O my God, pour out in abundance Thy spirit of sacrifice upon Thy priests. It is both their glory and their duty to become victims, to be burnt up for souls, to live without ordinary joys, to be often the objects of distrust, injustice, and persecution.

The words they say every day at the altar, “This is my Body, this is my Blood,” grant them to apply to themselves: “I am no longer myself, I am Jesus, Jesus crucified. I am, like the bread and wine, a substance no longer itself, but by consecration another.”

O my God, I burn with desire for the sanctification of Thy priests. I wish all the priestly hands which touch Thee were hands whose touch is gentle and pleasing to Thee, that all the mouths uttering such sublime words at the altar should never descend to speaking trivialities.

Let priests in all their person stay at the level of their lofty functions, let every man find them simple and great, like the Holy Eucharist, accessible to all yet above the rest of men. O my God, grant them to carry with them from the Mass of today, a thirst for the Mass of tomorrow, and grant them, ladened themselves with gifts, to share these abundantly with their fellow men. Amen.

COMMENT: April 11 is the feast of St Gemma Galgani, who died on this day in 1903 at the age of 25. 

Gemma was a simple Italian lay woman who was born 5 years after Fr Willie. She was unable to join a convent, so she lived a simple and modest life in the world. She was also the recipient of numerous mystical gifts, though of course these themselves are not the reason for her canonisation. 

The quote above comes from a prayer for priests commonly credited to Fr Willie. He was deeply concerned about priests – he wrote two hugely successful booklets on the priesthood and religious life; he assisted many men (and women) in finding their vocations; he developed very innovative fundraising schemes to help young men pay for their seminary formation; he was the Director General for Ireland of the League for Priestly Sanctity. Furthermore, he offered many of his severe penances in reparation for the sins of priests. This message of priestly sanctity is always timely, but perhaps never more so than in Ireland at this time.

St Gemma herself also felt that Jesus was calling her to prayer for priests, and she regularly offered her own sufferings for them. St Gemma once felt that Jesus was saying the following to her:

I have need of a great expiation specially for the sins and sacrileges by which ministers of the sanctuary are offending me.

Let us all therefore pray for our priests, and support them at this difficult time. And let us also remember that all of us are called to holiness in whatever state of life was are in!

Fr Willie was an early devotee of St Gemma’s. Her biography was first published in English in 1913 (just 4 years before his death) and we are told that he would sometimes pick a page at random at use it as inspiration for his prayer. In his archival papers there is a newspaper clipping with a photograph of Gemma, presumably cut out by Fr Willie himself.