I remember...
"Much preparation and many prerequisites are involved in the selection of priests and bishops for that great office. The Apostle exhorts: "If a man is blameless" (Tit.1,6), let him be appointed priest or bishop. He also recommends that such a person should not be "a novice" (1Tim.3,6), not a novice because he must have previous spiritual experience and thus have been baptised to that great office, he must have purified himself, as we shall see later, and only then may he proceed to ordination.
Indeed St. John Chrysostom writes that a priest has to have more attentiveness and spiritual strength even than the hermits themselves. For if the hermits, who are freed from "the city, the market place and its people", are not secure in the spirit, how much more strength and vigour needs to be exercised by the priest in order to be able to "snatch his soul away from all infection and keep its spiritual beauty inviolate". That is why he affirms that the clergy who live in the world need even more purity than the monks."
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, the sinner!
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Post Edited (One Love) : 11/10/2011 8:39:12 AM (GMT-6)