Letter 4 of Saint-Cyran

The short-lived preparations that last for only a time are not of any great importance before God for no matter what and especially for the priesthood which is the most holy state in religion. Since it is eternal and unchangeable, it ought to be established in a stable and permanent disposition which may not be measured by time but passes all the way into eternity. This disposition does not consist of a few good works or in a few religious and saintly exercises but in a stable state of virtue printed on the bottom of the soul which partakes of its immortality and is more inward than all the actions and all the movements that it could possibly produce. This is a matter that cannot be explained to men and that cannot be conceived except by divine light alone. The virtue of a priest ought to be solid and invariable and so engraved in his heart that it is for him as though natural and produces all its movements and all its desires according to God almost without him thinking about them. Acquiring this virtue is the true preparation for the priesthood and it can be called essential since it is sufficient in and by itself. It is not dependent on some short period of time or even on a period of years but on the whole life of a man who cannot reach this state without extraordinary grace from God and after a long exercise of Christian and Evangelical virtues. One particular disposition for the priesthood may be acquired by asking God in prayers and by actions for true humility. It does not consist of visible humbling but in the invisible renunciation of one’s will and one’s spirit to depend completely on the spirit and will of God. It is the disposition by which Jesus Christ entered into his glorious priesthood. He offered divinely to his father in heaven the same host that he offered him in a human manner on the cross. For he was raised up to this state only because he humiliated himself, obeying his father by his humiliation having come into the world to do his father’s will and not his own. He gave up his own will to follow the will of his father up to death and since this humiliation, this obedience, this dispossession of his own will and of his own spirit was the way by which he was raised to the glory of his priesthood, it should not seem astonishing that it is the way by which men can also participate in the priesthood.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

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