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Be faithful, just as Christ is faithful—Laguna Prelate

SAN PABLO CITY, August 10, 2009—San Pablo Bishop Leo M. Drona urged priests, religious of the Diocese of San Pablo (Laguna) to emulate Christ as the Good Shepherd and to be faithful just as Christ is ever faithful.

In his homily during the Concelebrated Mass at the San Pablo Cathedral on Priest Day (August 4), the Memorial of  St. John Marie Vianney, the prelate focused his reflection on the theme selected by His Holiness Pope Benedict VI: “The Faithfulness of Christ; the Faithfulness of the Priest.”

Bishop Drona said, “‘When faithfulness is lived to the full in our life, it becomes identical to love. ‘The love of Christ must be the love of the priest.’”

Quoting the Pope, Bp Drona said, “the priestly ministry consists of a total adherence to the ecclesial tradition of participating in a spiritually intense new life and new lifestyle inaugurated by the Lord Jesus, and which the apostles made their own. They became new men endowed with the gift and office of sanctifying, teaching, and governing. This entails a necessary and indispensable urge for moral perfection which must dwell in every authentic priestly heart.”

Drona recalled the Pope as saying that the Cure of Ars, St. John Marie Vianney, was very humble. Yet as a priest he was conscious of being an immense gift to his people. “A good shepherd, a pastor…is the greatest treasure which the good Lord can present to a parish, and one of the most precious gifts of divine mercy.”

The Bishop also quoted St. Vianney who said, “Without the sacrament of the Holy Orders, we would not have the Lord with us. Who puts Him there in the tabernacle? The Priest. Who welcomes your soul at the beginning of your life? The priest. Who feeds your soul and gives it strength for its journey? The priest. The priest is always the priest who forgives your own sins in confession. After God, the priest is everything. Only in heaven will he realize fully what he is!”.

St. John Vianney, according to the bishop “taught his parishioners primarily by witness of his life, especially in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, by his sacrifices in expiation for sins of men, by making them experience the mercy of God. The misfortune of a parish is when priests become lukewarm and tepid, incurred to the state of sin or indifferent to the moral situation of his flock. He sacrificed himself often for them.” 

During the start of his homily at the Mass attended by more than 100 priests, religious, deacons and hundreds of students, nuns, faculty, parishioners, guests which filled the Cathedral to capacity, the prelate said that in this occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the death of the St. John Mary Vianney, the Pope called him a true example of a shepherd at the service of Christ’s flock.

Looking at him as model of priests, we are asked to focus our attention on vocation of priests/shepherds, Drona said.

This year-long celebration, said the bishop, is an important opportunity to recall and contemplate the most important legacy of the Lord the “sacrament of his love” (Sacramentum Caritatis, Benedict XVI), the Holy Eucharist and linking it inseparably to the institution of the ministerial priesthood. Thus, for us who believe, the Holy Eucharist is the source and summit of the life of the whole Church and also in a special way, of the life of the priest.

Bishop explained that, during this year, by means of prayer and reflection, and many other spiritual ecclesial activities (individual and collective), “we as a people of God are invited to discover anew the beauty and importance of the Priesthood and of each priest. In this inner journey to rediscover anew the proper identity of the priest, all the people of God are involved but most especially the fraternity of priests or presbyterium joined strictly in a sacramental relationship with the Bishop, this spiritual journey must be felt and realized by the whole church within the local level in every ecclesial circumscription.” 

(Fr. Romulo O. Ponte)