MINISTRY, NOT PROFESSION

Our will has accepted TO exercise "the priestly ministry", not other "professions"! Above all else we are called to be priests always and, as the Saints reminded us, iin every circumstance, exercising with our very being that ministry to which we have been called. One does not merely act as a priest: one is a priest!

Let us renew, my dear brothers, in this Year for Priests, the deep feeling by which we awake each morning conscious of who we are, who the Lord has willed that we be in the Church: for Him; for His people; for our own eternal salvation!

(Mauro Piacenza, Secretary of the Congregation for the Clergy)