St. Bernardine of Sienna has written: “Holy Virgin excuse me, for I speak not against thee: the Lord has raised the priesthood above thee. The saint nassigns the reason of the superpriority of the priesthood over Mary; she conceived Jesus Christ only once; but by consecrating the Eucharist, the priest, as it were, conceives him as often as he wishes, so that if the person of the Redeemer had not as yet been in the world, the priest, by pronouncing the words of consecration, would produce this great person of a Man-God. “O wonderful dignity of the priests,” cries out St. Augustine, “in their hands, as in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, the Son of God becomes incarnate.
Hence, if a priest is not holy, he is in great dager of being lost. They say the Office and Mass, and do nothing more they live without making mental prayer, without mortification, without recollection. Some will say, It is enough for me to be saved. “No”, says St. Augustine, “it is not enough; if you say that it is enough, you will be lost.”