We offer thanksgiving and pray for our priests, daily. And we gladly celebrate their nameday.

In your charity, please offer a prayer for Fr. Evaristus Eshiowu on this feast of his patron.

He is a fierce priest of tradition who instructs the faithful with great charity. He is a lover of souls and does all he can to admonish us sinners, help us prepare for what is to come, and raise us up so we can vigorously pursue our true home.

Pope Saint Evaristus, ora pro nobis.

“Thou art the first Pontiff to whom the Church was entrusted after the departure of all those who had seen the Lord. The world could then say in all strictness: ‘If we have known Christ according to the flesh, now we know Him so no longer.’

The Church was now more truly an exile; at that period, which was not without perils and anxieties, her Spouse gave to thee the charge of teaching her to pursue alone her path of faith and hope and love. And thou didst not betray the confidence of our Lord.

Earth owes thee, on this account, a special gratitude, O Evaristus; and a special reward is doubtless thine.

Watch still over Rome and the Church.

Teach us that we must be ready not only to fast here on earth, but to be resigned to the absence of the Bridegroom when He hides Himself; and not the less to serve Him and love Him with our whole heart and mind and soul and strength, as long as the world endures, and He is pleased to leave us therein.”

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