Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests

CHAPTER 4: SPIRITUAL FORMATION | 61

160. In today’s confused and fractured age, the priest must strive to be an agent of unity in the Church—not with the false irenicism that ignores important challenges or papers over meaningful differences and fissures in the Church, but rather with a genuine desire to promote authentic bonds of charity and understanding among Catholics. A priest who is spiritu ally mature strives to rise above the din of competing ideologies and over wrought websites in order to remain focused on what is important. He does not shy away from exposing sin, error, or corruption, but neither does he take morbid delight in doing so. He is a man who genuinely desires the good of all, whatever their past, and who receives with warmth and affec tion all those seeking Christ. He strives to emulate the Good Shepherd, who seeks out the one lost and straying sheep, however far it may have wandered. 129

MEANS OF SPIRITUAL FORMATION

PERSONAL MEANS

161. The personal means of spiritual formation are the behaviors and habits that allow the priest to grow in holiness, so that souls entrusted to him may be drawn to Christ. Just as he should avoid near occasions of sin, where he is more likely to fall into immorality, so he should seek out occasions of grace, where he is more likely to fall in love with the Lord. The personal means of spiritual formation are those occasions of grace that draw the priest into deeper relationship with the Lord.

129 “Priests have been placed in the midst of the laity to lead them to the unity of charity, that they may ‘love one another with fraternal charity, anticipating one another with honor’ (Rom 12:10). It is their task, therefore, to reconcile differences of mentality in such a way that no one will feel himself a stranger in the community of the faithful. Priests are defenders of the common good, with which they are charged in the name of the bishop. At the same time, they are strenuous defenders of the truth, lest the faithful be tossed about by every wind of opinion. To their special concern are committed those who have fallen away from the use of the sacraments, or perhaps even from the faith. As good shepherds, they should not cease from going after them.” PO, no. 9.