Hebrews 2.10-18; Psalm 39; Matthew 26.36-42
Pope Benedict XVI designated the year from the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart in 2009 to the same solemnity in 2010 as a Year for Priests, “meant to deepen the commitment of all priests to interior renewal for the sake of a stronger and more incisive witness to the Gospel in today’s world.” This new feast, added to the calendar of the Catholic Church in England and Wales in 2018, offers an opportunity for the whole Church to pray for her priests to grow into the image of Our Lord, the Eternal High Priest. [Hebrews 2.17]
“As Mediator between God and human beings, fulfilling his Father’s will, he sacrificed himself once on the altar of the Cross as a saving Victim for the whole world. …[W]ith a brother’s kindness he chose, from among the children of Adam, men to augment the priesthood, so that, from the sacrifice continually renewed in the Church, streams of divine power might flow, whereby a new heaven and a new earth might be made, and throughout the whole universe there would be perfected what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the human heart.”