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PRAYER OF THE HOLY FATHER JOHN PAUL
II
To all the Priests of the Church Dear Brothers in the Priesthood, From the beginning of my ministry as Pastor of the universal Church, I have wished Holy Thursday each year to be a day of special spiritual communion with you, in order to share with you in prayer, in pastoral care and in hope, to encourage you in your generous and faithful service, and to thank you in the name of the whole Church. This year I am not writing you a letter. Instead I am sending you the text of a prayer dictated by faith and coming from my heart, so as to share with you in offering it to Christ on the birthday of my priesthood and yours, and to suggest a shared meditation in the light and with the support of this prayer. May each one of you rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of hands (cf. 2 Tim 1:6), and may you experience with renewed fervour the joy of having given yourselves totally to Christ. From the Vatican, on the 25th day of March, the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, in the year 1982, the fourth of the Pontificate. JOANNES PAULUS PP. II I 1. We turn to you, O Christ of the Upper Room and of Calvary, on this day which is the feast of our priesthood. To you we turn, all of us, bishops and priests, gathered together in the priestly assemblies of our churches, and at the same time joined together in the universal unity of the holy and apostolic Church. Holy Thursday is the birthday of our priesthood. It is on this day that we were all born. As a child is born from its mother’s womb, thus were we born, O Christ, from your one and eternal priesthood. We were born in the grace and strength of the new and eternal Covenant —from the Body and Blood of your redeeming sacrifice: from the Body that was given for us, (1) and from the Blood that was poured out for us all. (2) We were born at the Last Supper, and at the same time at the foot ofthe Cross on Calvary: the place which is the source of new life and of all the sacraments of the Church is also the place where our priesthood begins. We were also born together with the whole People of God of the new Covenant, whom you, the beloved of the Father, (3) made "a kingdom, priests to your God and Father". (4) We have been called to be servants of this people, which brings to the eternal tabernacles of the thrice holy God its "spiritual sacrifices". (5) The Eucharistic Sacrifice is the "source and summit of all Christian life ". (6) It is a single sacrifice that embraces everything. It is the greatest treasure of the Church. It is her life. We thank you, O Christ - because you yourself have chosen us, associating us in a special way with your priesthood and marking us with an indelible character which makes each of us able to offer your own sacrifice as the sacrifice of the whole people: a sacrifice of reconciliation, in which you unceasingly offer to the Father your own self, and, in you, man and the world; - because you have made us ministers of the Eucharist and of your pardon; sharers in your mission of evangelization; servants of the people of the New Covenant. II 2. Lord Jesus Christ, when on the day of Holy Thursday you had to separate yourself from those whom you had " loved to the end ", (7) you promised them the Spirit of truth. You said: "It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you". (8) You went away by means of the Cross, becoming "obedient unto death", (9) and "emptying yourself" (10) through the love with which you loved us to the end; and so, after your Resurrection, the Holy Spirit was given to the Church, the Holy Spirit who came to dwell in her "for ever". (11) It is the Spirit who "by the power of the Gospel preserves the Church’s youth, continually renews her and leads her to perfect union" with you. (12) Each one of us is aware that through the Holy Spirit, working through the power of your Cross and Resurrection, we have received the ministerial priesthood in order to serve the cause of man’s salvation in your Church; and so - we ask today, on this day which is so holy for us, that your priesthood may be continually renewed in the Church, through your Spirit who in every epoch of history must "preserve the youth" of this beloved Bride of yours; - we ask that each one of us will find again in his heart, and will unceasingly confirm through his life, the genuine meaning that his personal priestly vocation has both for himself and for all people, - so that in an ever more mature way he may see with the eyes of faith the true dimension and beauty of the priesthood, that he may persevere in giving thanks for the gift of his vocation, as for an undeserved grace, so that, giving thanks unceasingly, he may be strengthened in fidelity to this holy gift, which, precisely because it is completely gratuitous, imposes a proportionately greater obligation. 