Acts 20, 24-28 Keep watch over the whole flock

(Acts 20, 24-28) Keep watch over the whole flock

[24] Yet I consider life of no importance to me, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to bear witness to the gospel of God's grace. [25] "But now I know that none of you to whom I preached the kingdom during my travels will ever see my face again. [26] And so I solemnly declare to you this day that I am not responsible for the blood of any of you, [27] for I did not shrink from proclaiming to you the entire plan of God. [28] Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock of which the holy Spirit has appointed you overseers, in which you tend the church of God that he acquired with his own blood.

(CCC 1562) "Christ, whom the Father hallowed and sent into the world, has, through his apostles, made their successors, the bishops namely, sharers in his consecration and mission; and these, in their turn, duly entrusted in varying degrees various members of the Church with the office of their ministry" (LG 28; cf. Jn 10:36). "The function of the bishops' ministry was handed over in a subordinate degree to priests so that they might be appointed in the order of the priesthood and be co-workers of the episcapal order for the proper fulfillment of the apostolic mission that had been entrusted to it by Christ" (PO 2 § 2). (CCC 1564) "Whilst not having the supreme degree of the pontifical office, and notwithstanding the fact that they depend on the bishops in the exercise of their own proper power, the priests are for all that associated with them by reason of their sacerdotal dignity; and in virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, after the image of Christ, the supreme and eternal priest, they are consecrated in order to preach the Gospel and shepherd the faithful as well as to celebrate divine worship as true priests of the New Testament" (LG 28 cf. Heb 5:1-10; 7:24; 9:11-28; Innocent I, Epist, ad Decentium: PL 20, 554A; St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 2, 22: PG 35, 432B). (CCC 1565) Through the sacrament of Holy Orders priests share in the universal dimensions of the mission that Christ entrusted to the apostles. The spiritual gift they have received in ordination prepares them, not for a limited and restricted mission, "but for the fullest, in fact the universal mission of salvation 'to the end of the earth"' (PO 10; OT 20; cf. Acts 1:8), "prepared in spirit to preach the Gospel everywhere" (OT 20).