Is there a place where God’s form of life, the style of life of a priest and that of the Church become visible in a sign, in a model? The answer is: Mary...
For a priest, it is especially important to look to Mary. He can learn something from her, which he cannot learn in the same way from anyone else: the pre-eminence of being (of what can be achieved in silent stillness) over action, and of faithfulness to the call over his own projects and ideas. For Mary, in herself, is “nothingness”, the nothingness of love that accepts and welcomes everything. Without losing her way and without distraction she makes herself all things to everyone.
A priest’s place is with her: near the cross of her son, in whom love... abandons itself and hands itself over to us, in order to become, for men and women, the style and content of life, to be become salvation for us.
Klaus Hemmerle
Scelto per gli uomini
Città Nuova, Roma 19952, pp. 213.215