Lima, Peru, Mar 25, 2008 / 13:02 pm
Bishop Kay Schmalhausen of Ayaviri in southern Peru said this week that the Church needs priests who are willingly obedient and have an intense spiritual life.
During the Chrism Mass of Holy Week, the bishop reminded priests that their lives “should be oriented toward replicating the supreme model who is Jesus Christ. A priest does not live for himself, nor has he been consecrated to do his own will.”
Bishop Schmalhausen said obedience is a primary characteristic of the priestly life and that only by embracing it “will we be will authentically free, our ministry fruitful for the Kingdom and our priestly life happy and truly complete.”
He warned that “it is not surprising that today’s world, subjected to secularism and to what has been called a civilization under threat is not only incapable of assuming this loving and sacrificial logic of obedience, but also frankly rebels against it and sees obedience as a synonym for oppression.”