For us laypeople, Holy Week is a glorious time of great excitement. I look forward to it every year. For our priests who make it all happen, it is also glorious and exciting, but their ability to enjoy it as such is limited. Multi-hour Confessions almost daily, new members of the Church, and preparing for festivities and special liturgies, while beautiful privileges they cherish, also form a very heavy, stressful, and sometimes agonizing cross. These consecrated men of God truly lay down their lives for the sheep. I spend every Holy Week in prayer and fasting for them, and find my own Holy Week experience nourished as a result. Out of love, gratitude, compassion, and reverence for their holy gift of self for us, let us relieve them as much as possible through prayer and sacrifice.
For a collection of prayers for priests, see here: http://www.cureprayergroup.org/devotions.htm
Amo Iesu by Grace Pax 
Great post. Sadly, the lack of vocations for the priesthood are the very reason so many Priests today, find Holy Week difficult.
I live in a rural part of the Central Plains states, and there was a time when every little town had a Catholic Priest and Church for its citizens. Alter servers were abundant for any Sunday or Holy Day of the week.
Fast forward to today: now only one Priest for every four or five towns, and some Churches now closed and cemeteries discarded and dilapidated. Alter servers almost absent and membership only 1/4 of what it once was.
The children of many of the old Catholic families never had children of their own, or stopped being Catholic.
I will share in your prayers for our Priests.
God Bless
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Very true. Our Cathedral has a Holy Hour for vocations every First Friday and I’ve started putting together a special prayer effort for this intention. Thank you for your prayers!
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Reblogged this on servantstochristsservants and commented:
Please pray!
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Reblogged this on amoiesu.
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