Pope Leo’s Renewed Call to Priestly Holiness

Called to Holiness; Called to be Saints

This is a very simple reflection on holiness, a topic given renewed attention by Pope Leo in recent months. The whole Christian life is a “quest for holiness.”¹ Sacred Scripture insists on this: “Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev 19:1). In Christ, the same call to holiness is a call to perfection centered on the Father: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48). This is our highest calling: holiness. For priests, this is a special charge.

At priestly ordination, the priest is given a specific gift of the Holy Spirit. What is that gift? It is the “Spirit of Holiness.” I think this is remarkable! The particular gift of the Holy Spirit in the priesthood is “the Spirit of Holiness.” That’s our call. That’s our life. The ordination Prayer of Consecration from the Roman Pontifical goes: “Grant, we pray, almighty Father, to this your servant the dignity of the priesthood; renew deep within him the Spirit of Holiness . . .”

In his brief papacy so far, Pope Leo XIV has placed new emphasis on holiness as the way of life for the baptized, but especially for the ministerial priest. It’s a theme he takes up repeatedly. To young people at World Youth Day in Rome (August 3, 2025) he appealed: “Aspire to great things, to holiness, wherever you are. Do not settle for less.” This call is the springboard for our reflection on holiness, especially priestly holiness. In making this appeal, the Holy Father outlines practices we already have as part of our daily life: the Sacred Liturgy; confession; adoration; prayer; charity, fraternity, pastoral outreach, etc. These practices foster holiness. They are also the practices of the young Saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis. We don’t need to do more things, but rather, to enter more fully into the practices already in place, into what the Lord places before us — to do regular things with greater love.

Pope Leo mentions how Saints Pier Giorgio and Carlo Acutis “cultivated their love for God and for their brothers and sisters through simple acts, available to everyone: daily Mass, prayer, and especially Eucharistic Adoration.” These acts are transformative. Encouraging Eucharistic adoration, St. Carlo Acutis would say: “In front of the sun, you get a tan. In front of the Eucharist, you become a saint!” And again: “Sadness is looking at yourself; happiness is looking at God. Conversion is nothing more than shifting your gaze from below to above.” At the end of his homily for the canonization of the two young saints, Pope Leo said: “Saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis are an invitation to all of us . . . not to squander our lives, but to direct them upwards and make them masterpieces. They encourage us with their words: ‘Not I, but God,’ as Carlo used to say.” This, the pope said, “is the simple but winning formula of their holiness.” “Not I, but God.” The “I” with the line through it is in fact the Cross, as Dr. Peter Kreeft would observe. In the saint, there is no self-love as we ordinarily understand that term.

Holiness, Our First Call

Holiness is our first call. Teaching the annual course on “Eucharist and Holy Orders,” I was often struck by a passage in Pope Saint Paul VI’s document Inter insigniores, On the Question of Admitting Women to the Ministerial Priesthood (1976). There, Pope Paul makes the point that whoever we are and whatever our calling, our first call is to holiness, our first vocation is to be a saint. Each has his or her role in the Church. There is no room for jealously or jostling for superiority, for “the only better gift, which can and must be desired, is love (1 Cor 12–13). The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are not the ministers but the saints.”

The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are the saints. This prompts the question for us: Do I want to be a saint? This may be the most important question of my life because it changes how I live. “Where your treasure is, there too is your heart” (Matt 6:21). If I don’t want to be a saint, then I won’t try, I won’t strive for holiness.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux wrote in her autobiography, “I always wanted to be a saint.” Fr. Willie Doyle, an Irish Jesuit born the same year as St. Thérèse (1873), was a heroic army chaplain who gave his life in the First World War, administering the last sacraments on the battlefield. He said that he wanted “to give all and to refuse nothing.” He wrote in his journal as a young priest: “The desire to be a saint has been growing in my heart . . . God has given me this desire; He will not refuse the grace, if only I am faithful.” He made the resolution that changes a life, that is, “to refuse God nothing.”² That’s one of the secrets of the saints. The Cistercian monk Dom Eugene Boylan would sometimes ask retreatants: “Would you like to make progress in the spiritual life? If so, then decide to refuse God nothing for six months and see how that changes your life.” To refuse God nothing. It will change your life. It will change you. Fr. Boylan’s view was that if you did it for six months you would never go back.

