Be cordial with all, and when the heart starts demanding, explain to it in a hundred ways why it can t have what it wants. Tell your heart an appetite, and thus a potential spoiled brat which must be governed politically, not despotically 4 to wake up to reason. Realize that though extremely powerful, Eros is only a fleeting feeling, not a god. Only fidelity to God himself brings real, lasting happiness. A priest must guard his heart all his life.
Love is a fickle thing.
Emotional love will always be a mystery even to the most experienced. It s unfortunate we have to go into such detail on such matters, but things have changed a great deal in the past forty years. There seems to be a lot more to this than in generations past. It s unpleasant to think about and talk about what has and can happen with priests, but it appears to be necessary to spell it out. We have to be more aware of the problems and the solutions.