Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests

48 | GUIDE TO ONGOING FORMATION FOR PRIESTS

126. All priests, especially those united in a common presbyterate, should endeavor to be friends. Priests who strive to find common ground with diocesan brothers despite differences in age, experiences, or view points seldom regret the effort. In addition to these broader friendships, most priests also have a handful of closer friends with whom they can share their joys and struggles. The best friendships are typically the result of a conscious choice on the part of both individuals to make it work. Some priests by temperament will be better at this than others, but all can learn. This effort means intentionally finding common interests, being open to deeper conversations, and above all, jealously guarding the time to make and sustain friendships. Aristotle said that it takes fifteen pounds of salt to make a good friend 104 —meaning that friends must enjoy enough meals together to consume that much salt. The goal is to foster the conditions in which genuine friendships can flourish: friendships that are deep and sincere, where we can truly be ourselves, where we are accepted as we are. Friendships like these, free of unhealthy dependencies and exclusivity, are the priest’s greatest source of strength apart from his relationship with the Lord. They are undoubtedly a marker of a thriving human life. Denying the excessive cravings of human nature is a final marker of human formation in the priest. Temperance applies, first and foremost, to the use of food, drink, and tobacco products, but it can involve other things that we can inordinately use and desire. Because we are never free of the effects of Original Sin, God gives us the capacity for the virtue of temperance, which we cultivate by his grace to help us deal with concu piscence and gain greater freedom in our life. 105 Apart from its benefit for human thriving, temperance is a way of mortifying the flesh and offers an important witness to our self-indulgent culture. It is a sign of credibility in 127. TEMPERANCE 128.

104 In Eudemian Ethics , 1238a1, Aristotle said literally a “peck” of salt, which is a quarter-bushel, or roughly fifteen pounds. 105 “It [original sin] is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it; subject to ignorance, suffering, and the dominion of death; and inclined to sin—an inclination to evil that is called ‘concupiscence.’ Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back toward God, but the conse quences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle (cf. Council of Trent: DS 1513).” CCC, no. 405.