Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests (Ascension)

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Chapter 4: Spiritual Formation

148 We must not forget that our friendship with Jesus as a priest— however close—rests on a prior foundation. Baptism is our rebirth in grace; it plants the seeds of the theological virtues. Through Baptism we are fashioned into children of God, and there is no greater honor on earth. 115 “For you I am a bishop,” St. Augustine famously said, “[but] with you, after all, I am a Christian. The first is the name of an office undertaken, the second a name of a grace.” 116 The role of spiritual formation is to draw us ever more deeply into the personal relationship with the Lord that is the birthright of every Christian— and the particular desire of Jesus for every priest. 149 Note, too, that Jesus called them friends and then appointed them “to go and bear fruit that will remain” (Jn 15:16). The priest’s friendship with Christ finds its fulfillment in spiritual generativity. Because we exercise our fatherhood in the order of grace, it follows that our spiritual formation as priests takes on a special importance. As priests, we nurture a relationship with the Lord not only for our personal growth in sanctity, then, but also for the benefit of our priestly ministry. Our apostolic fruit will be reaped in direct proportion to the depth of our interior life. 150 Our personal relationship with the Father is not unlike that of natural children. Parents do not expect a personal response from a newborn in the pastoral ministry and gives sense to his life.” DMLP, no. 6. 115 “The ministerial priesthood conferred by the sacrament of holy orders and the common or ‘royal’ priesthood of the faithful, which differ essentially and not only in degree (Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium , no. 10), are ordered one to the other—for each in its own way derives from the one priesthood of Christ. Indeed, the ministerial priesthood does not of itself signify a greater degree of holiness with regard to the common priesthood of the faithful; through it Christ gives to priests, in the Spirit, a particular gift so that they can help the People of God to exercise faithfully and fully the common priesthood which it has received.” PDV, no. 17. 116 St. Augustine, “Sermon 340—On the Anniversary of His Ordination,” in The Works of Saint Augus tine: A Translation for the 21st Century , pt. 3, vol. 9, Sermons 306-340A on the Saints, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1994), 292. MARKERS OF THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION Awareness of God’s Love

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