3. We thank you for having likened us to you as ministers of your priesthood, by calling us to build up your Body, the Church, not only through the administration of the sacraments, but also, and even before that, through the proclamation of your "message of salvation" , ( 13) making us sharers in your responsibility as Pastor. We thank you for having had confidence in us, in spite of our weakness and human frailty, infusing into us at Baptism the vocation and grace of perfection to be acquired day by day. We ask that we may always be able to carry out our sacred duties according to the measure of a pure heart and an upright conscience. May we be faithful "to the end" to You, who loved us "to the end". (14) May no place be found in our souls for those currents of ideas which diminish the importance of the ministerial priesthood, those opinions and tendencies which strike at the very nature of the holy vocation and service to which you, O Christ, call us within your Church. When on Holy Thursday, as you instituted the Eucharist and the priesthood, you were leaving those whom you had loved to the end, you promised them the new "Counsellor". (15) May this Counsellor— the "Spirit of truth" (16)—be with us through his holy gifts! May there be with us wisdom and understanding, knowledge and counsel, fortitude, piety and the holy fear of God, so that we may always know how to discern what comes from you and distinguish what comes from the "spirit of the world" (17) or even from the "ruler of this world’". (18) 4. Save us from "grieving your Spirit" (19) - by our lack of faith and lack of readiness to witness to your Gospel "in deed and in truth"; (20) by secularism and by wishing at all costs to conform to the mentality of this world; (21) - by a lack of that love which is "patient and kind...", which "is not boastful..." and which "does not insist on its own way...". which "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things..."—that lovewhich "rejoices in the right" and only in the right. (22) Save us from "grieving" your Spirit - by everything that brings inward sadness and is an obstacle for the soul, - by whatever causes complexes and divisions, - by whatever makes us a fertile soil for all temptations, - by whatever shows itself as a desire to hide one’s priesthood before men and to avoid all external signs of it, by whatever can in the end bring one to the temptation to run away, under the pretext of the "right to freedom". Save us from demeaning the fullness and richness of our freedom, which we have ennobled and realized by giving ourselves to you and accepting the gift of the priesthood. Save us from separating our freedom from you, to whom we owe the gift of this inexpressible grace. Save us from "grieving!’ your Spirit. Enable us to love with that love with which your Father "loved the world" when he gave "his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life". (23) Today, which is the day on which you yourself promised to the Church the Spirit of truth and love, joining with those who at the Last Supper were the first to receive from you the charge to celebrate the Eucharist, all of us cry out: "Send forth your Spirit... and renew the face of the earth". (24) Renew too the face of that priestly earth which you made fruitful by the sacrifice of your Body and Blood, the sacrifice which you renew through our hands every day on the altars, in the vineyard of your Church. III 5. Today everything speaks of this love whereby you loved the Church and gave yourself up for her, in order to make her holy. (25) Through the redeeming love of your definitive giving you made the Church your bride, leading her along the paths of her earthly experiences, in order to prepare her for the eternal "marriage of the Lamb" (26) in the "Father’s house". (27) This spousal love of yours as Redeemer, this saving love of yours as Bridegroom, makes fruitful all the "hierarchical and charismatic gifts" by which the Holy Spirit "provides for and guides" the Church. (28) Is it permissible for us, Lord, to doubt this love of yours? Can anyone who lets himself be guided by living faith in the Founder of the Church doubt this love, to which the Church owes all her spiritual vitality? Is it permissible to doubt - that you can and will give your Church true "stewards of the mysteries of God", (29) and, especially, true ministers of the Eucharist? - that you can and will kindle in the souls of men, especially the young, the charism of priestly service, as it has been received and actuated in the tradition of the Church? - that you can and will kindle in those souls not only a desire for the priesthood but also that readiness to accept the gift of celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven of which both in the past and still today whole generations of priests in the Catholic Church have given proof? Is it proper to continue, in opposition to the voice of the recent Ecumenical Council and the Synod of Bishops, to declare that the Church ought to give up this tradition and heritage? Is it not rather the duty of us priests to live out our commitment with generosity and joy, helping by our witness and by our action to spread this ideal? Is it not our task to cause an increase in the number of future priests in the service of the People of God, by working with all our strength for the reawakening of vocations and by supporting the irreplaceable work of the Seminaries, where those called to the ministerial priesthood can properly prepare for the total gift of themselves to Christ? 