The decision to refuse God nothing is a tough one, but it follows from the decision to become a saint. One of our spiritual directors has the practice of asking his directees to write out the words, “I want to be a saint,” placing this at the back of their room door. It’s amazing how God uses these words, this desire. Write out those words, “I want to be a saint,” and put them somewhere where you will see them often, perhaps in your breviary. It is a concrete practice and a good reminder. What made this practice concrete for me was wandering into an empty room over the summer months some years ago and seeing these words placed discreetly on the back of a door. The man who lived in that room for six years, now a priest, wrote out the words, placed them there, and forgot to take them with him. What was clear was that this man tried to live those words; I think he was one of the most charitable people in the seminary. “I want to be a saint”: it makes a difference.

What does it mean to be a saint? It means growing into God’s will. I strive to want what He wants, to love what He loves, and to give what He asks — most of all, I try to give myself entirely back to Him. In this way, nothing of my life is lost or wasted. In his homily for the canonization of Saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis, Pope Leo reflected that the way to ensure nothing in my life is wasted is, like Solomon, to ask God for His wisdom to know His plans. Only in this way do we find our place in God’s plan. Only in this way are we fulfilled. This means taking risks for God. But what is the greatest risk? Pope Leo observes that “the greatest risk in life is to waste it outside of God’s plan.”³ The Pope continues: The Lord “calls us to abandon ourselves without hesitation to the adventure that He offers us, with the intelligence and strength that come from His Spirit.” We will receive “to the extent that we empty ourselves of the things and ideas to which we are attached, in order to listen to His word.”⁴ This is classic ascetic spirituality: denying ourselves to be filled with God.

Pope Leo gives the example of Saint Francis of Assisi who renounced everything to follow the Lord in holiness.

Coming to his senses, he (Francis of Assisi) asked God a simple question: “Lord, what do you want me to do?” (Legend of the Three Companions, cap. II: Fonti Francescane, 1401). From there, he changed his life and began to write a different story: the wonderful story of holiness that we all know, stripping himself of everything to follow the Lord (cf. Lk 14:33).

The pope recalls other saints, too, noting that “for them, it all began when . . . they said ‘yes’ to God and gave themselves to Him completely, keeping nothing for themselves.” Saint Augustine writes that, in the “tortuous and tangled knot” of his life, “a voice deep within him said: ‘I want you’ (Confessions, II, 10,18). God gave him a new direction, a new path, a new reason, in which nothing of his life was lost.”⁵

It’s important to remember that holiness is not an impossible aspiration because, when God places a desire for something good in our hearts, He always fulfills that desire. If He is our heart’s desire, then we will be saints. The power of grace is unstoppable when God is given full scope to act in our lives.

Fr. Willie Doyle, the Jesuit priest who died heroically in the First World War, was utterly courageous. It was the love of Christ and the desire for holiness that drove him. Yet, in his seminary days, Fr. Doyle was sent home. A fire broke out in the novitiate and, as a result, he had some kind of nervous breakdown. He seemed cowardly. Years later, however, Fr. Willie Doyle is acknowledged as one of the bravest army chaplains ever to serve. See what God’s grace can do in us if we let Him act and fill us. But Fr. Willie Doyle started with small sacrifices, like not putting butter on his toast or sugar in his coffee. In his journals, we see how he wrestled with these small but transforming sacrifices.  All those countless, small sacrifices made him into a priest ready to make big sacrifices, one who would give everything. As he ministered to others in the war, he was blown to bits. No trace of him was found. He became a total offering to the Lord. He had always prayed for the gift of martyrdom, to be able to make the ultimate sacrifice for God. That was his heart’s desire — to give everything to God. His path to priestly holiness was the classic one of serious prayer, quiet sacrifice, and generous, joyful service — a path open to all of us.

Friendship With Jesus

“Not I, but God.” We saw this as the simple formula of holiness. It involves self-emptying and stripping away of all that is not of God. Most of all, it is friendship with Christ. Pope Leo says to priests: “Jesus . . . calls you first and foremost to an experience of friendship with Him . . .” “If there is anything clear in the Gospels it is . . . that Jesus Christ first and foremost desires our friendship. . . . [T]his friendship of Jesus Christ is the very secret of the Saints.”⁶ Friendship with Jesus is the secret of the saints who sketch for us the contours of holiness. They make holiness attractive because we can see it in lives that are transformed. And of this friendship with Jesus, Pope Leo tells seminarians “never to be ashamed to tell others, with all due discretion and respect, about your friendship with Him. He asks that you dare to tell others how good and beautiful it is that you found Him.”⁷ From this springs authentic and fruitful evangelization.

