Divine Appeal Reflection - 160
Today, consider in Divine Appeal 160: "My hand will be very severe with those priests who have abused Me and do not believe in My words of Mercy to mankind."
There are words that should make a priest pause before the tabernacle until every illusion of self-importance has fallen away. The priest is not merely a religious professional, a parish administrator, a preacher, or a dispenser of sacred services. Through Holy Orders he is configured to Christ and entrusted with a participation in Christ's own priestly mission (cf. CCC 1536; CCC 1563). The mystery is almost frightening: Christ places His mysteries into human hands. Those hands may baptize a child, absolve a sinner, anoint the dying, bless a marriage, elevate the Host, and pronounce words through which Christ gives Himself to His Church . The priest therefore lives beneath a mystery greater than his personality. St Ephrem the Syrian contemplated the astonishing holiness surrounding the Eucharistic mystery, allowing the wonder of Christ's self-gift to shape his reverence, prayer, and poetic theology (cf. Jn 6:51–58; CCC 1324–1327). St Isaac the Syrian understood spiritual authority through profound humility, compunction, and tears, revealing that genuine pastoral strength flows not from self-importance but from a heart softened before God and compassionate toward human weakness . St John Eudes saw the priesthood as intimately belonging to the Heart of Christ, emphasizing that the priest is called to allow Christ's love, holiness, compassion, and self-offering to become increasingly visible through his own life and ministry . Their spirituality exposes a frightening possibility: a priest can become familiar with what should continually astonish him. He can hold the Eucharist without trembling, enter the confessional without compassion, preach mercy without himself seeking mercy, and speak about Calvary while protecting himself from sacrifice . Yet Christ's severity is not the opposite of His Mercy. Precisely because souls are precious, He takes the shepherd seriously . The closer a priest stands to the Sacred Mysteries, the more urgently those mysteries must penetrate his own soul. The altar cannot remain something external to him. What he offers sacramentally must gradually become the offering of his entire existence—his time, celibacy, obedience, sacrifices, pastoral burdens, joys, wounds, and hidden fidelity . The priest who offers Christ must continually allow Christ to transform the one who offers, so that the Eucharistic sacrifice celebrated at the altar increasingly becomes a Eucharistic pattern of life .
To contemplate abuse of priestly authority mystically is to contemplate what happens when something consecrated for another person's salvation becomes an instrument of self-love. The shepherd receives authority in order to wash feet, not to possess consciences (cf. Jn 13:3–15). Christ's model of authority is not domination but self-emptying . Ezekiel's (cf. Ezek 34:2–10) warning against shepherds who feed themselves rather than the flock becomes painfully relevant whenever ministry becomes a platform for ego, money, sensuality, control, or prestige . A priest may misuse a penitent's trust, manipulate vulnerable people, exploit parish finances, conceal wrongdoing, cultivate admiration, or use spiritual language to protect personal interests . Such acts are not merely administrative failures; they wound the very people whom the priest was ordained to serve. The Church's teaching on the sacrament of Penance is especially sobering: the confessor is a servant of God's forgiveness, must respect the fallen person, love truth, exercise sensitivity, and lead the penitent patiently toward healing . Imagine therefore a wounded woman finally finding courage to enter a confessional after years of shame, only to encounter contempt. Imagine a young man disclosing an addiction while expecting mercy, only to be treated as a nuisance. Imagine a poor family trusting a priest with their resources and discovering that sacred stewardship has become personal enrichment. Imagine a child approaching a priest with innocent trust and that trust being violated. These are not abstractions. They are wounds carried in human bodies and memories. A priest must understand that every vulnerable person placed before him may be someone whom Christ has entrusted to his pastoral heart. St Vincent de Paul discovered Christ in the abandoned. St John Bosco protected vulnerable young people through patient fatherhood. St Giuseppe Moscati, though not a priest, demonstrates how professional authority can become sacrificial service rather than self-exaltation. St Oscar Romero learned to place his authority increasingly at the service of threatened and forgotten people. The priest who truly contemplates Christ crucified cannot comfortably use another human being for himself (cf. Gal 2:20). The crucifix should make exploitation spiritually impossible.
Perhaps the most mysterious danger is not simply abusing people but ceasing to believe that Mercy can transform them. A priest may begin with a burning desire to save souls and eventually become cynical. He hears the same sins repeatedly. He sees marriages collapse, young people abandon the Church, addictions return, families remain divided, and penitents fall again after promising to change. Slowly, without noticing, he can begin to think: This person will never change. That thought is spiritually dangerous because it limits the human possibility according to present appearances rather than God's grace (cf. Mt 19:25–26). The Gospel contradicts such despair everywhere. Saul becomes Paul (cf. Acts 9:1–22). Augustine becomes a bishop and doctor of the Church after years of wandering (cf. 1 Tim 1:12–16). Mary Magdalene (cf. Jn 20:11–18) becomes a witness to the Resurrection . The Samaritan woman (cf. Jn 4:28–30, 39–42) becomes an evangelizing witness in her own community . The thief (cf. Lk 23:39–43) beside Christ receives hope at the final hour . Yet mercy does not mean pretending sin is harmless. Christ forgives precisely because sin is serious . The priest must never become so accustomed to sin that he loses compassion, nor so sentimental about compassion that he ceases to call the sinner toward conversion . A confessor should be firm about sin precisely because he loves the sinner and desires his freedom, healing, and restoration . Mercy does not remove the truth; it leads the sinner through truth toward transformation . When a priest stops believing that grace can resurrect a ruined life, his ministry may continue externally while its mystical fire gradually weakens within. But Christ's power to restore remains greater than human failure .
