Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests (Ascension)

GOFP 221

Chapter 6: Pastoral Formation

is some disorder in his parish, he must trample upon human respect and the fear of being despised or hated.” 195

A Heart Open to All 220 A final marker of pastoral formation in the life of a priest is a magnanimous openness to other souls. He must be a man for others. 196 Such a disposition reveals itself in a priest’s life in many ways. Of primary importance is a pastoral zeal that is open and free of constraints. In forming his Apostles for their priestly ministry, Jesus begins and ends with a fishing expedition (see Mt 4:18-22 and Jn 21:1-14). He invites them, and each of us: “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Mt 4:19). The faithful priest is therefore dedicated to the work of evangelization; he extends himself to reach those who do not know Jesus or who have fallen away from his Church. An evangelically committed priest will not be content to simply receive whoever comes to the parish but will actively promote efforts, in his own life and among his parishioners, that have proven effective in drawing souls to the Lord. 197 221 Such a priest will also be generous in his service to those who are poor, elderly, lonely, abandoned, or rejected and to others on the peripheries of society. 198 His deep concern for social justice is motivated not only by temporal needs but above all by supernatural 195 St. John Vianney, quoted in St. John Paul II, “The Cure of Ars” (Letter to All the Priests of the Church for Holy Thursday 1986). 196 “If the priest lends to Christ, the Most Eternal High Priest, his intelligence, his will, his voice and his hands so through his ministry he may offer to the Father the sacramental sacrifice of redemption, he is to embrace the dispositions of the Master and, like him, live as a gift for his brothers. He is therefore to learn to unite himself intimately to the offering, placing on the altar of the sacrifice his whole life as a revealing sign of God’s gratuitous and prevenient love.” DMLP, no. 66, emphasis original. So too, it is good to remember that the priest was first ordained a deacon and, as such, was conformed to Christ the Servant. The priest must never forget this diaconal aspect of his ministry. 197 See, for example, CIC, c. 528 §1, pertaining to the parish pastor. 198 “Friend of the poorest, he will reserve his most refined and delicate pastoral charity for them, with a preferential option for all the old and new poverties so tragically present in the world, ever recalling that the first misery from which man must be liberated is sin, the ultimate root of all evil.” DMLP, no. 83. See CIC, c. 529 §1.

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