Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests

64 | GUIDE TO ONGOING FORMATION FOR PRIESTS

time-honored way to hear and speak to God. 140 A complementary approach to mental prayer is to dwell on each of the four acts of prayer: adoration, contrition, thanksgiving, and supplication (easily remembered with the acronym ACTS). Using this template, the priest can speak to the Lord in his own words of love: adoring and praising him, expressing contrition for sins, thanking Christ for the blessings in his life, and asking the Lord to supply the needs of his priestly ministry, of the people entrusted to his care, and of the whole world. Apart from mental prayer, every master of the spiritual life has recommended the practice of spiritual reading. Careful reading of spiri tual works puts the priest in touch with the great doctrinal and mystical Tradition of the Church, informs his mind, and feeds his prayer. Especially recommended for spiritual reading are time-honored classics such as the writings of saints and especially the Doctors and Fathers of the Church. A rich devotional life also nourishes the interior life of a priest. Particularly important are the great devotions to Divine Mercy and the Sacred Heart of Jesus as well as the principal devotions to the Blessed Virgin, including the Holy Rosary and the Total Consecration to Mary taught by St. Louis de Montfort. When St. John, the Beloved Disciple, took Mary “into his home” (Jn 19:25-27), it was more than an act of kind ness. Doing so completely changed the young priest’s life. Mary became an integral part of John’s daily affairs, his choices, and his aspirations. She was invited into every part of his life and his heart. John set the pattern for every priest. In recent times the role of St. Joseph has become more promi nent in the life of the Church and also in the lives of priests. St. Joseph— so close to the Incarnate Word and to his Holy Mother, as the protector 140 The priestly vocation demands that one be consecrated “in the truth.” Jesus states this clearly with regard to his disciples: “Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world” (Jn 17:17-18). The disciples in a certain sense were “thus drawn deep within God by being immersed in the word of God. The word of God is, so to speak, the bath which purifies them, the creative power which transforms them into God’s own being” Benedict XVI, Homily, 2009 Chrism Mass, April 9, 2009, www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2009/documents/hf_ben xvi_hom_20090409_messa-crismale.html . And Christ himself is God’s Word made flesh (see Jn 1:14)—“the truth” (Jn 14:6). Thus Jesus’ prayer to the Father, “Consecrate them in the truth,” means in the deepest sense: “Make them one with me, Christ. Bind them to me. Draw them into me. . . . there is only one priest of the New Covenant, Jesus Christ himself.” Benedict XVI, Homily, 2009 Chrism Mass. “Priests need to grow constantly in their awareness of this reality.” Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini (On the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church) , September 30, 2010, no. 80, www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/ en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20100930_verbum-domini.html. 167. 168. 169.