6. In this Holy Thursday meditation I make bold to put this far-reaching question to my brothers, precisely because this sacred day seems to demand of us complete and absolute sincerity before you, the Eternal Priest and the Good Shepherd of our souls. Indeed yes. It saddens us that the years following the Council, for all their undoubted wealth of beneficial leaven, their abundance of edifying initiatives and their fruitfulness for the spiritual renewal of all sections of the Church, have also seen the occurrence of a crisis and the appearance of not a few rifts. But, in any crisis, can we doubt your love? The love with which you loved the Church and gave yourself up for her? (30) Are not this love and the power of the Spirit of truth greater than any human weakness, even when this weakness seems to gain the upper hand, even claiming to be a sign of "progress"? The love that you bestow on the Church is always meant for the man who is weak and exposed to the consequences of his weakness. And yet you never renounce this love, which raises man and the Church, placing before both of them precise demands. May we "curtail" this love? Do we not do so whenever, because of man’s weakness, we decree that the demands that this love makes must be renounced? IV 7. "Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest". (31) On Holy Thursday, the birthday of the priesthood of each one of us, we see with the eyes of faith all the immensity of this love, which in the Paschal Mystery commanded you to become "obedient unto death" —and in this light we also see more clearly our own unworthiness. We feel the need to say, today more than ever: "Lord, I am not worthy...".Indeed "we are unworthy servants". (32) But let us make sure that we see this "unworthiness" of ours with a simplicity that makes us men of great hope. "Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us". (33) This Gift is precisely the fruit of your love: the fruit of the Upper Room and of Calvary. Faith, hope and charity must be the proper standard for our judgment and initiatives. Today, the day on which the Eucharist was instituted, we beg you with the greatest humility and all the fervour of which we are capable that the Eucharist may be celebrated throughout the world by the ministers called to do so, so that no community of your disciples and confessors may lack this holy sacrifice and spiritual food. 8. The Eucharist is first and foremost a gift made to the Church. An inexpressible gift. The priesthood too is a gift to the Church, for the sake of the Eucharist. Today, when it is said that the community has a right to the Eucharist, it must be remembered in particular that you urged your disciples to "pray... the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest". (34) If people do not "pray" with fervour, if they do not strive with all their strength to ensure that the Lord sends to communities good ministers of the Eucharist, can they say with inner conviction that "the community has a right..."? If it has a right, then it has a right to the gift! And a gift cannot be treated as if it were not a gift. Unceasing prayers must be offered to obtain that gift. We must ask for it on our knees. And so, since the Eucharist is the Lord’s greatest gift to the Church, we must ask for priests, because the priesthood too is a gift to the Church. On this Holy Thursday, as we are gathered with the Bishops in our priestly assemblies, we beg you, Lord, to grant that we may always be intensely aware of the greatness of the gift which is the Sacrament of your Body and Blood. Grant that, in inner accord with the economy of grace and the law that governs gifts, we may continually "pray the Lord of the harvest" and that our cry may come from a pure heart, a heart that has the simplicity and sincerity of true disciples. Then, Lord, you will not reject our plea. 9.We must cry to you with a voice as loud as is demanded by the greatness of the cause and the eloquence of the needs of our time. And so let us raise our imploring cry. And yet we are aware that "we do not know how to pray as we ought". (35) Is it not perhaps so because we are dealing with an issue that is so much above us? Nevertheless the issue is ours. There is no other issue as much ours as this one. The day of Holy Thursday is our feastday. Let us also think of the fields that "are already white for harvest". (36) Let us therefore be confident that the Spirit will "help us in our weakness... interceding for us with sighs too deep for words". (37) For it is always the Spirit that "preserves the Church’s youth, continually renews her and leads her to perfect union with her Bridegroom". (38) 10.We are not told that your Mother was present in the Upper Room on Holy Thursday. Nevertheless we pray to you especially through her intercession. What can be dearer to her than the Body and Blood of her own Son, entrusted to the Apostles in the Eucharistic Mystery—the Body and Blood that our priestly hands unceasingly offer as a sacrifice "for the life of the world"? (39) And so, through her, especially on this day, we thank you, and through her we beg - that our priesthood may be renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit, - that it may be ever vibrant with a humble but solid certainty of our vocation and mission, - that our readiness for the sacred service may increase. O Christ of the Upper Room and of Calvary! Accept us all, the Priests of the Year of Our Lord 1982, and by the mystery of Holy Thursday sanctify us anew. Amen 1) Cf. Lk 22:19.
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