There are pains that are not shouted: they are carried in silence, like someone who bleeds inside. One of the most inexpressible is that of seeing a brother priest who has lost the path of his vocation. It is not a theoretical or distant pain: it touches us brothers in the deepest fiber, because we all share the same anointing. From that day when the Bishop imposed hands on us and we were sealed forever, we are a family. And when one strays, the rest of us feel that something breaks inside us.
However, this wound must not lead us to paralyzing scandal or severe judgment. If it hurts to the point of death, it is because we love the priesthood and because we know what is at stake: the salvation of souls, the fruitfulness of the Church, the glory of God, the hope of the Heart of Jesus. The sin of one does not erase the holiness of the others, nor much less the holiness of the sacrament. The presbytery of that diocese is good, very good, dedicated, silently heroic. It is not ashamed to weep for the fallen brother, nor to offer sacrifices and hours of adoration for him.
Our pain purifies; it is not sterile if we turn it into prayer. Every tear we shed for a brother can be offered so that the Lord may rescue him, return him home, make him holier than he was before falling. The story of Peter, who denied Christ and then became the first of the apostles, reminds us that no one is lost if they allow themselves to be reached by the gaze of Jesus.
The fall of one of us is a knock from God to review our life, not to look at the one next to us with suspicion. It is time to return to the Gospel, to remember the demands of our vocation, and to keep in mind the warning of Paul, the great lover: Qui se existimat stare, videat ne cadat! (1Cor 10, 12). Or that warning from the Eagle of Hippo: «There is no sin in the world that man cannot commit if the hand that made man ceases to sustain him» (S. Augustine, Soliloquium I, 1).
Transparent Purity
A priest without simplicity ends up losing the sense of the essential; a priest without purity of life becomes an easy prey for the world and its shadows; a priest without transparency ends up disconnecting from his brothers.
Coherence lies in our lifestyle preaching more than our homilies. Our celibacy, lived with purity of heart, is not a burden: it is the freedom to love with an undivided heart. Transparency in the gaze, elegance in words, modesty in gestures, delicacy in treatment are the best sermon we can preach in a world saturated with impurity, lies, and hedonism. It is not enough to be chaste: we must be luminous, so that people can see Christ in us, the Spouse of the Church.
Ours is moderation in entertainments, balance in the use of social networks, time dedicated to things that build up. One of the great dangers of the priesthood is living without spiritual guidance. The priest needs to open his soul, allow himself to be accompanied, allow himself to be corrected: without someone experienced and supernatural who listens to him and confronts him with the truth, he is exposed to losing the objectivity of his own conscience.
And our travels? Some will be necessary and priestly, but others scatter, unsettle, worldly, destabilize interiorly and exteriorly. There is a way of moving that enriches, and another that tires the soul and exposes it to unnecessary temptations. Kempis warned of this: «Qui multum peregrinantur, raro sanctificantur» (De imitatione Christi I, 23). It is also vital to cultivate a taste for serious reading, for study, for time of silence, for prolonged prayer before the tabernacle, for recollection at home. A priest who does not know how to be still in the presence of God ends up empty, devoured by urgencies.
The Heresy of Activism
This is what Pius XII called this subtle enemy that makes those who hold positions today subjected to incessant meetings that, far from nourishing spiritual life, exhaust it. They are the fruit of a semi-Pelagianism sadly present in the Church, which seems to trust more in endless and peculiar pastoral plans and human effort than in divine grace. This post-conciliar assemblyism, closer to a Protestant and synodalist vision than to the hierarchical and sacramental conception of the Church, has led to multiplying encounters, commissions, and endless meetings that steal time from prayer, silence, friendly encounters with other priests, legitimate pastimes that soothe the psyche and relieve tensions, and true pastoral plans in contact with souls.
If the priest does not defend his time for prayer, reading, rest, walks or sports, periodic retreats…, he runs the risk of emptying himself interiorly, becoming defenseless against temptations, and even falling physically ill, with the consequent emotional and relational repercussions. Activism without contemplation and without the courage to rest (as Benedict XVI told us in the Year of Priests) kills the priestly soul… and sometimes the body as well. It is a foolish and grotesque way of ceasing to be what we are.
Moreover, sincere priestly fraternity is the great antidote against dangerous and self-sufficient loneliness. A priest cannot live isolated, without opening himself to his brothers. Priestly friendship is not a luxury, but a duty. We need to share, confront each other with charity, correct each other, laugh and cry together. Complicit silence kills; fraternal correction saves. «Frater qui adiuvatur a fratre, quasi civitas firma» (Prov 19, 19).
Thank you, Jesus, for your priests!
