Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests

CHAPTER 4: SPIRITUAL FORMATION | 57

child, because the infant is not yet capable of it. Eventually, though, the child grows and begins to grasp the depth of his or her parents’ love and starts to respond with love. That is the moment when love becomes recip rocal, even if the child cannot yet respond with the full freedom of an adult. In our life of faith, there comes a point when we are no longer infants— when we begin to grasp, however partially, God’s love for us. “When I was a child,” St. Paul tells the Corinthians, “I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things. . . . At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known” (1 Cor 13:11-12). A key marker of the spiritual maturity of the priest is therefore the awareness of God’s love. The priest’s growth in the interior life hinges largely on the firm conviction that he is the object of God’s particular, personal, loving care. By embracing this relationship to the Father, in communion with the Holy Spirit, the priest grasps this identity as a “son in the Son.” That identity, in turn, enkindles his mission in life, his life of discipleship, his apostolate with others, and ultimately his priestly mission as a spiritual father. The priest is able “through divine filiation to experi ence the paternal providence that never abandons its children. If this is true for each Christian it is equally true that the priest, by virtue of the consecra tion received with the sacrament of Holy Orders, is placed in a particular and special relationship with the Father, with the Son and with the Holy Spirit.” 117 151.

UNION WITH THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST

152. Of central importance to a priest’s interior growth is union with Christ in his sacrifice on the Cross. Christ is the innocent Lamb of God who, as the High Priest of our faith, offers himself in a holocaust of love. His sacrificial offering and his priesthood are inseparable. 118 Those who are conformed to Christ the Head of the Church—that is to Christ the

117 DMLP, no. 3. 118 “Through the ministry of priests, the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful is made perfect in union with the sacrifice of Christ, the sole Mediator. Through the hands of priests and in the name of the whole Church, the Lord’s sacrifice is offered in the Eucharist in an unbloody and sacramental manner until He Himself returns. The ministry of priests is directed toward this work and is perfected in it. For their ministry, which takes its start from the gospel message, derives its power and force from the sacrifice of Christ.” PO, no. 2.