A Prayer for Priests

A member of our parish pastoral council shared this prayer at our last meeting:

Almighty God,
look upon the face of Him
who is the eternal High Priest,
and have compassion on your priests in today's world.
Remember that they are but weak and frail human beings.
Stir up in them the grace of their vocation.
Keep them close to you
lest the enemy prevail against them,
so that they may never do anything
in the slightest degree unworthy of their sublime vocation.

O Jesus,
we pray for your faithful and fervent priests,
for the unfaithful and tepid ones,
for those laboring at home
and abroad in distant fields;
for those who are tempted;
for those who are lonely and desolate;
for those who are in purgatory.

But, above all, we recommend to you
the priests dearest to us:
the priest who baptized us;
the priests who absolved us from our sins;
the priests who instructed us
or helped us by their encouragement.
We pray devoutly for all the priests
to whom we are indebted in any other way,
in particular for N. and N.

O Jesus,
keep them all close to our hearts
and bless them abundantly in time and eternity.
Amen.