My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.

ON THE MYSTERION (SACRAMENT) OF PRIESTHOOD (Part II)
By Saint John Chrysostomos

Again, if a king confers on one of his subjects the right to imprison and release again at will, that man is the envy and admiration of all. But although the priest has received from God an authority as much greater than that, as heaven is more precious than earth and souls than bodies, some people think he has received so slight an honor that they can imagine someone entrusted with it actually despising the gift. God save us from such madness! For it is patently mad to despise this Great Office without which we cannot attain to salvation or God's good promises.

For if a man "cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven except he be born again of water and the spirit," (John 3-5) and if he that eateth not the Lord's Flesh and drinketh not His Blood is cast out of everlasting life (cf. John 6:53), and all these things can happen through no other agency except their sacred hands (the priests', I mean), how can anyone, without their help, escape the fire of Gehenna or win his appointed crown? They are the ones--they and no others--who are in charge of spiritual travail and responsible for the birth that comes through baptism. Through them, we put on Christ and are united with the Son of God and become limbs obedient to that blessed Head. So they should properly be not only more feared than rulers and kings, but more honored even than the fathers. For our fathers begot us "of blood and the will of the flesh"; but they (the priests) are responsible for our birth from God, that blessed second birth, our true emancipation, the adoption according to grace.

The priests of the Jews had the authority to cure the leprosy of the body, or rather, not to cure it, but only to certify the cure. And you know what rivalry there used to e for the priesthood then. But our priests have received authority not over leprosy of the body but over uncleanness of the soul, and not just to certify its cure, but actually to cure it. So people who look down on them are far more execrable than Dathan and his company and deserve more punishment. For although they claimed an office which did not belong to them, at least they had a marvelous opinion of it, as they showed by wanting it so much. But the people we are considering have done just the opposite at a time when the priesthood has been so embellished and enhanced. Their presumption, therefore, is far greater. In the assessment of contempt, there is no comparison between coveting an honor that does not belong to you and making light of it. Between one and the other, there is all the difference between admiration and disdain.

But, to return to the topic from which I digressed, God has given greater power to priests than to natural parents, not only for punishment, but also for help. The differences between the two are as great as between the parents and the future life. Parents bring us into this life; priests into the life to come. Parents cannot avert bodily death nor drive away the onset of disease: priests have often saved the soul that is sick and at the point of death, by making the punishment milder for some, and preventing others from ever incurring it, not only through instruction and warning, but also through helping them by prayer. They have authority to remit sins, not only when they make us regenerate, but afterwards too, "is any among you sick? Let him call for the presbyters (elders) of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him" (John 5:14-15). Again natural parents cannot help their sons if they fall foul of the prominent and powerful, but priests have often appeased the anger of God himself, to say nothing of rulers and kings.

Will anyone still dare to accuse me of arrogance after this? I think that after what I have said, such reverence must fill the minds of my hearers that they can no longer accuse of conceit and presumption those who avoid this honor, but only those who seek it of their own accord and are determined to get it for themselves. (Source: Saint John Chrysostom On the Priesthood)

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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things! - Saint John Chrysostomos

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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry)
The sinner and unworthy servant of God

+Father George