CAPG's Blog 

Our Lord in His hidden home in the sanctuary is every with the priest. What a home of contemplative prayer the sanctuary should be. There are our Lord and the priest living and working together in the life of mutual love. The hidden, the active, the suffering life, are all there before us in this sacrament of love, which is the prolongation of our Lord's Incarnation in our midst. There, too, is the Fountain of living water, every-flowing to refresh and purify our souls. What a privilege of love is all this if we do but respond to it. It is a matter of forming a spiritual habit - the habit of enjoying the unseen world, the presence of our Lord and His angels, who are ever with us in the sanctuary.

"O God, my God, to Thee do I watch at break of day, for Thee my soul hath thirsted. So in the sanctuary have I come before Thee to see Thy power and Thy glory. " " In the sight of Thy angels I will praise Thee."

Source: A Spiritual Retreat By Fr. H. Reginald Buckler

In all the workings of the sacramental system our Lord is always the principal worker. He it is who baptizes, He who absolves, He who consecrates. Deus est agens principale. He is the head of angels and men, and angels and saints co-operate with Him in the workings of the Church on earth. "The Catholic religion is the coming of the unseen world into this. What we see here is as a screen, hiding from us God, and Christ, and the Angels, and the Saints." (Newman, Sermons)

But here it is, in these most Divine workings, that our Lord chooses His priests, and wills them to live and work with Him, with His angels and His saints "you are come to Mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the company of many thousands of angels: and to the Church of the first born, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Testament, and to the sprinkling of blood, which speaketh better than that of Abel." (2 Tim)

Saint Paul gives us the idea of what a priest should be his words to Timothy: "Carefully study to present thyself approved unto God - a workman that need not be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth... a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and profitable to the Lord... that the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work."

And Saint Thomas may be said to epitomise this when he describes the priestly life as being "midway between God and men; receiving from God in contemplation, and giving to the people by action."

Source: A Spiritual Retreat By Fr. H. Reginald Buckler

Ad Vos O Sacerdotes.

God's wondrous plan, both in nature and grace, is to work through the agency of His creature. He gives us life, but through our parents; light and heat, but through the sun; breath, but through the air; food and clothing, but through the hands of our fellow-creatures; knowledge, but through our teachers. So in the world of grace our Lord comes to us, but through a human mother. He gives His truth to the world, but through the Church; His grace, but through the Sacraments; His own very self, in His hidden Sacramental life, but through the hands of His priests.

O Veneranda sacerdotum dignitas

Source: A Spiritual Retreat By Fr. H. Reginald Buckler

Zeal for the salvation of souls is the outcome of the love of God overflowing to the love of our neighbor. It is a virtue for all Christians to cultivate, as belonging closely to Christian charity. It is a necessary part of religious, priestly, and spiritual life, for no one could love God truly without loving the souls for whom Christ died.

It is clear that with many their zeal for souls will have to be mainly affective, yet to some unknown degree effective by their prayers, as they have neither the ability not the call to work effectively. But prayer entreats God, and God lest Himself be entreated. 

Let all true lovers of God therefore associate themselves with our Lord and the priesthood of His Church; let them be in union with all the Masses and Divine offices of the Church going on night and day in the world; and let them offer all the toils and trials of daily life, too, for the conversion of souls to God - for the heathen, the heretics, and for bad Catholics; let them especially pray in all this union for the hundred thousand dying daily, and let them pray for the vast wants of the Church in her conflict with the world, and especially for the Holy Father, the bishops, and priests and all the religious of the world , that all may be men of God, and profitable in His hands for the salvation of souls. Let them extend their prayers and penances to the holy souls in Purgatory in the same spirit of love and zeal, looking to the glory of God and the blessedness of the spirits departed. Sometimes of course opportunities for effective charity will come, and then each one must be ready for caritas in actu, remembering that our progress is by love, and that our Lord tells us we are to be "rich towards God."

Source: A Spiritual Retreat By Fr. H. Reginald Buckler

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the representative Man, and the model and the perfect Man. It is only through Him and through conformity to Him that we can go to God. "No man cometh to the Father but by Me." "whom He foreknew, He predestined to be made conformable to the image of His Son." Let us learn from our Blessed Lord's life on earth the ways of "holiness, without which no man shall see God. "

First there are the marvels of our Lord's infant and hidden life on earth for thirty years, with lessons to all the world of humility, dependence, and obedience. How sweet a virtue humility must be before God, when we find that He, the God of all, empties Himself of the Majesty of His glory and becomes as nothing in the hands of men. Then the utter dependence in which He wills to be on His Blessed Mother, looking to her for everything. How can we ever realize the intense love He will have had for her, and the marvelous holiness He will have bestowed on her, for such Divine Ministrations? What a model to priests our Blessed Lady must every be, in the intensity of her devotion to the body of our Lord. And what a home of prayer, contemplation, and union with God must the holy house of Nazareth have been during those years of the hidden life. What must have been the sanctity of St. Joseph to have been the chosen guardian of the Word Incarnate and His Blessed Mother? The lowest of the three that he was, he is yet the official superior of the house. Who will not love obedience and subjection, even to those beneath us in power and dignity, from the examples of Jesus and Mary in subjection to Joseph?

