Priestly Vocation Quotes

A married vicar is likely to regard his vocation as a job - a tough and ill-paid one, to be sure - but a priest is seen as a pillar of the community, answerable only to his parishioners and his God, rather than to a wife and children.

The priest is not made. He must be born a priest; must inherit his office. I refer to the new birth-the birth of water and the Spirit. Thus all Christians must became priests, children of God and co-heirs with Christ the Most High Priest.

I have always hoped that it might be possible to conclude my ministry as I had begun it, as a parish priest, and this I believe to be the call of God.

Support your priests with your love and prayers, that they may always be shepherds after Christ’s heart

Celibacy is not a matter of compulsion. Someone is accepted as a priest only when he does it of his own accord.

We have so many priests who have gone half way … it’s sad that they did not manage to go the whole way; they have something of the employee in them, something of the bureaucrat in them and this is not good for the Church. Please be careful you don’t fall into this! You are becoming pastors in the image of Jesus, the good pastor. Your aim is to resemble him and act on behalf of him amidst his flock, letting his sheep graze.

I grew up very Catholic. I wanted to be a priest.

But a priest's life is not supposed to be well-rounded; it is supposed to be one-pointed - a compass, not a weathercock.

Priesthood is forever and does not cease when a priest cannot carry out that priestly ministry.

A Catholic understanding of priesthood is so strongly rooted in the historic actions of Jesus and in all their antecedents in the place of sacrifice in life. And those things... they are rooted to the role of the man.

Today is my anniversary of ordination to the priesthood. Please pray for me and all priests.

This is precisely the reason for the dissatisfaction of some, who end up sad - sad priests - in some sense becoming collectors of antiques or novelties, instead of being shepherds living with 'the odor of the sheep.' This I ask you: Be shepherds, with the 'odor of the sheep,' make it real, as shepherds among your flock, fishers of men.