Dear Father, my name is Alessandro, and I hope this letter finds you well.

I’m writing to ask for clarification on two issues.

First, I’d like to ask you: since the Lord wants to save everyone, he does the good for everyone, he seeks to bring everyone to salvation. Now, when we pray to God, we essentially ask for precisely this: His good for us, that is, His will. So, in this case, what’s the point of praying, given that the Lord would do our good anyway, even if we didn’t pray to Him or if we were misled?

Second, I’d like to ask you: is priestly ordination a right of those who feel a call, or is it a grace conferred by the Church? In other words, can the Church refuse to ordain someone, even if they feel a call? If so, by what authority does it do so? Isn’t vocation the expression of God’s will for a specific person to become a priest?

I know the answer to these questions may be trivial, yet I can’t fully answer them myself.

Thanking you again and asking you to pray for my vocation, I will keep you in my prayers.

Alessandro

The Priest’s answer

Dear Friend,

1. Prayer is not meant to inform God, Who already knows our needs much better than we do.

Rather, it makes Him present and active in our lives.

He becomes present and active only if we open the door to Him. And we open it especially through prayer.

2. For this reason, we must pray tirelessly, as the Lord taught in chapter 18 of the Gospel of St. Luke.

The work the Lord must do in our lives or in the lives of those for whom we pray can last very long because He wants to make us understand that everything He wants to give us is for the sake of our sanctification.

To make us understand this, He needs our cooperation to till the soil of our hearts and minds, thus enabling us to welcome His gifts.

This is what the Liturgy says when teaching us to repeat the invocation “pray for us, Holy Mother of God”: “that we may become worthy of the promises of Christ” (ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi).

If we persist in straying from the path, the Lord can do nothing but continue knocking so that we open the door to Him.

3. St. Thomas Aquinas, with different words, says what I wrote to you: “Divine providence disposes not only what effects shall take place, but also from what causes and in what order these effects shall proceed. Now among other causes human acts are the causes of certain effects. Wherefore it must be that men do certain actions, not that thereby they may change the Divine disposition, but that by those actions they may achieve certain effects according to the order of the Divine disposition: and the same is to be said of natural causes. And so it is with regard to prayer. For we pray not that we may change the Divine disposition, but that we may beseech that which God has disposed to be fulfilled by our prayers, in other words that by asking, men may deserve to receive what Almighty God from eternity has disposed to give, as Gregory says (Dial. i, 8).” (Summa Theologiae, II-II, 83, 2).

4. And shortly after he adds: “our motive in praying is, not that we may change the Divine disposition, but that, by our prayers, we may obtain what God has appointed.” (Ibid., ad 2).

5. Regarding priestly ordination, it is not sufficient for an individual to claim he possesses vocation.

The vocation must be discerned by the person charged with conferring priestly ordination.

It is, in fact, a gift from God given to the Church for the common good.

6. It could also happen that the authority recognizes the presence of a vocation. But the intellectual or moral preparation, that is, the exercise of the virtues, could be judged insufficient.

In this case, ordination is postponed. It could also happen that, due to the individual’s persistent issues, the authority declares the matter closed.

I willingly follow you with my prayer that the Lord may make you ever more steadfast in your calling, of which there are good signs, as seen in previous correspondence.

I bless you,

Father Angelo

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