Noise

Just underneath the title of my blog, I have a passage from 1 Kings 19 that was nice to come back to after a very noisy political season. This election cycle was much like the "... strong and heavy wind ..." in which the Lord is not. The crushing earthquake of politics has passed, for the time being, and the "tiny whispering sound" of the Lord can be heard. The noise of the political season was very distracting to my discernment, but I hardly realized it at the time. Now that the wind, and earthquakes and fires have passed by, I realize how noisy it all was. And now, the tiny whispers return in the silence ... and here is an example of a whisper that came to me today, and is most worthy of contemplation. This, from Saint John Vianney:

What is a priest! A man who holds the place of God - a man who is invested with all the powers of God. 'Go,' said Our Lord to the priest; 'as My Father sent Me, I send you. All power has been given Me in Heaven and on earth. Go then, teach all nations. He who listens to you, listens to Me; he who despises you despises Me.' When the priest remits sins, he does not say, 'God pardons you'; he says, 'I absolve you.' At the Consecration, he does not say, 'This is the Body of Our Lord;' he says, 'This is My Body.' If we had not the Sacrament of Orders, we should not have Our Lord. Who placed Him there, in that tabernacle? It was the priest. Who was it that received your soul, on its entrance into life? The priest. Who nourishes it, to give it strength to make its pilgrimage? The priest. Who will prepare it to appear before God, by washing that soul, for the last time, in the blood of Jesus Christ? The priest - always the priest. And if that soul comes to the point of death, who will raise it up, who will restore it to calmness and peace? Again the priest. You cannot recall one single blessing from God without finding, side by side with this recollection, the image of the priest.

h/t to Fr. Check, via Brad.