Baptismal Duty #1

1. Be a Priest.

Not a ministerial priest but a royal priest! Sounds much more drastic but really, we are all sharers in Christ's priesthood. The role of a priest is to connect people to God and I would suggest the best way we can do that is through prayer and sacrifice.

- Prayer!

When was the last we actually prayed for others ? The phrases " keep each other in prayer", "I'll pray for you", have become for some, if not all of us, a mere(yet very Catholic) replacement of "see you again" right after we say “goodbye” to others. "Goodbye, let's pray for each other" Do we really mean it when we say it?

Now, the power of prayer is a whole other topic to jump right into but the fact is this, prayer is universally acknowledged by Catholics and yet, fundamentally ignored. In essence, prayer can reach out where our own words and actions can't. Prayer can give effect to our words and works, in fact. Time to start praying for others to turn to God in order to fulfill our duties as royal priests.

- Sacrifice

To share in His High priesthood means we are to celebrate actively every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Therefore, it’s due time we start tuning in more and more at every Mass. To better appreciate the Holy Mass, we have numerous works available for relatively-cheap prices (compared to all the other books y'all buy) by the likes of Scott Hahn, Fr. Ignatius Huan and in fact, there are many more available for free! The more given of us, the more is expected of us. We live in the age of information, we have no excuse but to inform ourselves of the Mass and its rich beauty so that we can worship better. Time to make some sacrifices in our bid to learn more about the Mass and grow deeper in our experience of Heaven on Earth. In fact, this component of sacrifice brings the previous one of prayer to the highest level possible for the Mass is the highest form of worship – Heaven on Earth.