The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Young Priest's Keepsake, by Michael Phelan

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Title: The Young Priest's Keepsake

Author: Michael Phelan

Release Date: July 19, 2005 [EBook #16330]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG PRIEST'S KEEPSAKE ***

Produced by Angela

THE YOUNG PRIEST'S KEEPSAKE

By MICHAEL J. PHELAN, S.J.

Second Edition.

DUBLIN
M. H. GILL AND SON, LTD.
AND WATERFORD
1909

1st. Edition MAY, 1909.
2nd. -- Enlarged, NOV., 1909.

PREFACE

This little book is written in the hope that it may assist young
priests and ecclesiastical students to meet the demands which the
life before them has in store.

Works specially suited to the priest, the layman and the nun are
happily abundant; but to the young man standing on the threshold
of his career as a priest, how few are addressed. Yet it is while
his character is in the formative stage, and his weapons are
still in the shaping, that advice and direction are of most
practical value.

The writer brings to his task only one qualification on which he
can rely--his own personal experience.

After having gone through a long course of preparation in Irish
ecclesiastical colleges, he lived for nearly thirteen years on
the Australian mission, and is now completing a decade spent in
giving missions and retreats in all parts of Ireland. Of the
college, therefore, and of the foreign and home missions he can
speak with whatever authority a long experience and ordinary
powers of observation are supposed to give.

In dealing with the foreign mission he does not rely solely on
his own judgment. Many matters here treated of he heard
repeatedly discussed by priests abroad, who bitterly deplored
that, while in college, they knew so little of the life before
them, and regretted that there was then no kind friend to take
them by the hand and show them what was in store when the day
came for them to plunge into a life that was strange and entirely
new. It is to be hoped that this modest volume will, in part at
least, discharge the office of that friend.

It may appear, at first sight, that when writing the f