The beauty and value of an ordinary, humble, homely, hidden life is here shown in all its power and perfection. We cannot doubt that during those thirty years our Lord was living and working for the glory of His Father, and for the regeneration and salvation of the world. Yet it was rather by the way of affective than effective love, at least as far as outer works were concerned. Our Lord would not go forth to evangelize the world until His hour had come. "My hour is not yet come." God Himself is the first Worker, and His will is the rule of life. He will know where to find us when He wants us. What a lesson to all young religious and aspirants to the priesthood is given to us by our Lord's long hidden life at Nazareth.  He had no need or preparation for His mission to the world. But He was the model man, and the model priest, and He willed to teach us that our first need, for God and for souls, is the life "hidden with Christ in God. "

Source: A Spiritual Retreat, Fr. H Reginald Buckler, O.P.

No one can be saved without exertion on his part. Some foolish people assert that no man can influence his destiny. 

A Franciscan monk, Dunn Scotus by name, was one day walking alongside a field where a laborer was at work, cursing and swearing all the time. The monk begged him to desist, telling him if he used such bad language he would surely go to hell.

The Man answered: "if God has decreed that I shall go to hell, no prayers will avail me anything; if He has decreed that I shall go to heaven, I shall be saved, however much I curse and swear."

"If so," the priest rejoined, "I cannot understand why you are plowing this field. For if God has decreed that you shall have a good crop, you will have one although you do not cultivate your land: but if He has decreed that the harvest shall fail, all your labor will be in vain." The peasant replied that if he did not till the ground there would certainly be no harvest. The priest smiled, and said: "There, you have just reversed your former argument." Thus the man's eyes were opened to the falsity of fatalism.

source: Anecdotes and Examples Illustrating the Catholic Catechism. 1904

An unbeliever said once to a good and faithful Catholic: "O unhappy Christian! How terribly you will find you have been deceived, if heaven is only a fable!" 

The Catholic answered: "O unhappy atheist! How terribly you will find you have been deceived, when you discover that hell is NOT a fictitious place.!

Source: Anecdotes and Examples Illustrating the Catholic Catechism.

The world is at present afflicted with a strange malady; it is in the throes of a feverish intoxication; it is like a sick man writhing in pain; it is harassed and tortured by the burning fever of impiety.

But when God shall determine to put an end to these convulsive movements, what will He do? Will He raise up astute politicians and powerful rulers who will restrain as with fetters of iron the seething passions of men? No.

Will He send profound philosophers and great orators to recall these peoples by eloquent speech and powerful reasoning to a sense of their duty? By no means.

What, then, will He do? He will do what He has done in every age when He wished to heal the wounds of society and restore it to moral soundness. He will send apostles chosen for this special work, priests without name or reputation, but strong in strength of faith and holiness of life; these He will send, bearing a cross of wood into the midst of nations invaded and desolated by the demon of pride and the lust of greed and sensuality: Go, ye swifts angels, to a nation rent and torn in pieces, to a terrible people, to a nation expecting and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled.

Thither will these apostolic men go, urged on by the Spirit of God. Error and vice will flee at the sight of them, and a purified land will bring forth a new generation of men, full of life and adorned with every virtue: Thou shalt send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created: and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.

 Source: Jesus Living in the Priest: Considerations on the Greatness and Holiness of the Priesthood by Rev. Fr. P Millet, S.J. 1901

Who are the priests to whom even the world cannot refuse its esteem and confidence? Are they not precisely those who hold themselves furthest aloof from its vanity and dissipation, and refuse to share in its feasts and diversions?

Such priests fully realize that those who are called to their state should be grave and serious men., They are never seen meddling in other people's business: they live in retirement and silence: they are not anxious to get news, rather they prefer not to know many things which would serve no purpose except to gratify curiosity; they avoid encumbering their memory and burdening their mind with the silly stories and gossip of the world, while their holy faith furnishes them with so many sublime truths on which they can occupy their thoughts with profit and pleasure. In all this they but imitate our Blessed Mother, of whom St. Ambrose beautifully says: She sought no companionship except that of her own thoughts, and she was never less alone than when she seemed alone.

Source: Jesus Living in the Priest: Considerations on the Greatness and Holiness of the Priesthood, Rev. Fr. Millet, SJ 1901

"No, I do not believe that there ever existed in the world so much pomp and vanity, so much impurity, as at the present day; to find in the world's epoch so criminal, we must go to the days of Noe and the universal deluge. the inns in the cities and villages are filled with persons of abandoned character; they are so numerous that the entire world is infected by them... Avarice and usury increase under the disguised name of contracts, Simony reigns among the clergy, envy among the religious. Gluttony prevails to such an extent in every rank of social life that the fasts of Lent, the vigils and Ember days, are no longer observed... In a word, vice is held in such great honour that those who prefer the service of God to that of the world are held up to scorn as useless ans unworthy members of society."

Source: St. Vincent of Ferrer, The Angel of the Judgment, by F.r Andrew Pradel, O.P.