Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests (Ascension)

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Chapter 4: Spiritual Formation

Fraternal Means 173 Although the principal responsibility for spiritual formation rests on the shoulders of each priest, his personal efforts can be greatly enhanced by fraternal support. Of primary importance are Christ centered friendships with other priests. It is difficult to overestimate the influence of brother priests who encourage and affirm each other in their spiritual practices, hold each other accountable as needed, and inspire one another to grow in holiness. They “seek to promote fraternal communion by giving and receiving—from priest to priest—the warmth of friendship, caring assistance, acceptance and fraternal correction.” 147 174 St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen were friends whose mutual affection and holy “competition” spurred both to ever-greater heights of holiness. 148 Priests today can enjoy that kind of friendship as well, with the spiritual fruits that flow from it. Even for friendships in the earlier stages, priests can very naturally begin to spend fraternal time together in prayer and ensure that spiritual topics, if not the exclusive content of their conversation, are at least not forbidden. 175 Priest friends can also contribute to each other’s spiritual growth by coming together for more extensive periods of prayer. For instance, small groups of priests might consider taking a monthly or quarterly day of prayer at a local monastery, retreat center, or another place 147 DMLP, no. 36. 148 “We were impelled by equal hopes, in a pursuit obnoxious to envy, that of letters. Yet envy we knew not, and emulation was of service to us. We struggled, not each to gain the first place for himself, but to yield it to the other; for we made each other’s reputation to be our own. . . . The sole business of both of us was virtue, and living for the hopes to come, having retired from this world, before our actual departure hence. With a view to this, were directed all our life and actions, under the guidance of the commandment, as we sharpened upon each other our weapons of virtue; and if this is not a great thing for me to say, being a rule and standard to each other, for the distinction between what was right and what was not.” St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 43: “Funeral Oration on the Great S. Basil, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia,” no. 20, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers , 2nd series, vol. 7, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894).

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