Vatican Catechesis

Priests must be devoted to Prayer:

In a word we can say that, consecrated in the image of Christ, the priest must be a man of prayer like Christ himself.

The Gospel shows Jesus in prayer at every important moment of his mission. His public life, inaugurated at his baptism, began with prayer (Lk 3:21). Even in the more intense periods of teaching the crowds, he reserved long intervals for prayer (cf. Mk 1:35; Lk 5:16). Before choosing the Twelve he spent a night in prayer (cf. Lk 6:12), and he prayed before asking his apostles for a profession of faith (cf. Lk 9:18). He prayed alone on the mountain after the miracle of the loaves (cf. Mt 14:23; Mk 6:46); he prayed before teaching his disciples to pray (cf. Lk 11:1); he prayed before the extraordinary revelation of the transfiguration, having ascended the mountain precisely to pray (cf. Lk 9:28); he prayed before performing some miracles (cf. Jn 11:41-42); he prayed at the Last Supper to entrust his future and that of his Church to the Father (cf. Jn 17). In Gethsemane he offered the Father the sorrowful prayer of his afflicted and almost horrified soul (cf. Mk 15:35-39 and parallel passages), and on the cross he made his last invocations, full of anguish (cf. Mt 27:46), but also of trustful abandon (cf. Lk 23:46). It could be said that Christ's whole mission was animated with prayer, from the beginning of his messianic ministry to the supreme priestly act: the sacrifice of the cross, which was made in prayer.

Those called to share Christ's mission and sacrifice find in his example the incentive to give prayer its rightful place in their lives, as the foundation, root and guarantee of holiness in action. Indeed, we learn from Jesus that a fruitful exercise of the priesthood is impossible without prayer, which protects the presbyter from the danger of neglecting the interior life for the sake of action and from the temptation of so throwing himself into work as to be lost in it.