I have found in explaining my conversion that nothing irritates people like the priesthood. The priest is usually a person’s first direct exposure to Church hierarchy, and let’s face it, authority just rubs us all the wrong way when it doesn’t conform to what we think or want.

Institutional priesthood is God’s idea.

Welcome Todd, Kandy, Mandi, and Maribeth, Bible Study Evangelista's newest friends of the show! Thank you for loving and lifting me :)

LOVE the Word™ is a Bible study method based on Mary's own practice: lectio without the Latin.

L - Listen (Receive the Word.)

O - Observe (Choose one or more of the following personality approaches to connect the passage to your life and recent events.)

F | Franciscan - Write a note of thanks and appreciation to your parish priest.

I | Ignatian - Imagine you are present by the Sea of Galilee as Jesus chooses fishermen Peter, James, and John to follow Him. Use all your senses to imagine you are there. How do you feel when He chooses you, too?

A | Augustinian - Did anything about today's show help you appreciate your priest and the priests you know, more? Did anything convict you about how you view and talk about your priest?

T | Thomistic - Use the prayer in the E - Entrust step, below, to list by name the priests that come to mind as you read and pray.

V - Verbalize (Pray about your thoughts and emotions.)

Remembering that He loves you and that you are in His presence, talk to God about the particulars of your O - Observe step. You may want to write your reflections in your LOVE the Word journal. Or get a free journal page and guide in the right-hand margin.

E - Entrust (May it be done to me according to your word!)
The Daily Prayer For Priests by St. Therese of the Child Jesus
 
O Jesus, I pray for your faithful and fervent priests; for your unfaithful and tepid priests; for your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields; for your tempted priests; for your lonely and desolate priests; for your young priests; for your dying priests; for the souls of your priests in Purgatory. But above all, I recommend to you the priests dearest to me: the priest who baptized me; the priests who absolved me from my sins; the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion; the priests who taught and instructed me; all the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way (especially …).
 
O Jesus, keep them all close to your heart, and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity.  + Amen.

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*LOVE the Word™ exercises are offered according to FIAT: the four personalities, or "prayer forms," explored in Prayer and Temperament, by Chester Michael and Marie Norrisey: Franciscan, Ignatian, Augustinian, and Thomistic: FIAT! These prayer forms correspond to the Myers-Briggs personality types.
Notes and References
The institutional priesthood: “The priest’s office shall be theirs by perpetual statute. Thus you shall ordain them” (Ex. 29:9).

The lay priesthood: Ex 19:3-6, 3 And Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him out of the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel… 6 …you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

1 Peter 2:5-9, And like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

Numbers 16:1-11, the people rebel against the institutional priesthood,