The Priest at Prayer for July 6: Priestly Chastity

The Third Part - Vices and Virtues

Priestly Chastity

First Meditation - Motives

I. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the Church permits the chalice of the Blood of Christ only to priests, because, among other reasons, She considers them purer than the general body of the faithful: ad haben­dum vas congruum hujus Sanguinis contentivum. (Opusc. 58, c. xxix)

As wine is served in cleaner and choicer vessels than those used for bread, so also the priest is granted the Precious Blood under the Species of wine because he is the vessel of the Lord consecrated to divine wor­ship and bound to God by the vow of chastity, and burnished brighter than other men by the beauty and purity of a more virtuous life.

God grant that the Church may always find in me the fulfilment of Her intention and desire! A terrible contrast it would be if the purity and infinite wealth of the Blood of Christ - vinum germinans virgines - ­were poured into a heart made a sink, day by day, year after year, of lewd iniquity. So let me keep my ears open to St. Paul's grave admonition:

"Each of you must learn to control his own body, as something holy and held in honour, not yielding to the promptings of passion." (Thess. xv, 4)

II. It is well to stress this idea. I am a vessel consecrated to God; a temple, a tabernacle set apart for the sole purpose of containing God, by His grace, by the ful­filment of His law, and by my daily dealings with the Blessed Sacrament. On the frontispiece of this temple rather than on the fanes of ancient paganism should be sculptured the motto: Deo sacrum.

I am a monstrance and a chalice of the Holy Eucharist. Every day for a number of years, and, I hope, until the end of my life, I have been the Tabernacle of the Most Holy Body and Blood of my Lord Jesus Christ. Lips, tongue, hands, and my whole body are sanctified by contact with the Sacramental Species, more so than the corporals and the chalice: I am, so to speak, the earthly vesture now of the Word made flesh.

Hence, to stain myself with the repulsive vice of impurity would be tantamount to assigning the sacred vessels, my body and soul, to profane and unworthy uses, in imitation of the sacrilegious King of Babylon; and so horrible a crime, I fear, would suffice to make God's Patience yield to His infinite Wrath, and once again would appear the writing on the wall above my sinful head: Mane, Thekel, Phares.

III. If we have any esteem at all for the inheritance Christ has promised us, for the souls He treasured and redeemed at such a price, for the vineyard He planted with so much sweat and toil, let us priests be chaste. For it is one of the sad lessons of history in every age of the Church that the vice which has wrenched the greatest number of souls, communities, and nations from Christ's Fold is the sensuality of His evil ministers.

Of this particular vice we might say in the words of the Vulgate Psalter: singularis ferus depastus est eam. (Ps. lxxix, 14) A terrible curse afflicts those individuals and nations who stand witness to the long-continued sexual laxity of the altar's ministers, of the dispensers of the divine word and mysteries.

No morals, however pure; no faith, however deep-rooted, but will eventually succumb to the infernal force of such an evil example. Impiety and vice will build up a stronghold of im­pregnable defense from the sexual laxity of the clergy; this is Hell's infallible boast.

Am I, O Jesus, on the black list of those priests whom Thou, century after century, canst point to with a finger of scorn and flay with the devastating rebuke:

Ignominia domus Domini!
Abominatio desolationis in templo sancto! ?

Resolution
I shall often repeat the meditations on the Holy Sacrifice and Blessed Sacrament and the Sacrilegious Mass contained in earlier pages of this book, as an incentive to keep myself chaste and pure, at least out of reverence for such sublime mysteries.
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Adapted from The Priest at Prayer
by Fr. Eugenio Escribano, C.M. (© 1954)
Translated by B.T. Buckley, C.M.

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Please pray for our priests and pray for vocations to the priesthood!