On the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, June 19, Pope Benedict XVI opens this Jubilee Year by welcoming the Reliquary of the incorrupt heart of St. John Marie Vianney. The Pope asks us to “Please pray for our priests that they might always be faithful to their sacred calling.”
 
St. Francis of Assisi once said, “If I were to meet on the road a priest and an Angel, I would first greet the priest and then the Angel. Why? The priest is the one who gives us Christ in the Eucharist.” The priesthood was instituted by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper. When He said, “Do this in memory of Me,” Jesus gave to the apostles the command and the power to change bread and wine into His Body and Blood.
 
For the Sacrament of Reconciliation, Jesus said to the apostles, “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (John 20:23). Through Jesus, we are reconciled to God and each other. Jesus transforms the violence of the Cross into an act of love for the forgiveness of sins. The ministry of reconciliation is essential in the life of the priest.
 
Priests exist for others. Priests live with the People of God in divine love, in the richness of holy celibacy, in unity with those who suffer and live in many types of poverty. Priests are laborers for the building up of the one Church of Christ. Priests are called to live purposefully and faithfully in communion with the Pope, with the Bishops, with brother priests and with the Faithful. Priests live this communion of love with the unbroken pilgrimage of the Church within the very sinews of the Mystical Body of Christ.
 
Let us journey together with “wide open hearts” so as to inwardly conform ourselves to say, in truth “it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
 
In this Jubilee Year, we will seek together to concentrate on the identity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in communion with the Father and the Holy Spirit, who became man in the virginal womb of Mary. The mission of Christ carries with it the building up of the Church: Behold the Good Shepherd (John 19:1-21) who gives His life for the Church (Ephesians 5:25).