Assistants

The service of the assistants is essential with respect to formation. Quoting Paul VI (1975), we can say that they are called to be ‘proper, humble, generous priests, who know how to bring to maturity the gifts of the Spirit with their vigilant presence, their prayer, their sacrifice, their enthusiasm’.

CATHOLIC ACTION AND HOLY PRIESTS
Assistants and CA promoters for being Church together
Exhibition produced on the occasion of the International Symposium promoted by the Pius XI Ac School of Holiness Foundation on the theme “Pedagogy of Holiness. A universal challenge for the lay faithful’ held in Rome from 5 to 9 February 2020

“I do not cease to give thanks for you” (Eph 1:16).

Dear Brothers priest,

I thank you for your fidelity to the commitments you have made.

Thank you for the joy with which you have offered your lives.

Thank you for working to strengthen the bonds of fraternity and friendship with your brother priests and your bishop, providing one another with support.

Thank you for your witness of persistence and patient endurance in pastoral ministry.

Thank you for celebrating the Eucharist each day and for being merciful shepherds in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Thank you for anointing and fervently proclaiming to all, “in season and out of season” (cf. 2 Tim 4:2) the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Thank you for the times when, with great emotion, you embraced sinners, healed wounds, let us give thanks for the holiness of the faithful People of God, whom we are called to shepherd and through whom the Lord also shepherds and cares for us. He blesses us with the gift of contemplating that faithful People (…) Let us be grateful for each of them, and in their witness find support and encouragement. “For his mercy endures forever”.

Pope Francis
Letter to priests on the 160th anniversary of the death of the Holy Curé of Ars
On 4 August 2019