CAPG's Blog 

"Every priest knows that Mary, as Mother, is also the most distinguished modeler of his priesthood, since it is she who moulds the priestly soul, protects it from dangers, from routine and discouragement, and maternally safeguards it, so he may grow in wisdom, age and grace, before God and men."

-- Congregation for the Clergy (Directory on the Ministry and Life of Priests)

" You are not of yourself because you are of God. You are not of yourself because you are the servant and minister of Christ. You are not your own because you are the spouse of the Church. You are not of yourself because you are the mediator between God and man. You are not from yourself because you are nothing. What then are you? Nothing and everything. O Priest! Take care lest what was said to Christ on the cross be said to you: "He saved others, himself he cannot save!"

-- St. Norbert

Our Divine Savior, it is true, left all the splendors of Heaven. He became man in order that He, Who is life itself, might die to save us. He endured all the fury and barbarity of His enemies; He was torn, bleeding, abandoned by all on an infamous gibbet. Assuredly, this was too much, but it was not enough for His love to us. Hence it is that we behold Him in the Mass - this same God, again become a victim, giving Himself to us in perpetual sacrifice, in order thereby to apply forever to the souls of men the merits of His life and death.

What can we say - what can we do while contemplating these prodigies, save to humble ourselves with the angels, in endless adoration, thanksgiving and love!

Source: The Holy Mass: the Sacrifice for the living and the dead, the clean oblation offered up among the nations from the rising to the setting of the sun, Fr. Michael Muller 1881.

Thrones and scepters and crowns have withstood the hierarchy of the Church; but, immutable, like God, who laid its foundation, it is the firm, unshaken center round which the weal and woe of nations move - weal if they adhere to it - woe if they separate from it.

If the world takes from the Pope, the bishops, and priests of the Catholic Church, the cross of gold, they will bless the world with one of wood. If necessary, popes, bishops and priests can suffer and die for the welfare of the world, as Jesus suffered and died. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church is immortal.

Source: The Catholic Priest, Rev. Michael Muller C.S.S.R

The priest is a steward in charge of interests not his own. He is a servant, as servant of all work, expected to be helpful all round and all day long. He can work for nobody but his Master. His rule is that of our Lord himself.

Priests of God, you are not your own.

Source: Daily thoughts for priests by Fr. John Hogan 1899

We live in a country and in a period of restless activity, of advertising and being advertised,
of nervous anxiety for results almost at any cost. How sad to see priests caught up and carried
 away by the flood, losing the merit of their lives, not to say their very souls, while saving others!

Like those of whom Our Lord speaks, they prophesy by the earnestness of their preaching; they
 cast ou devils by the power of the sacraments; they work wonders of material construction and
organization; but they are sustained in it all and borne along chiefly by natural impulse, by
 exuberant activity, by the spirit of pride, by the desire to be talked of by their people and by
 their fellow priests, by all manner of human motives worthless in the sight of God.

 Only at the judgment of God - "on that day"- will they know, will the world know,
in what depths of spiritual poverty they have lived and died.

Source: Daily Thoughts for Priests, Fr. John B. Hogan

A priest without faith can form no idea of the sublime dignity of the priesthood, no idea of the perfection required of the priest!

Source: The Catholic Priesthood, Rev. Fr. Michael Muller, 1885

Behold the fatal cause of the persecutions of the Apostles, and of other Ecclesiastics !

Behold the source of the damnation of innumerable souls, ignorance, wilful and deliberate !

Because no one understandeth, they shall perish for ever" (Job. iv. 20).

If people are, in great part, slaves of the devil, it is from want of knowledge : " Therefore is My people led away captive, because they had not knowledge" (Is. v. 13). "Where there is no knowledge of the soul there is no good " (Prov. xix. 2). And we must acknowledge with grief that this ignorance, which is the mother of all vices, springs from the carelessness of Priests, because they neglect to preach the Word of God, which is " living and effectual" (Heb. iv. 12). Justly, therefore, does St. Gregory declare against such Priests as render themselves guilty of the ruin of innumerable souls, who are thus lost for want of instruction. We who are called Priests, he says, are guilty of murdering men's souls, for we are the cause of the death of all those whom by our tepidity and silence we allow to go to destruction.

Let us remember what the devil one day said to a French Priest, who was preparing to make a speech at the opening of a synod : " The Rulers of the infernal darkness salute the Rectors of Parish Churches, and thank them for their negligence in teaching the people ; because sin is born of ignorance, and damnation is born of sin."

Let us implore the Holy Spirit to bestow on us a little of that light and zeal which he gave to St. Paul, so that we may be able to say with him, "I am clear from the blood of all men, for I have not spared to declare unto you all the counsel of God" (Acts xx. 26, 27). " By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all the power of them by the Spirit of His mouth." — Pu xxxii. 6. " I will pour out My Spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thy stock' Is xliv. 3.

Source: Meditations for the use of the clergy : for every day in the year. On the Gospels for the Sundays, Volume 3 (Msgr. Scotti, Archbishop of Thessalonica)