But at the beginning of his priestly career, he has even greater
difficulty, for it comes at a time when he has just thrown off the
restrictions of seminary life, and also when he is reaching the
fulness of his manhood. The world which has been kept from him to a
great extent up to then now seems to open out and smile before him. It
used to be a frequent question to seminarists, "How soon do you hope
to be out?" Now he has come out. He is at once made much of by his new
parishioners, who shower upon him invitations to lunch, dinner,
supper, or other social gatherings. He needs no small self-control to
avoid being carried off his legs at the outset, and being drawn into a
daily life such as he never looked forward to when picturing to
himself the priesthood.
His personal freedom also tends to increase the difficulty of his
state. He has no wife or family to think of, he is alone, and is for
the first time in the enjoyment of outward liberty, for his actual
priestly duties can in the majority of cases be postponed or adjusted
or even omitted to facilitate his recreation. It is very easy for his
boy's outlook on life, which he should have put away before entering
philosophy, to persist in considerable measure not only during his
seminary course, but even after he has begun his career as a priest.
Such an attitude is simply to take anything pleasurable or attractive
which comes in his way, provided it is not sinful, and to enjoy it.
The state of the newly ordained priest in this respect is vividly
depicted by Cardinal Manning:--[1]
"To a priest who enters for the first time upon the sacerdotal life
the first danger is the loss of the supports on which he has so long
been resting in the seminary. As in the launching of a ship, when the
stays are knocked away, it goes down into the water, thenceforward to
depend on its own stability; so a priest going out from the seminary
into the field of his work has thenceforward to depend under God upon
his own stedfastness of will. The order, method and division of time
and of work; the sound of the bell from early morning through the day
till the last toll at night; the example and mutual influence and
friendship of companions in the same sacred life; and still more the
nature, counsel and wise charity of superiors--all these things
sustain the watchfulness and perseverance of ecclesiastical students
until the day when invested with the priesthood, they go out from the
old familiar walls and the door is closed behind them. They are in the
wide world, secular as the Apostles were--that is, in the world for
the world's sake, not of it, but at war with it; of all men the least
secular, unless they become worldly, and the salt lose its savour."
A little later he continues:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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