There is an even deeper mystery: every Mass places the priest beneath the judgment of the mystery he celebrates. At the altar, Christ's self-offering is not merely remembered; the Church sacramentally participates in the one sacrifice of Christ (cf. Lk 22:19–20; Heb 9:11–14; CCC 1362–1367). The priest's hands become instruments through which this mystery is sacramentally made present. Yet the altar silently asks him: Are you willing to become what you place before the Father? (cf. Rom 12:1). St Maximilian Kolbe offers a terrifyingly beautiful image of priestly self-gift: priesthood cannot ultimately be understood apart from the Cross, where the shepherd learns to give himself for others rather than merely perform religious duties (cf. Jn 10:11–15; Jn 15:13; Rom 12:1). St Joseph Cafasso formed priests and accompanied prisoners through a spirituality marked by mercy, sober awareness of judgment, and preparation for eternity, reminding ministers that every soul must be led toward the ultimate encounter with God . St Lorenzo Ruiz, a layman and martyr, reminds the ordained that radical fidelity is not the exclusive possession of priests and religious but belongs to every baptized Christian, each called to remain faithful to Christ whatever the cost . For a priest, however, the altar repeatedly confronts the temptation to separate ministry from personal conversion. He can preach sacrifice while avoiding inconvenience, preach forgiveness while retaining grudges, preach poverty while becoming attached to luxury, preach chastity while secretly cultivating impurity, preach trust while manipulating people for control . This is the terrible possibility of sacramental contradiction. Yet the Eucharist is also the place of restoration. A priest can kneel after a difficult day and bring Christ not a successful image but his exhaustion, temptation, disappointment, loneliness, and failure (cf. Mt 11:28–30). The Church (cf. CCC 1566) explicitly teaches that the Eucharistic mystery is the heart and centre of priestly life and that priestly pastoral charity flows from the Eucharistic sacrifice . The altar therefore does not merely reveal whether the priest is working; it reveals what the priest is becoming. If he remains close to the Eucharistic Christ, his heart can gradually acquire Christ's own dispositions—patience toward the weak, courage toward evil, compassion toward sinners, fidelity amid obscurity, and willingness to spend himself for souls (cf. Phil 2:5–8).
The deepest answer to this warning is not fear of punishment but a priest allowing himself to be possessed by the Heart of the Good Shepherd (cf. Jn 10:11–15). A priest becomes spiritually dangerous when he begins to think, These are my people, my parish, my ministry, my reputation, my success. They are not his. They belong to Christ (cf. 1 Pet 5:2–4). The priest is a servant of mysteries and a shepherd under the authority of the true Shepherd (cf. 1 Cor 4:1; Jn 21:15–17). St John Henry Newman contemplated the priestly life as a hidden participation in Christ’s work, where much of a priest’s deepest fruitfulness is born invisibly through prayer, sacrifice, and faithful union with Our Adorable Jesus (cf. Jn 15:4–5; 1 Cor 4:1). St Clement Mary Hofbauer tirelessly sought souls amid difficult circumstances, refusing to allow pastoral disappointment to extinguish his zeal (cf. Gal 6:9; 2 Tim 4:2). St Luigi Orione carried an extraordinary apostolic love for abandoned and suffering people, revealing that authentic priestly charity naturally moves toward those whom the world overlooks, forgets, or leaves behind . St José de Anchieta spent himself evangelizing and serving in demanding circumstances. St Peter Claver made the dignity of enslaved people a concrete expression of Christian love. These saints reveal a priesthood that moves outward because it has first been consumed inwardly by Christ .
The priest who spends an hour before the tabernacle should eventually become more patient with the difficult parishioners. The priest who celebrates the Passion should become more willing to forgive. The priest who hears confessions should become more merciful toward human weakness. The priest who carries the Eucharist to the sick should become more attentive to those who feel forgotten (cf. Mt 25:35–40). The priest who preaches heaven should live as a pilgrim rather than as a proprietor of earthly status (cf. Phil 3:20). This is where the severe warning becomes an extraordinary invitation: “Let Christ purify the shepherd before the shepherd wounds the flock.” The priest must examine his friendships, use of money, digital habits, treatment of women and children, relationship with authority, prayer life, Eucharistic devotion, handling of power, response to criticism, and willingness to seek help when struggling (cf. 1 Tim 4:16). He must permit trusted brother priests and legitimate superiors to speak truth into his life . He must go to confession not merely because he is required to, but because he too is a sinner desperately dependent upon mercy (cf. 1 Jn 1:8–9). He must remember that his greatest dignity is not that people call him Father, but that he belongs to Christ . The priest's deepest protection is not reputation, intelligence, popularity, or ecclesial position. It is remaining near Jesus. The tabernacle is therefore both sanctuary and tribunal: sanctuary because Christ receives the exhausted shepherd; tribunal because His silent Presence exposes every false motive . And perhaps the most beautiful prayer a priest can make is simply: Jesus, do not let me become an obstacle between You and the souls You died to save. For the priest who genuinely prays this is already allowing Divine Mercy to become severe—not against his person, but against everything within him that refuses to become like Christ . The Church (cf. CCC 1565–1566) teaches that the priestly ministry exists for the salvation of others and that its strength flows from the Eucharistic sacrifice . The priest who lives this mystery does not merely administer mercy; slowly, painfully, sacrificially, he becomes its human witness.
Prayer
O Adorable Jesus, look upon Your priests with merciful severity. Strip away every hidden ambition, impurity, pride, hardness, and misuse of authority . Give them the tears of Your Heart, the courage of Your Cross, and the tenderness of Your Mercy . Before they shepherd Your flock, teach them to kneel before You, remain little, and serve with humble, sacrificial love . Amen.
Sr. Anna Ali of the Most Holy Eucharist, intercede for us.