Loving with the Heart of Jesus

Closely linked to friendship with Jesus is attention to the heart, the place where this friendship grows. The heart is “where God makes His voice heard and where all the most profound decisions are made.” To seminarians, the pope says: “As Christ loved with the heart of man, you are called to love with the heart of Christ.”⁸ This entails having the “smell of the Gospel,” a phrase Pope Leo uses as a parallel, I believe, to the famous “smell of the sheep” phrase used by Pope Francis. Pope Leo says, “The heart must be continuously converted so that one’s whole being smells of the Gospel.”⁹ How does this happen? It happens by immersing ourselves in the Gospel to learn Christ as we take on His sentiments. It happens through prayer. It happens by giving ourselves to Him unreservedly. It happens by facing the truth about ourselves and allowing Him to change us. This is difficult at times, but not complicated.

Often, we complicate things. In one of his first ordination ceremonies as Leo XIV, the new pope called us back to basic, priestly spirituality — a simple program.

What I have to say is simple . . . [the pope says]. Love God and your brothers and sisters, and give yourselves to them generously. Be fervent in your celebration of the sacraments, in prayer, especially in adoration before the Eucharist, and in your ministry. Keep close to your flock, give freely of your time and energy to everyone, without reserve and without partiality, as the pierced side of the crucified Jesus and the example of the saints teach us to do.¹⁰

See what Pope Leo does here! Priestly ministry and holiness flow only from the pierced heart of Christ Crucified, from the Blood and Water poured out from His side for the life of the world. It is from that source, from His Sacred Heart, that the saints drink and live anew.

Priest-Saints: Heart Speaking to Heart

Here, Pope Leo reminds us also of the intercession and example of the saints, especially, priest-saints. Remember, this is what we desire to be: priests, yes, but saints first, and saints because we strive to be good priests: “I want to be a priest” implies that “I want to be a saint.” Pope Leo asks us to look to the wonderful examples of priestly holiness in the long history of the Church.

Cherish this treasure: learn their stories, study their lives and work, imitate their virtues, be inspired by their zeal, and invoke their intercession often and insistently! All too often, today’s world offers models of success and prestige that are dubious and short-lived. Don’t let yourselves be taken in by them! Look rather to the solid example and apostolic fruitfulness, frequently hidden and unassuming, of those who, with faith and dedication, have spent their lives in service of the Lord and their brothers and sisters. Keep their memory alive by your own example of fidelity.¹¹

We should be friends with the friends of Jesus, the saints. A priest should have a priest-saint as intercessor. Often, they pick us and attract us.

Saints are not ready-made. We saw that with the saintly Fr. Willie Doyle. Saint Vincent de Paul is a great example. In his first parish, he didn’t know what to do. He wrote: “To my own embarrassment . . . I had no idea how to proceed . . .” Earlier in his life, he went through the horrors of doubt, temptation, darkness, and anger. St. Vincent changed from someone on the lookout for a better parish to a much deeper living of the priesthood. This change was influenced by other remarkable priests, especially Saint Francis de Sales. So impressed was Vincent by Francis de Sales that he said: “I came to see in him the man who best embodied for me the Son of God on earth.”¹² This captures who the priest is meant to be, that is, an extension of Christ. Through our priesthood, Christ still serves His Father and still washes the feet of His people. In St. Francis de Sales, St. Vincent saw the priest as a living image of Jesus Christ.

It was from St. Francis de Sales that Cardinal Newman took his motto describing the soul in communion with God as “heart speaking to heart” (Cor ad cor loquitur). The human heart is healed and restored only in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It was in the Eucharist that Cardinal Newman encountered the living heart of Jesus. The Heart of Jesus, the consuming fire of divine charity, is the origin, the burning bush of our vocation.¹³ From this fount of grace, our transformation comes. Only because He speaks first to our hearts are we able to speak and move the hearts of others. No wonder, then, that Pope Leo reminds priests and seminarians that just as Christ took on a human heart, we must take on the heart of Christ.¹⁴

Contemplatives in Action

It is from being close to Christ’s heart that we become contemplatives in action. Pope Leo asks priests to “preserve together mysticism and social commitment, contemplation and action, silence and proclamation.”¹⁵ Mysticism, contemplation, and silence: these are expected of the diocesan priest and from these flow social commitment, action, and proclamation. Pope Francis expressed this same dynamic in terms of “adoration and service.”

