The third petition in this official prayer for the priest stresses his absolute need of divine help if he is to be faithful to his vocation. This is brought out in all three sections of the prayer. In the Collect we are reminded that it is only God Who can make the priest worthy of his high office. "All our sufficiency is from Him." The Secret expresses an urgent request for grace which is necessary if the priest is not to fail. And in the PostCommunion the priest once more throws himself, sinner that he is, on the mercy of God, Who alone can forgive him his sins.
There is thus his absolute dependence upon God. "Without Me you can do nothing," not even have an incipient desire to practice an act of virtue, still less accomplish it, and still less live a life on the high plain that is to be the ordinary and daily atmosphere of the priestly vocation.
This dependence is a theme for immense rejoicing on the part of the priest. It is true that he could never hope to attain to the holiness demanded by his state if left to himself; true that there is no depth of vice so deep but he is capable of descending into it; true that priests have fallen before him from this high eminence and brought scandal on the Church and shame and misery on themselves; and what they have done, he remains capable of doing as long as he is in this life.
But the very fact of his helplessness is his most cogent argument for depending on God's almighty power. God has called him, knowing all about him, to this holy state; therefore on God devolves the task to give His priest all he needs in order to be faithful to his vocation. There is immense comfort in realizing that he can surely abandon himself and all he is to such an allloving, allpowerful God. "In peace in the selfsame will I rest, for Thou has wonderfully established me in hope."
When His apostles were out in the boat and in imminent danger of being lost, Jesus came to them walking upon the waters. The very elements that were causing all the terror were the same that bore to them the comfort and peace of which they had nearly despaired. And does not daily experience show how often a grievous trial, a harassing temptation, which we thought must end in spiritual shipwreck, prove, in actual fact, to be the channel of immense graces? The eye of faith detects God's hand working through such apparently adverse circumstances, and such living faith quickens the heart with trust that all is certainly going to be well, despite appearances.
No priest can afford to forget this. If he were to dwell on the sublimity of his vocation without remembering that he is in God's almighty hand, he would be crushed with a weight of responsibility. Indeed, he would tell himself he never could hope to persevere and this would be most true, were he to look only to the ideal and only to his own natural powers.
Jesus, make our priests men of boundless trust in Your strength, in Your promises. Raise up mighty priests to make the world ring with the message You give: that You love ardently, that You desire eagerly to sustain us in every fight, that even our very sins, if we put them under our feet, can lift us up higher to You. Teach them in Your own school of love, so that when they come to us their words will be charged with a conviction that is the outcome of personal experience.