Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests (Ascension)

96 GOFP

Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests

96 Other positions that priests might assume include hospital or campus chaplains, vocation directors, seminary faculty, or chancery positions. These men undergo the usual challenges of a change in life while also needing particular formation for their new positions. 97 Finally, transitions include the ordinary, but still difficult, changes that occur in every human life. When priests experience the death of their parents, for example, they are especially prone to difficulties. Priests undergoing these pivotal moments in life need extra support and guidance from friends and mentors. Middle Years of Priesthood 98 As they enter middle age, men sometimes experience a “midlife crisis” that tempts them to reconsider the direction their life is taking and the commitments that they have made. Married men, for instance, can be tempted to question their previous choices about their spouse, family, or career. A priest, like other men, is called to respond to these temptations with fortitude, supernatural outlook, and joyful perseverance. They are an opportunity for him to rededicate himself to the Lord, to his priesthood, and to the Church. 72 Nevertheless, midlife is not a period of life to be ignored; the support of others, including the advice of older priests, will help priests at this age to emerge from the crisis more confident and peaceful than ever. 99 In middle age, men must also begin to pay more attention to their physical health. Without becoming fastidious, priests need to make reasonable efforts to remain fit and healthy through good nutrition, exercise, wholesome habits, and sufficient sleep. Healthy aging begins 72 “They [that is, middle-aged priests] need encouragement, intelligent appreciation and enhancement, and a new deepening of formation in all its dimensions in order to rethink themselves and what they do; to reawaken the motivations underlying the sacred ministry; to do serious thinking about pastoral methods in the light of what is essential, communion among priests of the presbyterate, and friend ship with the Bishop; to surmount any sense of exhaustion, frustration and solitude; to rediscover the wellsprings of the priestly spirituality.” DMLP, no. 112.

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