Page:The Eternal Priesthood (4th ed).djvu/80

68 by thy mind, by thy lips, by thy works, by thy spirit of prayer, by the exhortation of thy words, by the example of all thine actions." When our Lord said, "As My Father hath sent Me, so send I you," He meant that His priests should perpetuate in the world not only His truth and His Holy Sacraments, but His own mind, and likeness, and life. And for this He has given us all the necessary means. He chose and taught and trained and assimilated His Apostles to Himself by direct and immediate action. He chooses, calls, and conforms His priests to Himself now no less than in the beginning, though His action be mediate by the divine tradition, and by the action of His mystical Body edifying itself in charity. Dionysius the Areopagite, whosoever he be, says: "He who speaks of a priest speaks of a man most august, and altogether divine, and most skilled in the whole sacred science," that is, of God. S. Ignatius calls the priest "the culminating point of all goodness among men."

This, then, is an axiom in the law and spirit of the sacerdotal life: that a priest is predestined for the greatest glory of God.