Priest of Christ, giver of the divine graces that God has deposited in His Church, the sole word that can bring to men the Word of Life Incarnate…. Priest of Christ, friend, confidant of the uncreated God, who has been entrusted with the mission to continue the work for which the Word of Life became flesh, “so that, knowing God under visible forms, we could be attracted by Him to the love of the Invisible….” A mission that Christ has entrusted to you, as the prolongation of His very own mission in His Church. Since, on coming to sing us the infinite perfections, on espousing the Church, He made Her so rich, that, uniting Her to Himself, filled Her in full measure with His very happiness and gave Her His mission for Her to prolong it, which is why this Holy Mother remains now in a state of victimhood due to the tragedy of Her Bridegroom; and you are, inside Her, the one who has to prolong and communicate His life, mission and tragedy for all ages.

Priests of Christ, through whom the High Priest, at the time of His bloody Sacrifice, when He had to give the greatest proof of love for the Father and through the Father for His brethren, says: Father, so that everyone can know You and be filled with love for You, and may enter into Your bosom and live the divine life, which You and I, Father, aflame in the Holy Spirit, want to communicate to all our children, and so that all may live this life sharing and possessing by grace what we possess by nature, “I sanctify myself for them,” for those who have to communicate it by means of their participation in You and in Me in the Holy Spirit, I offer myself as victim, as an oblation, since they are the chosen means for the plan of the Incarnation to be fulfilled.

“They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.” I came out from You and now I return to You. “That where I am, O Father, they may be;” “That they may be sanctified in the Truth.” Father, I now go to You and the ones you have given me stay behind now like sheep amongst wolves. I ask you, Father, “guard them as the apple of your eye; and in the shadow of your wings protect them, ” because the evil one does not slumber and is more astute than the children of Light. “I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to protect them from evil.”

“Do not touch my anointed; do no harm to prophets…!” Already in the Old Testament, in relation to that priesthood that was an image and figure of the priesthood of Christ, God asked for that respect and veneration that is due to the priest, to the anointed person, to him who has been predestined and consecrated solely for the Sacred and for the service of the Sacred. Yet, those priests offered sacrifices that were a very imperfect image of the unbloody sacrifice that now the priest of the New Testament offers partaking of the priesthood of Christ!

If God willed for that priesthood to be so very much respected that He Himself respected it in the person of Aaron when together with Mary they spoke against Moses, punishing Mary with leprosy and doing no harm to Aaron, in virtue of his priesthood, what will God do regarding the priesthood of the New Testament?

How many times, by reducing everything to the natural, we don’t see in the priest of Christ his awe-inspiring dignity, lowering it down to our own condition! What would it become of humanity if priesthood did not exist, without the celebration of the Mass, without this Holy Sacrifice through which unceasingly all honour and glory is given to the One Trinity, or without sacraments, without Jesus in the Eucharist in our tabernacles…!“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit….” “This is my Body.” “Do this in memory of me….” “Receive the Holy Spirit, whatever sins you will forgive will be forgiven….” Sublime powers that are only reserved to the Eternal Priest, Christ Jesus, and which He, lovingly pouring Himself out through the Holy Spirit, deposits in His Church, embellishing and beautifying Her by means of the sacraments, the fruitful water springs through which divine grace is poured over mankind.

O priest of Christ, I venerate you for your priesthood! What would become of our souls without priests and, therefore, without sacraments?

Let us see in the priest his divine dignity and not his human frailty, since the latter remains covered by the vestments of his royal priesthood and by the union of the priest with the Word.

The Word Incarnate is the only Priest and all other priests partake of His priesthood.

Let us venerate and respect the priest of Christ, the one anointed with the divine anointing, and let us see in him the spiritual father who gives us the divine nourishment by which –filling our souls from the sources of the sacraments, which he alone has the power to administer– we become God’s children and heirs of His glory.

“Do not touch my anointed,” the Lord says in the Old Testament. And, in the New Testament, Jesus, the divine Word and the manifestation of God’s will, because He is the very Word Incarnate, says: “Whatever you do to one of these, you do it to me;” “He who welcomes you, welcomes me, he who rejects you, rejects me, and rejects my Father who is in Heaven.”

Jesus also says: “The Father and I are one.” And he who sees Jesus sees the Father: “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father, because the Father and I are one.”

And the priest of Christ is “another Christ” on earth, and when we see him, we have to always see the Lord’s anointed, Christ Himself; because, in so doing, we will also see the Father, and “we will be brought to perfection as one .”

Both, not only the Old but also the New Testament, are full of God’s predilections for the priests.

In the Gospel we proceed to see how Jesus, the manifestation of God’s heart, the expression of the Father’s will, lovingly pours Himself out over His priests.

When Caiphas, the High Priest, asks Jesus in the name of God to tell him whether He was the Son of the only God, Jesus, who until then had been silent, respectfully responds, because Caiphas was the High Priest, Jesus’ representative, and because he asked in the Name of the Father: “You have said it; I am a king.”O, Jesus, my Good Shepherd, my only Priest: “Lamb led to the slaughter without opening his mouth!” grant me to feel in your soul the loving and paternal heart-beats towards those who are your other You, and may I see in them my Good Shepherd who has to carry me to the flock of the Father’s bosom. And give me the only nourishment which they have to offer inside the bosom of the Church, that is Your infinite life.