The fall of one does not obscure the fidelity of so many others. Despite a fallen priest, the people of God continue to trust in their pastors and pray for them, knowing that many, incomparably more, celebrate Holy Mass with devotion, spend hours in the confessional, preach sound doctrine, visit the sick, catechize children, guide vocations, accompany marriages and families, patiently listen to those who suffer, serve the poor. They are the true news, the living face of Christ in the midst of his people.
Light is stronger than darkness, and the good that so many priests do far surpasses the wound that the stumble of one alone can cause.
In the moment of pain, it is just and necessary to lift our eyes and give thanks: for the enthusiastic generosity of so many young priests, who give the best of themselves in their first years of ministry; for the immolated dedication of so many sick priests, who offer their suffering in silence for the good of the Church; for the veteran wisdom of so many elderly priests, who, from experience, continue to teach with their example; for the daily fidelity of professors, chaplains and pastors, missionaries and monks, who pray and sustain the faith in schools, hospitals, parishes and convents; and for the bishops, who, «catholicæ et apostolicæ fidei cultores», in the shaken Church of today strive to listen to, guide, support and encourage their priests.
Leo XIV: «prepare the soil»
Enough of that tedious and bellicose assemblyism that tires and scatters, inventing more and more useless meetings. It is urgent, for decades, to return to the foundation: a solid human formation; a virile and sincere education of the affections, eradicating sentimentality and infantilism, humbly accepting reality and one’s own limitations. And on that indefectible base, a strong and ordered spiritual life, mature and self-demanding, spongy and happy.
In his recently published authorized biography, Leo XIV says something that today more than ever should be kept in mind in seminaries and in the much-vaunted «ongoing formation» of presbyteries:
«One of the aspects that I have always considered very important and that leads to sound formation is to start with the Thomistic principle that grace perfects nature. So we have to prepare the nature, prepare the soil where you are going to try to sow the seed, to say: who are these people who are arriving? The human dimension is extremely important. That means helping young people, first of all, to know themselves. Obviously, the formator would have to know them to some extent, but not try to jump to the spiritualization of ‘you have a vocation, pray a lot and then God will make you a good priest.’ We have to prepare the soil. That doesn’t happen automatically all the time, so it is necessary to walk with these young people who show some sign of having a vocation, to help them recognize who they are, what their gifts and weaknesses are, to learn to respect each other, to develop a healthy concept of humanity, to be free. Some have criticized me for this, but I was not so disciplinary, taking away all personal freedom and saying ‘you must do this,’ and where every minute of the day is highly regulated, because people do not grow toward freedom that way, they grow toward conformity. Often, if the person is not healthy on all levels when they begin this process, forcing them to comply with certain norms [is not the best]. Many people can do it, but then, when they leave formation and become priests or religious, the difficulties that perhaps already existed reappear and the problems come.»
Woman, behold your son!
There are no magic recipes nor is it possible to uproot concupiscence from us, but let us at least have «bullfighter’s shame.» We must be what we are: men, priests, and saints. In that order! Nobility obliges. First, toughness and sense of duty, seriousness and joy, spirit of sacrifice and work, fidelity to the given word and disinterested openness to friendship, equanimity and vigilant self-mastery, sober and detached austerity, relational capacity with naturalness, freedom and manhood in the management of affections, self-renunciation, death to childish whims and to the centrifugation of real or imaginary problems, hearty laughter in the face of body worship and hypochondria, Olympian contempt for fashions, manifestation of one’s own identity in all the details of the way of dressing. Then, or simultaneously, pray, pray, pray a lot: silent Eucharistic adoration, without guitars or testimonies; Holy Mass well prepared, celebrated and thanked, without invasive protagonism of the homily, that is, «mine»; faithful and punctual prayer of the breviary, munus suavissimum of the priest, his joyful and voluntary «prayerful slavery» for souls, seven times a day. And fasting, in one of its thousand possibilities. Only it makes Satan flee. For, as the Saint said, «gift and prayer are incompatible.»
Mary, Mother of priests, keep us faithful until the end and lift up with her hand the fallen brother, so that one day we may embrace him again in the joy of reconciliation. May no priest in the world fail to pray the Holy Rosary even a single day of his life: if we are faithful to this daily appointment with the Lady, She will not allow us to get lost.
The priesthood is the greatest grace we have received. It is not ours, it is Christ’s, for the glory of the Most Holy Trinity and for the people of God. Therefore, although today’s pain is immense, we stand firm, we remain on guard, we continue fighting, encouraged by the heavenly winner of all God’s battles. The sweetness of this certainty consoles and enflames us: Maria duce!
Mons. Alberto José González Chaves