Several years ago, I was invited to preach the Forty Hours Devotions at Saint Mel’s Parish in Sacramento, California.  The flight from Tucson was short but there was plenty of time for a Rosary.  Across the aisle, a woman was reading her newspaper. As I whispered the Hail Maries, my eye caught the glaring headline: “Priest Charged with Molestation.” The woman turned toward me with a grimacing scowl.  It was guilt by association.  With a heavy heart, I avoided her disdainful glare.
   
    For too long, we Catholics have suffered stories of sordid scandals, souring settlements, betrayals of sacred trust, and the financial ruin of diocese after diocese. It has been shocking and pitifully painful.

    Was it that long ago that the Priest was the most revered and admired of men?  I remember my youth at the Annunciation Parish in Philadelphia.  Garbed in their Roman cassocks, our Priests preached fearlessly of Jesus Christ and His Church. Men tipped their hats to them on the streets. To us altar boys, Father was larger than life.  What mighty men they were!
   
    The Priest baptized us, heard our confessions and offered daily Mass. He was there in sickness and in death.  Always, he presented himself as a man of God.  Father dressed like a Priest, looked like a Priest and acted like a Priest. He was truly an, “Ambassador of Christ."

    What has happened?  Shame has engulfed us.  The Catholic heart is broken for the people love their Priests. Before his election, Cardinal Ratzinger said: “A filth has entered the Church!”

    In his May 13th homily to Priests, the new Pope said: “The Priesthood is not a question of a job in which someone secures his own livelihood by his own abilities, perhaps in order to rise latter to something better.”  

    No, indeed!  The Priesthood cannot be viewed as a career!  Careers come and go with the needs and demands of life.  Yet, as Pope Benedict XVI said: “The Priesthood is rooted in Christ (and) is by its nature in the Church and for the Church.”

    On Holy Thursday night, Our Savior offered the first Mass. In an un-bloody manner, He offered the identical Sacrifice that He would offer the next day on Calvary, in a bloody manner.  Then, Jesus ordained the Apostles to be Priests of the New and Eternal Covenant.  Ever since, the most respected of men has been the Priest, not because of his own person, but because of the Person of Christ. 
   
    Vatican II teaches that the Priest receives a special sacrament by which he is conformed to Christ in such a way that he acts, in Persona Christi. In offering the sacraments and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Priest acts, in the very Person of Jesus Christ."

    Acting, in the Person of Christ signifies an abiding sacramental identification with the Eternal High Priest. When the Priest says, "This is my Body," or "I absolve you," he is not acting in the place of Jesus Christ, or as a representative of Jesus Christ. Rather, as the Church teaches, the Priest acts, "in the very Person of Jesus Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body." Yes! “The Priesthood is rooted in Christ!”

    Conformity to Christ means that the Priest must be one with Christ and not with the secular world.  He must be an alter Christus, another Christ!  When the people see him, they must see Jesus Christ in His charity, His mercy and forgiveness, His patience, His love, and His purity!  The profound purity of Christ, Our Lord!  Such was the exhortation of Paul to Timothy (see 1Tim 4:12). Such is the expectation of the People of God today.
   
    Throughout the ages, saintly Priests such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas have written of this sacramental, Priestly identity.  Pope Pius XII reaffirmed that it is through the hands of their Priests that the faithful can obtain the medicine of salvation and the forgiveness of their sins. “It is through the Ministry of Priests,” he said, “that we attain to eternal life”   

     From the profundity of His Sacred Heart, Jesus said to His newly ordained Apostles: “You are my friends, if you do what I have commanded you.” Pope Benedict reminded Priests: “The Lord calls us friends, He makes us His friends, He entrusts Himself to us, He entrusts to us His Body in the Eucharist, He entrusts to us His Church.”   

    My dear friends, what a profound privilege it is to be a Priest! Our Lord often calls men who seem to contradict human wisdom.  He beckons ordinary men to do extra-ordinary things.  Do not the scriptures tell us that God chooses the weak to confound the strong? 

    May Mary, the Queen of the Clergy and gloriously assumed into heaven, protect and guide our Priests.  May we Priests of Jesus Christ, perpetuate her Divine Son’s mission of the salvation and the sanctification of souls.