This adoration of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus is key because, Pope Leo remarks, the Father’s plan is “to make Christ the heart of the world. . .”¹⁶ That’s our pastoral plan. Our priestly ministry is about making Christ the heart of the world, the life of the world. I can do this because He is, first of all, the center of my world and the heart of my life as I seek holiness.

Is God Enough?

Pope Leo reminds us that we are not defined by our weakness but by the power of Christ in us. To priests, he says: “Only in the Heart of Jesus do we discover our authentic humanity as children of God . . . Do not be daunted by your personal frailty: the Lord does not look for perfect priests, but for humble hearts that are open to conversion and prepared to love others as He himself loved us.”¹⁷ Our strength and hope is the Heart of Jesus, not our own fickle and sometimes self-deceptive hearts. Pope Leo assures us, “We are not perfect, but we are friends of Christ, brothers and sisters among ourselves, and children of His tender Mother Mary, and this is enough for us.”¹⁸ Here, an important question arises, one that helps us form the desire for holiness: is God enough for me? Theoretically and theologically, we know God is enough for us, but often we are attracted and unsettled by other things.

If God is satisfied with Himself (from eternity), why can’t I be satisfied with God? Why does God not seem enough for me at times? Why am I dissatisfied, even when God gives Himself entirely to me and holds nothing back? It’s like when St. Augustine says to God: “you were within me, but I was outside” — taken by the things of the world. “You were with me, but I was not with you.”¹⁹ Sometimes in prayer we hear Him say to us, especially perhaps as priests seeking results, “Am I not enough for you?” Only in prayer do we come to realize that He is enough for us, that He is everything, that our peace lies in Him, and our will rests only in His will. “My God and my All” as Saint Francis of Assisi would exclaim.

Conclusion: Pope Leo Encourages Classic Priestly Spirituality

What Pope Leo proposes to us is classic priestly spirituality. The priest is called to total consecration. He is called to the deepest forms of prayer and contemplation, to continual conversion, and to the heights of sanctity. He is called to perfection, nothing less. He is sanctified, especially through his pastoral charity, that is, by exercising his priestly ministry faithfully and generously. When we sincerely strive to do God’s will and serve His people, God can give us in an instant what would have taken us many months or years to receive or cultivate on our own terms and in our own way.

Holiness is close friendship with Jesus: “I call you friends . . .” (John 15:15). Holiness is letting His faithful love triumph in us. Pope Leo, following the Church’s classic priestly spirituality, is telling us: go back to Christ; go back to the Tabernacle; go back to the Heart of Jesus; go back to the Gospel; go to Mary; go to the saints; go into the secret places of your heart where we meet God, face what’s there without self-deception, and let Christ shape your heart after the pattern of His own Heart. Go back to basics. Go back to the feet of Jesus like His disciples. Cultivate that friendship with Jesus, the most important of your life.

But then, having spent time with Him, go out and serve, for, as the Holy Father reminds us, mercy is the “purest fruit” of contemplation.²⁰ Indeed, love for the poor ones, whatever the poverty, is a path to holiness. They reveal the “the very heart of Christ . . .  which every saint seeks to imitate.”²¹ Be with the Lord and then be with His people. Have the smell of the sheep, but first, have the smell of the Gospel. Without the smell of the Gospel, that is, the heart and mind of Christ, we are of little value to the Lord’s flock.

The priesthood is an immense privilege, even in hard times. No wonder the Pope appeals to us: “Aspire to holiness.” Even the holiest monk will insist that “they have hardly begun to work on their conversion. Still, we get a faint idea of holiness, of what it means to see God when, now and again, we catch a glimpse of transformed lives.”²² We perceive holiness in lives that are changed. We see this in the saints or we glimpse it in others — but also in ourselves, looking back, if we let the Lord do in us what He desires.

Saint Teresa of Avila wanted to cry out and tell people “not to be content with just a little” — not to settle for less.²³ Who wants to live in mediocrity or compromise or lukewarmness? Life is too precious and too brief! Pope Leo makes the same appeal to us: “Aspire to holiness . . . do not settle for less.” Less will never satisfy the Lord. Less will never satisfy us.