The prefect and secretary of the Dicastery for the Clergy issued a message to priests, deacons, and seminarians for Holy Thursday.
Cardinal Lazarus You Heung-sik and Archbishop Carlo Redaelli began by thanking priests:
First of all, we wish to say to you: thank you! Thank you for your daily fidelity, often silent and hidden. Thank you for your “yes,” renewed each day, even amid hardships, loneliness and misunderstandings. Thank you because, through your ministry, Christ continues to draw near to His people, to heal, to forgive and to nourish them.
The prelates then reflected on sacrifice and service.
“Sacrifice, in its deepest truth, is not first of all renunciation, but gift: it is offering one’s life so that it may be wholly oriented to the love of God and of our brothers and sisters,” they wrote. “We are called to live as men given over, consecrated, who find in the Eucharist the source and summit of our existence. It is at the altar that we allow ourselves to be conformed to Christ, receiving the strength to accompany, to forgive and to console.”