Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests

CHAPTER 4: SPIRITUAL FORMATION | 67

and receiving—from priest to priest—the warmth of friendship, caring assis tance, 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. 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 of solitude. By sharing prayer together, they encourage each other in perseverance and offer a measure of accountability. Similarly, fraternal groups such as those in the Jesus Caritas tradition can encourage spiritual growth through spiri tual conversation, periods of prayer, and sharing of graces and struggles. 149 175.

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 command ment, 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 Cæsarea 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), www.newadvent.org/fathers/310243.htm. 149 “Among the diverse forms of common life (residence, community at table, etc.), held in eminent pride of place is to be communal participation in liturgical prayer (see SC, nos. 26, 99; Institutio Generalis Liturgiae Horarum , no. 25). Its diverse modalities are to be encouraged according to possibilities and practical condi tions, without necessarily transferring the albeit praiseworthy models proper to the religious life. Worthy of praise in particular are those associations which support priestly fraternity, holiness in the exercise of the ministry, and communion with the Bishop and the entire Church (see CIC, c. 278 §2; see also PDV, nos. 31, 68, 81).” DMLP, no. 39.