His name if you have a very little or even nothing of Him? You cannot disguise yourself as one who gives good sermons with long, spineless words. Long words look good, but go in one ear and out the other.
Nowadays, it is said about the necessity of a good number of degrees: culture occupies the first place for a priest, sanctity, instead, the last one. Which is your daily effort to improve your spirit, to be an other Christ? Do you often stop a little to see inside you how to pull up the wild rice that ruins the good grain of your spirit? Do you complain that people does not follow you, or discourage for you have too much to do, and are contested in your daily work? Is your behaviour pure? Is it good your relationship with brothers? Do you try to occupy the first place or agree the last one as well? Do you look for honours and glories, estimation and regards, or you look for souls? Are you agitated when realise you do nothing or nearly? Why do you not, instead, occupy your time praying more and in spiritual direction? You will not be a good teacher if you are not able to be a good learner first. Be persuaded that you need a Guide if you want to guide, a Priest full of virtues and experience, an older one, a man of pray and good example of life, whose authority you have to submit to, in obedience and with great joy.
Attend to deepen your inner life, your relation with the Lord you have to represent. Learn to talk with Him as you did it with yourself; to listen to His advises and submit to your guide. This is because the devil’s action, sometimes, tries to dirty the waters in a spiritual path, and make you see, of God, what is yours or the darkness’ spirit instead.
Do not waste your time. If you want to sanctify yourself try to live your night as the day. Above all, when you wake up, bless those who are in agony, in mortal sin, or during a kill, a suicide. Bless those Priests, who tempted by the devil, are betraying the Sacrament of Order, to launch into the dust of eternal corruption.
Be strong, Brother, and do not forget that Christ, on the cross, gave His Apostles His Mother, the Very Holy Virgin. Stretch out your arms towards Her in restless nights and keep Her strict at your heart.
It is only She who has the power and the gift of comforting you, giving the love you need, particularly in certain difficult moments, when the devil, jealous of your strength, wants to destroy the serenity and the peace of your spirit.
Along the course of each day do not forget the companion God put at your side the day of your birth: the Guardian Angel. Learn to question Him, to open your heart to Him, when, tired for work, you cannot find a help, a light that shows you better the way. So doing you will not feel alone.
Washed by the Sacrament of Penitence, as frequently as you can, you walk as hanging between earth and Heaven, starting to know the kindness of that Paradise you will dwell one day for all the Eternity.
Remember you are not alone. If the God’s race is within you, do not go after comfort or affection out of the true way; it begins with some and it ends with much. Afterwards, when you keep yourself in complete subjection, it is difficult to turn back. The clever man’s soul does not let itself be subdued by its mortal body.
How lovely to be Priest is! How lovely to save souls! But, pay attention… for someone wants to save too many, but without oxygen. In this case he risks to loose his own. The most certain way to Paradise is obedience. Obedience is teacher of virtues, the way that keeps the heart serene and assure you to be in God’s will. Poverty, that is detachment from vanities and surplus, makes the Priest a means in God’s hands. Chastity draws on him the Virgin’s complaisant eye, his model of life Jesus and the herd he was grant and he devotes his life to.
Pay attention to looking for affections, in both female and male field; to curiosity, for this behaviour made different Priests fail. In case you have free time, spend it putting in order your room, as certainly Jesus, with His Mum and S. Joseph, did.
The Priest must serve instead of being served. Outsider order is synonym of the interior one. Visit the sick persons and be for them their comforting Angel. When you can, visit the prisoners and the old needful of comfort and courage, as well. Be simple with the children and teach them to pray spontaneously. Stay far from the fire, where the flash calls you. Think of the altar you raised white dressed, because who has not clean hands and a pure heart could not raise the Lord’s mount (cfr. Sal 23).
Admonish the sinner kindly, with comprehension and hope as well by trying to bring him to penitence for his sins, without entering too deeply in his life. This last method, indeed, made many penitents and priests fail. «I don’t want to go to that priest anymore, because…».
Jesus has a great heart, and he certainly opens His arms always to whom regrets his sins. He chose Madeleine to announce His Resurrection to the Apostles. Christ understands a penitent man’s weakness: why do you not, that you are sinner as him?
A lot of people do not go to confession anymore, because they do not find in the Confessor the support they would have been given by the Lord.
Stay near the youth, encourage them to live well, making them learn that the death could come suddenly, like a thief. One needs to be prepared for it.
Persuade the Newlyweds that satisfaction consists in giving to birth new creatures to the glory of God and for the happiness of their own family. Parents being afraid that they might die of hunger because of another son, will certainly lack Providence when in need. Large families, most of the time, have also religious vocations that are their parents’ consolation.
Dear Priest, pray God might send many vocations for the Order and religious life in your parish or your Congregation. If you put them in your hands, treat them kindly non to be an obstacle to God’s Will for each of them. How many things do I wish to say to you.! But I feel unworthy, even though the Lord, since my youth, called me to pray and sacrifice for al the priests’ sanctification throughout the world, and He put into my hands so many of His Sons among them, that I might have been for them a mother more than a teacher.
If you wish to start a collaboration with me, contact me: I will pray for your particular necessities, and if you think you could need some good advice, I will be happy to do it through e-mail. In a second time, if you want, you can correspond with me also by letter, and I will give you my address.
( Mother Providence died on 16 June, 2002 in the odour of sanctity).
Meditation on the gift of the Priesthood said by Fr. Luigi Duilio GRaziotti - video.