If we knew what the priests mean to the heart of Christ, how great would our love and veneration be when speaking about them and how much therefore would we respect them…! Because if Caiphas, who was a figure and a representation of that Eternal Priest to whom he commanded on behalf of God, as Pontiff, to tell him who He was; if he was responded with such humility by Christ Himself, the Son of the living God, what a greater respect should we show to the priest of the New Testament, in whom Christ, by pouring himself out through the Holy Spirit, has deposited all the infinite treasures of eternal life that He, as God, wants to communicate to us…!

The saints, who lived in the truth, having attained in their purity of soul to penetrate and intuit the most sublime reality of priesthood, have left for us some memories that are truly sublime.

On a certain occasion, a holy soul said to have experienced real desires to worship the priest of Christ and to go after him kissing wherever he walked, dazzled by the sublime dignity of God’s representative, because, in the light of the Holy Spirit, that saintly soul had understood the almost infinite greatness of the priest of the New Testament.

Enlightened by the selfsame Spirit of God a holy king said that, if during the course of his life he were ever to find a priest who, due to human weakness was sinning, he would take off his royal cloak to cover the priest, so that upon seeing that priest anyone might think that it was the king himself who was sinning, and thus the good fame of the priest could remain unblemished.

This is to be of one mind with Jesus, to live from the spiritual realities, to be of one heart with Christ. Do we, the Christians of today, do as the saints of yesterday did and as the saints of today do, knowing that whatever we do to His priests, we do to Jesus…? Let us not be like those persons who, playing the devil’s game, spread or unveil all the defects that, due to human weakness, these ones commit!

Sacred Scripture says that “the righteous person falls seven times.” And if “the righteous falls seven times” and all mortal creatures are exposed to fall, who are we to judge anyone, and less even him who is the direct representative of the most High God Himself?

“Do not judge and you will not be judged.” All that we say about the priest of Christ or the defects we discover about him underestimates and undermines our own religion and our own being Church, because the treasure of the Church is enclosed within the sacraments that the priest of Christ has to administer. Yet how many times in your life, instead of helping him with your prayer and sacrifice, you harm him because you let yourself be dragged by human criteria…!

The greatest triumph of the devil is when a priest, due to his weakness, fails and commits faults, falling sometimes even into sin. Take care of their reputation and of their souls partaking thus of the feelings of God’s heart. Venerate and respect the priest of Christ, the one of your parish church, of your town, the one who guides your soul. To the extent that you live of Jesus, you will recognize Him in the priest, and, don’t you know that prudence is the virtue that rules over the other virtues and that without prudence all the others are thrown into disorder?

My daughters, when in your life there will be space only to love God, you will then see, as a fruit of this, that your love for the priesthood is identical to your love for God and, then and only then, you will be able to approach and address them with confidence, without fear of harming any priest. Because then the heartbeats that you feel in your heart for him will be like an echo of the heartbeats of Christ, which demand from you holiness and self-sacrifice for them. Yes, only when God and His glory will fill your souls completely and there will be no space left in you for anything else…!

The priest of Christ is another Christ on earth, the good shepherd and the good father who has to be ready to lay down his life for his sheep. And he will attain this more easily if you and I help him through our life of prayer. Because, even though he is the one anointed and consecrated to the service of the Sacred, and his dignity is immense, almost infinite, not because of that it is less contained in a fragile vessel of clay. And we, all of us Christians, have to cooperate and help so that this vessel breaks not lest we waste all the divine life that through him God wants to communicate to us. A sacred vessel that can be desecrated by anything…!If we knew of the highest dignity of the priest of Christ, we would penetrate into these words of Holy Scripture by which God Himself tells us about how we are to act in regard to him: “Do not touch my anointed, do no harm to my prophets!”
If we knew the dignity of the priesthood of the New Testament through which the Word of Life Himself gives Himself to us in Holy Communion…

The priest is the father of souls, and only as such should one look at him.

My daughter, in your thoughts, in your words, he has to be present only when you remember God or for you to come closer to God, since if because of you any priest were to be harmed, you would be called to such a severe account of yourself on the day of judgement, and it would be very difficult for you to be saved from the hands of the Eternal Priest who chose them to be those who perpetuate Him, and loves them more than the apple of His eyes.

Priest of Christ, I venerate you! It doesn’t matter if you are more or less perfect due to your human weakness. I venerate you because I see in you God’s delight in fullness that has been totally emptied out on you, choosing you to be an extender of His Word Incarnate, preacher of His divine life, messenger of His Infinite Love.I venerate you, priest of Christ, because I see in your royal head the priestly anointing with which the Word of Life was anointed; because you are the one who has been called, the chosen one and he who has been predestined ever since all Eternity to give me the possession of the very happiness of God the Almighty.

I will virginally cover, as a priestly mother, all the imperfections that your weakness causes you to commit, praying God that they may fall on me to expiate in my bosom in the Church the purification that these imperfections deserve, abandoning myself into the hands of the Priest who is Love to be used according to His will. And, torn apart with my Christ, Priest and Victim, with my Word Incarnate, with my divine Bridegroom, within my soul of a priestly mother, I say in my unbloody or bloody sacrifice: My God, so that You may be known in Your intimate life, in Your eternal being, in Your loving fatherhood, in Your most simple infinity, “for them,” like Christ, “I sanctify myself,” and thus, being of one heart with your same priestly love, I cry out with You through the Holy Spirit: “Do not touch my anointed, do no harm to my prophets!”

Mother Trinidad de la Santa Madre Iglesia