Thank Your Priest this Father's Day

“The priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus. When you see a priest, think of our Lord Jesus Christ.” - St. John Vianney

How often do most of us thank our good and faithful priests; for their prayers, the Sacraments, and ultimately their sacrifice? Not often enough. It is important that we take the time to truly let our priests know that we care about them, and that we appreciate all that they do for us. We can show them through our actions and our words how appreciative we are for them caring for our souls. 

It is the priest, who by the power of the Holy Spirit at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, can change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. Without being able to consume the Flesh and the Blood of Christ, we would be wandering in the desert without this precious gift of eternal life; the true Bread from Heaven. The Eucharist is the "source and summit" of the Christian life, and it is the Eucharist that gives us the spiritual nourishment to carry on in our everyday lives in this world. Without the priest there is no Eucharist, and without the Eucharist there is no Church.

There is a poem that I love, written by an anonymous author, called "The Beautiful Hands of a Priest," and it truly captivates the essence of the ministerial priesthood and illustrates how priceless of a vocation it is to the faithful:

We need them in life’s early morning,
We need them again at its close;
We feel their warm clasp of true friendship,
We seek it while tasting life’s woes.

When we come to this world we are sinful,
The greatest as well as the least.
And the hands that make us pure as angels
Are the beautiful hands of a priest.

At the altar each day we behold them,
And the hands of a king on his throne
Are not equal to them in their greatness
Their dignity stands alone.

For there in the stillness of morning
Ere the sun has emerged from the east,
There God rests between the pure fingers
Of the beautiful hands of a priest.

When we are tempted and wander
To pathways of shame and of sin
‘Tis the hand of a priest that absolve us.
Not once but again and again.

And when we are taking life’s partner
Other hands may prepare us a feast
But the hands that will bless and unite us,
Are the beautiful hands of a priest.

God bless them and keep them all holy,
For the Host which their fingers caress,
What can a poor sinner do better
Than to ask Him who chose them to bless

When the death dews on our lids are falling,
May our courage and strength be increased
By seeing raised o’er us in blessing
The beautiful hands of a priest.

We should be grateful and appreciative for the gift of spiritual fatherhood that our priests offer to us, and to remember, especially on this Father's Day, to thank our priests for their dedicated service to God and to His Church.