Prayer for the Priest

O Mary, Mother of the High Priest, 

You love your priestly Son with the love of your maternal heart.

Hear my heartfelt prayer today for all priests.

I pray 

For faithful and fervent priests,

For unfaithful and tepid priests,

For priests who minister at home,

For priests in the missions,

For young and old priests,

For the sick and dying priests,

For the souls of forgotten priests,

For priests who have touched my life,

Especially for Fathers______________.

Maternal heart of Mary,

Remind us that your priestly sons

Are weak and frail human beings.

Give them a deep faith, a firm hope,

And a burning love, to faithfully live

And preach the Gospel.

I ask that

In their loneliness, you strengthen them;

In their sorrow, you comfort them;

In their frustration, you support them.

Mary, keep them close to your Son, the Priest.

Bless them abundantly

Now and in eternity. Amen.

This is a nice short prayer to say for priests. Thursday is the day that we traditionally remember priests, just as Friday we commemorate the Lord's Passion, and Saturday is dedicated to The Blessed Virgin Mary. Remember the priests every Thursday, and offer your Holy Communion for them.

sthughofcluny.org

On Holy Thursday 2013, Fr. Richard Cipolla of St. Mary Church in Norwalk Connecticut, gave a stirring homily on the priesthood through the ages, and the challenges of the priesthood today. Father Cipolla says that the true priest is a hero for his people, one who stands before God on our behalf, and who stands before the forces of evil as protector of his people. Even the most lukewarm priest in the world still received Holy Orders for this holy purpose.

"But when a priest dares to take on something so counter-cultural, so in your face damning the culture, as celibacy and does it in freedom, not because this is part of the package, but because this is in imitation of his Lord and Savior, and in so doing, turns his back on the false and hideous understanding of freedom that the world preaches and lives by: then the priest incurs the hatred of the world, and, if the truth be told, the annoyance of many of his own flock. When the priest accepts his personal suffering as a genuine and necessary part of his life as a priest as a joining of his suffering to the suffering of his flock all grounded in the suffering of Christ on the Cross, when he accepts that as priest he will always have in his heart la tristezza così perenne, that sadness that is always there, and when he stands at the altar and loses himself and allows the reality of his suffering and the suffering of his people to be offered up by his hands and to be placed in the crucible of the fiery love of God and there to be transformed by that love that is present at that moment in our time and space, that love whose locus is the Cross, that love that cannot be contained by time and space and yet is contained in that bread and in that wine, that love that makes itself completely disponibile, to be touched, lifted up, adored, and ultimately eaten and drunk. How can the priest’s heart not break with love and therefore with joy at the celebration of every Mass, knowing who he is and what he is doing?"

Please pray for our priests! St. John Vianney, patron of priests, pray for us!