The Blessed Trinity is not despotic– God is not a tyrant. Quite the opposite! The Blessed Trinity has chosen to govern the creation with the unique assistance and participation of all those who have been made sons and daughters in Christ. God has willed it to be like this. He has chosen from the beginning of all time to weave within His divine providence your prayer and my prayer.
Prayer makes a difference, and it can truly contribute to the sanctification of those we pray for and for ourselves. As I write this, I am reminded of the viral video of the power of one Hail Mary shared by Fr. Joe Feedy on YouTube. A man was jogging past a house and stopped to pray a Hail Mary for the woman being taken out into the ambulance. In the hospital, the woman, aware that she was dying, had a visitation of Jesus, who revealed on the palm of his hand the face of a stranger. Jesus said to the woman that the man’s prayer saved your life.
What was his prayer? One Hail Mary! Could we ever fully grasp the power of humble and loving prayer?
Priesthood today is wounded and in the ambulance. Men chosen by God to be His priests face so many temptations and trials and need support in so many ways.
Above all, the most powerful support is prayer backed with sacrifice. A powerful image of this for us to hold in our hearts is Moses in Exodus in the midst of a great battle: “But Moses’ hands grew weary; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat upon it, and Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; so his hands were steady until the going down of the sun (Exod 17:12).” Priests need the prayers of their own brother priests and the prayers of the lay faithful to hold up their priestly vocation of sacramental ministry, mediation and intercession.
One particular form of prayerful support that is uniquely powerful for the priesthood today is the Holy Mass and Eucharistic adoration outside of Mass. Preparing sacrifices in daily life to bring to the altar in Holy Mass is a source of untold blessings for the priesthood. This is why it is so important to remember our priests in our personal prayers at Holy Mass. The Holy Mass is the greatest act of worship and adoration we can offer God for his priests. It is the source of the greatest blessings possible. Imagine: if one Hail Mary saved that woman’s life, how much more will Holy Mass devoutly offered benefit his priests?
The next most powerful prayerful support we can offer for our priests is Eucharistic adoration. Why is this? Pope Benedict XVI gives us the answer: “The act of adoration outside Mass prolongs and intensifies all that takes place during the liturgical celebration itself.”[1] When we offer the sacrifice of our time to go to adore the Lord in the tabernacle for his priests, we are instruments of the power of Christ’s Cross and Resurrection for them.
Speaking of the transformational effects of Eucharistic Adoration, Pope St. John Paul II wrote these very striking words to the bishop of Liège:
“Through adoration the Christian mysteriously contributes to the radical transformation of the world and to the sowing of the Gospel. Anyone who prays to the Savior draws the whole world with him and raises it to God.”[2]
In Eucharistic Adoration we literally draw up to our Lord the lives of all priests, especially those we pray for in particular. Through this intercession we call down upon their lives the precious blood of the lamb. Our prayer can truly sanctify them by God’s grace.
In a similar vein Peter Kreeft offers us one of the most riveting quotes of the power of Eucharistic adoration. I invite you to read it in light of prayerful support for priests. Kreeft writes:
“Restoration of adoration of the Sacrament will heal our Church, and thus our nation, and thus our world. It is one of Satan’s most destructive lies that sitting alone in a dark church adoring Christ is irrelevant, impractical, a withdrawal from vital contemporary needs. Adoration touches everyone and everything in the world because it touches the Creator, who touches everything and everyone in the world from within, in fact, from their very center. When we adore, we plunge into the center of the hurricane, “the still point of the turning world”; we plug into infinite dynamism and power. Adoration is more powerful for construction than nuclear bombs for destruction.”[3]
Are you and I willing to touch the hearts of our priests by touching God who touches them from within?
[1] SC, n. 66
[2] John Paul II, Letter to the Bishop of Liège for the 750th Anniversary of the “Corpus Domini” Festival, May 28 1996, translated passages at “St. Pope John Paul II: Quotes on the Importance of Eucharistic Adoration,” St. Francis, T.C., MI, https://stfrancisadoration.org/pope_john_paul_ii.htm.
[3] Peter Kreeft, The Angel and the Ants: Bringing Heaven Closer to Your Daily Life (Servant Publications, 1994), 92
Image courtesy of Unsplash.
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