To Save Souls and to Pray for Priests
Preceding her Profession of Vows, St. Thérèse of Lisieux recalled why she came to Carmel: “I came to save souls and especially to pray for priests” (Story of Soul A, 69v).
Before entering Carmel, I was a Catholic missionary on college campuses. I experienced firsthand the insatiable thirst of Jesus for the hearts of His children, and I could see in the eyes of even those walking down the street a soul that longed deep down for an authentic Love only Jesus can give, though most were unaware of it. Hence when I read Story of a Soul for the first time, I resonated with Thérèse’s desire and resolution to save souls in Carmel; but it was only after I entered the monastery when the second part of Thérèse’s resolution, that desire to pray for priests, came alive in me.
Thérèse says a little earlier in the same Manuscript of her autobiography:
“If holy priests, whom Jesus in His Gospel calls the ‘salt of the earth,’ show in their conduct their extreme need for prayers, what is to be said of those who are tepid? Didn’t Jesus say too: ‘If the salt loses its savor, wherewith will it be salted?’ How beautiful is the vocation, O Mother, which has as its aim the preservation of the salt destined for souls! This is Carmel’s vocation since the sole purpose of our prayers and sacrifices is to be the apostle of the apostles. We are to pray for them while they are preaching to souls through their words and especially their example.” (Story of a Soul A, 56r)
With the heart of a missionary still burning within me, I was given the grace to realize that from my little hidden cloister I can help save even more souls when I focus my prayers and sacrifices on the priests of our Church. Together as one Body, we can do more good for souls if we support and encourage our own members, especially the heads and shepherds in the persons of our priests, than if we were all just focused on our own outward evangelistic efforts. By offering up fervent prayers for our priests, we can work to build up the Body of Christ in a powerful way (cf Eph 4:12). Saving souls and praying for priests go hand in hand.
Priests are charged with guarding and feeding our Church. Like salt, they preserve and give flavor, preserving the faith handed down to us through sound doctrine and giving us the ‘flavor’ of God’s love through the holy Sacraments. The more that we fall in love with God’s giving of Himself through the Sacraments (especially the most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist that tells me that He desires me and is so madly in love with me that He wants to be consumed and made One with me every single day), then the more we should fall in love with the ministry of the priesthood which hands over to us these sacred gifts from Heaven.
As St. Thérèse points out to us, our priests have an extreme need for our prayers. While they preserve the Church, they also need to be preserved by the protection of our prayers. And we must remember that every prayer and sacrifice is fruitful in God’s hands. Every prayer opens up a grace. Every prayer can open up a grace for a beloved priest of Jesus Christ.
Our priests labor tirelessly in the vineyard for the good of souls. Some priests suffer from exhaustion in their labors, many from loneliness. They battle temptations just like the rest of us, and some in human weakness fall and are in even more need of our loving prayers that beg for God’s mercy. There are priests who have just been newly ordained, priests who are retired, priests who have died and whose souls are in need of our prayers too.
For decades, our Carmel has had the tradition of having a Holy Hour to pray for priests and priestly vocations on the first Sunday of every month to meet this need and encourage the faithful to do so with us in our Chapel. The priests are the apostles of our Church, and we (you and us) want to become the apostles to those blessed apostles by supporting them through our loving and devoted prayers.
So we humbly ask with our sister Thérèse: Can you join us for a Holy Hour to preserve the salt of the earth and to be the apostle to the apostles? Join us in our Carmelite vocation “to save souls and most especially to pray for priests,” and let us together build up the Body of Christ!
Sr. Talitha of the Trinity, O.C.D.