Today we contemplate that Holy Orders —in its three grades of bishop, priest and deacon— is the Sacrament that enables a man to exercise the ministry which the Lord Jesus entrusted to the Apostles, to shepherd his flock, in the power of his Spirit and according to his Heart. It is useless if it is not done with love. The ministers who are chosen and consecrated for this service extend Jesus’ presence in time, if they do so by the power of the Holy Spirit, in God’s name and with love.

Those who are ordained are placed at the head of the community. They are “at the head”, yes, but for Jesus this means placing ones authority at the service [of the community], as Jesus himself taught his disciples. Through Holy Orders the minister dedicates himself entirely to his community and loves it with all his heart: it is his family. The bishop and the priest love the Church in their own community, they love it as Christ loves the Church.

—A priest who is not at the service of his community fails to perform his duty!

Today, while the Apostles “discuss”, Jesus offers himself. In the history of mankind we can really find a distinction between those who have “paid less” for their freedom (wrongfully using others) and those who have “paid more” for their freedom (patiently serving others). God, infinitely free in Himself, has indeed paid very much for the freedom of all the humanity.

A man who understands freedom as doing just as he pleases, lives in a lie, then according to his own nature man is part of a reciprocity, his freedom is something he must share with the others. Behind the ambition of being entirely free, without a “from where” and a “for”, there is not a hidden image of God but an idolatrous image.

- In His essence, the true God is entirely a “Being-for” (the Father), “Being-from” (the Son) and “Being-with” (the Holy Spirit). Now, man is precisely image and likeness of God because the fundamental anthropological structure consists in the “from”, the “with” and the “for”.