What's the best part of being a priest?

I was at lunch with two young laymen today and one of them asked me this question. Of course my initial reaction was to say that the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the highlight of my day. And so it is. But from the point of view of personal satisfaction, i suppose you'd call it, I had to say that hearing confessions is both the most challenging and rewarding part of my ministry.

I have had the privilege of really encountering Jesus christ through the ministry of a priest in the confessional and from that liberating experience my passion for the priesthood arose. I have often said that my call to the priesthood was, in a sense, born in the confessional. I so wanted others to experience the liberty and joy I had been granted in this great sacrament.

Of course it is only one of many things that make the priesthood so fulfilling for me - though of course there are days when things aren't always easy.

Still, Cross and all, I love being a priest!

Pope Pius XI on the Priesthood

The following is a quotation from Pope Pius XI called Ad Catholicii Sacerdotii. It is an Encyclical Letter on the Catholic Priesthood:

#21. What a comfort to the guilty, when, stung with remorse and repenting of his sins, he hears the word of the priest who says to him in God's name: "I absolve thee from thy sins!" These words fall, it is true, from the lips of one who, in his turn, must needs beg the same absolution from another priest. This does not debase the merciful gift; but makes it, rather, appear greater; since beyond the weak creature is seen more clearly the hand of God through whose power is wrought this wonder. As an illustrious layman has written, treating with rare competence of spiritual things: ". . . when a priest, groaning in spirit at his own unworthiness and at the loftiness of his office, places his consecrated hands upon our heads; when, humiliated at finding himself the dispenser of the Blood of the Covenant; each time amazed as he pronounces the words that give life; when a sinner has absolved a sinner; we, who rise from our knees before him, feel we have done nothing debasing. . . We have been at the feet of a man who represented Jesus Christ, . . . we have been there to receive the dignity of free men and of sons of God."

#22. These august powers are conferred upon the priest in a special Sacrament designed to this end: they are not merely passing or temporary in the priest, but are stable and perpetual, united as they are with the indelible character imprinted on his soul whereby he becomes "a priest forever"; whereby he becomes like unto Him in whose eternal priesthood he has been made a sharer. Even the most lamentable downfall, which, through human frailty, is possible to a priest, can never blot out from his soul the priestly character. But along with this character and these powers, the priest through the Sacrament of Orders receives new and special grace with special helps. Thereby, if only he will loyally further, by his free and personal cooperation, the divinely powerful action of the grace itself, he will be able worthily to fulfill all the duties, however arduous, of his lofty calling. He will not be overborne, but will be able to bear the tremendous responsibilities inherent to his priestly duty; responsibilities which have made fearful even the stoutest champions of the Christian priesthood, men like St. John Chrysostom, St. Ambose, St. Gregory the Great, St. Charles and many others.