p. 57The Sacred Heart and Reverence for the Priesthood

The immense and unending love of the Sacred Heart is not limited to the men and women of any time or place, but extends to the whole world and to all ages. Our blessed Lord desired eagerly to bless, to heal, and to save all generations, as He did those happy fellow countrymen of His among whom He walked during His mortal life in Palestine. He wore Himself out, during the days of His active life, walking from place to place to instruct the people, to heal the sick, to comfort the afflicted, to convert and forgive sinners. Then, during the night, when the world was asleep, He would spend long hours in prayer, pleading with His heavenly Father with all the fervor of His Sacred Heart for all mankind, His world-wide family, those brothers and sisters of His human nature whom He held so dear.

But it was the will of God the Father that Christ should remain on earth only a few years. In the prime of His manhood, with the desire of His Sacred Heart still unsatisfied, that all men should hear the message of salvation, He meekly ceased from His labors, carried His cross to Calvary, lay down in holy obedience upon that most disgraceful gibbet, and offered up the agonizing sacrifice of His life for our salvation.

Yet, before He died for us on the cross, He had chosen and taught His twelve apostles, who, with His other disciples, were to be other Christs and to continue for Him the work of saving and sanctifying souls, so dear to the Sacred Heart. Before He ascended into heaven, He had completed His instructions, had prepared His ambassadors for their holy ministry, had given to the apostles and their successors, bishops of His Church, the power to ordain priests until the end of time, and had committed to the priesthood the tremendous ministry of carrying on the work of Christ, age after age, generation after generation, until the very consummation of days.

Though our Lord, in His visible presence, has long since left this earth, though we can no longer see His beautiful countenance, nor hear His dear voice, melodious with the accents of His divine love, we still have Christ with us—Christ ministering to us, Christ teaching us His holy doctrine, forgiving us our sins in the sacrament of penance, feeding our souls with His Sacred Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist, washing us clean of original sin in baptism. In the person of His priests, we see Jesus offering up for us, day by day, on a hundred thousand altars, the holy sacrifice of the Mass, anointing the brows of the dying with the holy unction of strength and of healing, pouring forth on all the world the treasures of His Sacred Heart.

The priest, as has been often said, is the ambassador of Christ and bears with him the power of Him Who sent him. It is in the name of Christ that the priest exercises his august mission. Thus, our Lord has multiplied His presence many hundreds of thousands of times in the person of His priests, as He has multiplied His hidden presence innumerable times in the Holy Sacrament of the altar. In the Blessed Eucharist, it is Christ Himself Who is really present, living and entire, beneath the sacramental veils. In the priest, He is present by the power which He has given these men through ordination to speak for Him and to act for Him in the tremendous ministry of the sacraments. When the priest speaks in the name of Christ, to forgive a sinner, to consecrate the bread and wine during Mass, to anoint the dying, God the Father in heaven sees in these solemn rites His own divine Son, acting through His ministers, and moved by that sight He pours down graces upon those whom Christ thus helps by the consecrated hands of His priests.

Indeed, the Sacred Heart of Jesus does many things through His priests which He does not choose to do in His own real presence on the altar. In the Blessed Sacrament, He remains hidden and silent; but in the person of His priests, He carries on innumerable visible ministrations to countless human beings. As these lines are written, and at the moment when you shall read them, hundreds of thousands of priests throughout the entire world are busy ministering to the people in the name of Christ. Somewhere on earth at this instant the sun has but lately risen and is filling the world with the light of early morning. There, on many altars, Christ’s priests are offering up in His name the Holy Sacrifice, and are laying on the lips of the people the adorable sacrament of the Eucharist. As our great world revolves beneath the sun, His light falls upon multitudes of priests, other Christs, carrying into the whole world the power and love of the Sacred Heart. They are pouring on the brows of children the waters of salvation; they are witnessing, in the name of the Church, the solemn and holy contract which is the sacrament of matrimony, sealed by Christ’s blood; they are preaching, teaching, visiting the sick, comforting the afflicted, directing good works, and anointing the dying. In a word, they are doing what Christ desires to accomplish through their ministry, out of the love of His Sacred Heart.

If we ourselves have a true love of that Sacred Heart and desire to cherish what our Lord cherishes, to esteem what He esteems, we shall have an immense appreciation of the holy priesthood and we shall pray for the priests, as He desires us to do. We shall cooperate with their efforts, assist them over their weaknesses, and give them the means of carrying on their ministry. When any youth who is dear to us shows signs of vocation for the priesthood, we shall rejoice with the Sacred Heart and try to help and encourage him worthily to enter on and persevere in this Christlike calling. We shall pray for priestly vocations, offering up our thoughts, words, and actions that our Lord may send worthy laborers into His vineyard.

How grateful we ought to be to the Heart of our Lord for giving to priests such stupendous powers, for enabling men to forgive sins, to call down from heaven our divine Lord, Himself, Who at their words in the consecration of the Mass changes the bread and wine into His body and blood. How we ought to thank that loving Heart for giving to so many young men the wonderful grace of priestly vocation, that grace which enables them to leave home and family, to give up the consolations of domestic life, and to devote their whole lives to acting as Christ’s agents and representatives, leading an existence like that of the angels who minister about the throne of God.

How grateful we should be that the Sacred Heart of our Lord has filled the whole world with these priestly ministrations, so that wherever we go in this or in other lands, we shall always find waiting for us, in the great cities and in smaller places, these ambassadors of Christ, seated in the confessional, standing at the altar, ready at any moment of the day or night to rise even from sleep and come to us in case of grievous accident or deathly illness, to anoint us with the oil of salvation, to feed us with Christ’s body and blood.

Our esteem for the priesthood, our prayer for priestly vocations, our habit of interceding for priests—these things are a measure of our love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus. With the eyes of faith we can see our blessed Lord walking through the world today as He walked through Palestine in times of old. Nay, He does much more for us than He did for the Jews. Never, in all His earthly pilgrimage did He offer up the Sacrifice of the Mass or give Holy Communion save at the Last Supper, the night before His death. Yet these sublime, astounding favors He grants us daily, if we will, by the hands of His priests. All the tenderness of our heart, its gratitude and love are all too little to render back to the Sacred Heart of Jesus even a part of what we owe for this sublime and heavenly ministry which He sends to us by the hands of His priests.