” “"Even if the priest tries to live his services as an ascesis and his sacramental action as a personal encounter with Christ wrote the Pope he will need, however, some pause for breath, so that this inner guidance can actually become real". According to Benedict XVI, "one cannot commit oneself unstintingly without discipline and the steady recovery of a real, trustful inner life". The effectiveness of the pastoral action "ultimately depends on prayer; otherwise, the service becomes empty activism". So, "the time of the immediate encounter with God in prayer can rightly be qualified as the pre-eminent pastoral priority: it is the breath of the soul, without which the priest cannot help but remain ‘out of breath’, out of the ‘oxygen’ of optimism that he needs to let himself be sent, day after day, as a labourer in the harvest of the Lord".” “
