Jesuit Says A Priest Is An Artist Masterpiece A Faithfully Reproduction Of Jesus Christ

A Worldly Priest Compromises the Success of His Ministry.

By Fr. Pierre Millet, S.J.

St. Gregory the Great, writing of the prophet Samuel, says : "Raro videbatur in civitate, videlicet tarde veniens et cito recedens. He wishes the priest to follow the same rule : Raro sit in piiblico frequcns in secreto, ut qni tar dins aspicitur, devotius revcreatur. Ea est mens Jnunana, says St. Maximus of Tyre, lit qucz ex posit a sunt, minor is faciat; qua; abstrusa, veJicmentcr admiretur."

St. Peter Damian compares ecclesiastics to a picture. A picture is admired, he says, provided it is not brought too close to the eye. When looked at from a distance the objects seem so faithfully reproduced that it is difficult to distinguish the copy from the original ; while if the picture is brought too close the illusion vanishes. Instead of those delicate shadings which so charm the beholder, you see only a mass of color laid thick on the canvas, outlines formed by heavy strokes of the brush and figures without grace or beauty. The same thing happens in the case of priests. They are esteemed and venerated when they are seen at a distance engaged in the duties of their holy office. They are then regarded as the representatives of Jesus Christ, and the faithful dispensers of His mysteries and graces.

These high ideals are destroyed by habitual intercourse and familiarity, and priests are no longer regarded as heavenly messengers and angels of the New Covenant; they are looked upon as are other men, subject to the same weaknesses and liable to the same human maladies.The aversion which laymen have for a priest who makes himself too common, passes insensibly from his person to his ministry. The sacred word which he preaches and the sacraments which he administers produce little effect in souls, because sermons when not backed up by example are as a rule sterile, and because a physician of the soul, who is himself afflicted, is not the proper person to heal another stricken with the same malady.

What will be the thoughts of men of the world who see a priest at a club or other place of amusement, as worldly, as dissipated, as exuberant as an ordinary layman, and who then sees the same man in the Church, saying Mass at the Altar, absolving penitents in the confessional, preaching the word of God from the pulpit and discharging the august functions of his calling after the manner of any public official in the world?

Have they not reason to be scandalized? Is it any wonder that they should say: Our priests do not believe what they preach; if they did, would they lead such lives as they do?

Link (here) A Worldly Priest Compromises the Success of His Ministry (pg 136)contained in the book by Fr. Pierre Millet, S.J. entitled Jesus Living In the Priest