Please Note: The following is translated from Portuguese. Please do not consider this translation the most accurate interpretation of the Cardinal’s words, instead please consider it the most available and consult the original text for a better understanding. The link to that text follows the text itself.-ed.

In the life of a priest, prayer necessarily holds a central place. It is not difficult to understand, because prayer cultivates the intimacy of the disciple with his Teacher, Jesus Christ. We all know that avoiding prayer weakens the faith and the ministry loses content and feeling. The existential consequence for the priest is expressed in less joy and happiness in the daily ministry. It is as if the Priest upon following the footsteps of Jesus side by side with so many others, loses himself on the road, remaining always more and more distant from the Teacher until he loses Him over the horizon. From then on he walks without direction and vacillates.

St John Chrysostom, in the homily on commenting on the 1st letter of Paul to Timothy advises wisely,: “The Devil plays against the pastor [. . . ]. The effect: the sheep die, the flock grows smaller, in other words, eliminating the pastor destroys the flock completely.” The commentary thinking of many daily situations, Chrysostom advises that the dimunition of the pastors diminishes and will diminish always the number of faithful in communities. Without pastors our communities will be destroyed!

Here, therefore, I desire before all, to speak of the necessity of prayer in order that as Chrysostom would say, the pastors defeat the Devil and they do not lose. In truth, without the essential nourishment of prayer, the priest gets sick, the disciple does not encounter strength to follow the Teacher, and thus he dies through extreme weakness. Consequently his flock becomes dispersed and dies.

Really, each priest is, by definition, door keeper of an essential reference to the ecclesial community. He is the very special disciple of Jesus, that the call and through the sacrament of Orders, He’s configured to Him as Head and Pastor of the Church. Christ is the only Pastor, but He wants the 12 and their succesors, to make participate in His ministry, by means of whom also the Priests, therefore, to another degree, are made participants of this sacrament, of such form that also they participate, to his own mode, of the ministry of Christ, Head and Pastor. This holds an essential tie of the Priest with the ecclesial community. He cannot omit in that respect to this responsibility, given that the community without pastor divides.

For this reason, in order to continue fidelity to Christ and the Community, the Presbyter needs to be a man of prayer, the man that lives in the intimacy of the Lord, Needs, more over to be comforted through prayer of the Church and of each Christian. The sheep should pray for their pastor! But, when he is aware that his own life of prayer has weakened, it is the time to direct oneself to the Holy Spirit and implore Him with humble soul. The Holy Spirit will reignite the fire in his heart. Reignite the passion and the enchantment with the Lord. He is always there and desires to dine with those who open the door to Him.

It is the Year of the Priest and, therefore, we want to pray, with perseverance and great love through the priests and with the priests. . . .

Cardinal Dom Cláudio Hummes
Archbishop Emeritus of São Paulo
Prefect for the Congregation for the Clergy

Translated from Portuguese