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Posted April 14, 2004 The PriesthoodMonsignor Luigi GiussaniMonsignor Giussani is an Italian priest and the founder of the ecclesical movement Communion and Liberation. The first time I conducted a meeting of priests, the first one to raise his hand said to me, "What would you recommend to us young priests?" "That you be men!" I said to them. "What do you mean, that we be men?" That you be men! To be a good priest, you must, above all else, be from among men. If you are men, feel in yourself those things that are proper to men, the needs and problems typical of men; live the relationship with all those things which become present and which radiate from the present to you. In the effort to respond to all of this, learn that the truth in all these things is the truth of God which is the fulfillment of the truth of men. Analogously, I respond to you; be human, live the truth of your humanity. Your humanity is not that which you do now; it is what God did in making you to be born in the womb of your mother, when you were little . . . and so now become once again little and simple, and cry because you need to cry, it's natural to cry, or be afraid because the problem is difficult and you feel the disproportion of your own effort. Be human, live your humanity as an aspiration, as a sensibility to problems, as a risk to confront, as a faithfulness to the urges in your soul, to those urges that God created in your soul from its very origin; and in this way according to your appeal -- reality will present itself to your eyes in a new way. |