Under gårsdagens audiens tok pave Benedikt opp «presteåret» som nettopp er starta. Her sa han bl.a.:
The objective of this Year for Priests, as I wrote in the letter sent to priests for this occasion, is to support that struggle of every priest «toward spiritual perfection, on which the effectiveness of his ministry primarily depends.» It is to help priests first of all — and with them all of God’s people — to rediscover and reinvigorate their awareness of the extraordinary and indispensable gift of grace that the ordained ministry is for he who receives it, for the whole Church, and for the world, which would be lost without the real presence of Christ. …
Alter Christus, the priest is profoundly united to the Word of the Father, who in incarnating himself, has taken the form of a slave, has made himself a slave (cf. Philippians 2:5-11). The priest is a slave of Christ in the sense that his existence, ontologically configured to Christ, takes on an essentially relational character: He is in Christ, through Christ, and with Christ at the service of man. Precisely because he belongs to Christ, the priest is radically at the service of all people: He is the minister of their salvation, of their happiness, of their authentic liberation — maturing, in this progressive taking up of the will of Christ, in prayer, in this «remaining heart to heart» with him. This is therefore the essential condition of all proclamation, which implies participation in the sacramental offering of the Eucharist and docile obedience to the Church.