In the Person of Christ, the Head of the Body: The Mystery of the Priestly Vocation
A Pastoral Letter to the Church of Denver
J. Francis Stafford
Archbishop of Denver
The Feast of St. Vincent de Paul
September 27, 1988
INTRODUCTION
An extraordinary renewal has taken place within the Catholic Church since the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965.
The years since have been a time of excitement and turbulence, a time of inspiration and hard work. Seldom has history seen a community as vast or as ancient as the Church change as dramatically or as fast.
Because change is never easy, it also has been a time of anxiety. Renewal has had its price—disillusionment and discouragement for some, contention and divisiveness for many and, for most, a disorientation and bewilderment concerning an outcome that simply cannot yet be discerned.
In few areas of the Church's life has this ambiguity been as deep as in the ordained ministry. Bishops and priests have discovered a new meaning in their call. The permanent diaconate has been restored. Parochial ministry has been diversified. Many religious and lay men and women have stepped forward to serve the Church in new capacities.
In some places there is confusion about roles and accountability. The dwindling number of priests has become a serious concern and, most troubling, priests themselves are no longer recruiting suitable candidates as their replacements.
In the context of renewal and excitement, ambiguity and turbulence, Archbishop J. Francis Stafford, in his third pastoral as head of the Church of Denver, offers his reflections on the priesthood and attempts to provide clarity and direction.
The archbishop places emphasis on the essential element of the ordained ministry—the capacity to act “in persona Christi"—in the person of Christ, the Head of the Body.
The document presents a review of the doctrine surrounding the priesthood, recalls the connection of priesthood and sacrifice, the central role played by the priesthood in the New Covenant and then develops the distinction between the universal priesthood of the baptized and the ordained.
"The priest, Archbishop Stafford writes, “is a man of mystery. While he is called forth from among the members of the Church and ever remains human—even a sinner—he is set apart for sacred duty and thus permanently marked with a special character.'
THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH
1. To the priests, deacons, religious, lay-ministers, educators, and pastoral workers of the Archdiocese of Denver; to the students, faculty, administration, and trustees of St. Thomas Theological Seminary community; and to the entire people of God of northern Colorado, my brothers and sisters all: may the grace of Christ, our compassionate High Priest, be with us always!
2. The years since the Second Vatican Council have been a time of excitement and turbulence in the Roman Catholic Church. An extraordinary pastoral renewal has taken place in our midst: the liturgy has been reformed, the Scriptures have assumed a greater prominence in our lives, the people of God have dedicated themselves anew to the life of holiness to which we are all called, religious are seeking to resummon the charism of their respective founders and foundresses, the hierarchical ministry has recalled its evangelical and collegial foundations, and everywhere the Church has sought to realize a dialogue within the human community - the vision of Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI which the Council made its own. It has been a time of inspiration and hard work, filled with the signs of the Spirit, who protects us and leads us forward. Seldom has history seen a community as vast or as ancient as the Roman Catholic Church change as dramatically or as fast.
3. Yet the very sources of that excitement have also at times given rise to a certain anxiety among us, since change is never easy for human beings. Honesty compels us to admit that renewal has had its price: disillusionment and discouragement for some, contention and divisiveness for many, and for most of us, at one time or another, a disorientation and bewilderment concerning an outcome we simply cannot yet see.
4. In few areas of the Church’s life is this ambiguity as deep as in the ministry. Bishops and priests have discovered a new meaning in their call as a re-invigorated people of God take up the Council’s challenge to evangelize. The permanent diaconate has been restored and with it the ministerial symbolism of a sacramental ministry by married men. Parochial ministry has been diversified, and many well trained associates, men and women, religious and lay, have stepped forward to serve the Church in cooperation with pastors and bishops. But exciting as these developments have been, they have also seen their trying moments. In some places there is confusion about roles and accountability. Almost everywhere the dwindling number of priests is becoming a serious concern, and the most troubling report about the ministry is that priests themselves are no longer asking suitable candidates to consider a priestly vocation—in effect, no longer recruiting their own replacements.
5. This pastoral letter is one of several which I intend to offer in the hope of affording some clarity and direction in the present ecclesial context of excitement, ambiguity and turmoil. I anticipate offering, on later occasions, some thoughts on the recruitment of vocations to the priesthood and on the growing phenomenon of layministry. In this letter, just the same, I will reflect on the mystery itself of the ordained priesthood. In the considerations that follow, I will proffer more a review of doctrine than a speculative treatise. I will recall the connection of priesthood and sacrifice, especially as it is signified in the New Covenant, and I will recall the central role played in that New Covenant by the priestly mediation of Christ. Then I will develop the distinction and relation of the two orders of sacramental symbolism by which the priesthood of Christ continues in the Church: the universal priesthood of the baptized and the ordained priesthood of the presbyter. Finally, in developing the latter idea, I will emphasize the essential note of the ordained ministry, the capacity to act in persona Christi, in the person of Christ, the Head of the Body. The priest is set apart within the Church by his priestly consecration, and this to render service to others; yet he is first called for this consecration from among the members of the Church, the Body of Christ, and he ever afterwards remains a part of their life.
6. These reflections must necessarily be limited in scope. While I intend to review some of the elements that are essential to understanding and living the priestly ministry, I cannot review all of them. Moreover, the priesthood itself is understood and lived in a variety of ways, which I cannot do justice here by describing them. Let me at least, nonetheless, affirm the manifold embodiments of the priestly mystery which we find in the secular and religious priests of the Archdiocese. I know well that a fundamental unity links these embodiments to the unique priesthood of Christ, thus to one another and to the Church. I know, too, that precisely through this variety the presbyterate as a whole realizes the pastoral strategy of St. Paul: to be “all things to all men” (1 Cor. 9:22), to continue the saving work of the Redeemer. I am continually edified in my work as Archbishop with these priests, and I daily ask the Lord to bless them and their priestly ministry.
7. My prayer in offering these reflections to the Archdiocese is that the Lord grant to us all, especially to us priests, a “wisdom of heart” (see Ps. 90) concerning the priestly consecration, a wisdom not unlike that which Solomon sought for his own royal office (1 Kgs. 3:9, Wis. 9:1-18). I pray that the Lord grant us a wisdom of the priesthood as practical, far-seeing and keenly discerning as the wisdom of Solomon, and as loving, generous and humbly service -oriented as the mind of Christ Jesus. And I pray that the Lord grant to priests themselves a renewal of the Spirit of holiness whom the bishop invoked at their ordination: a true molding into the likeness of Christ, the supreme and eternal Priest.
8. The Church is a mystery whose life derives from the supreme mystery that is the triune God. As Pope Paul VI said in his opening allocution at the second session of the Second Vatican Council, “The Church is a mystery. It is a reality imbued with the hidden presence of God. It lies, therefore, within the very nature of the Church to be always open to new and greater exploration:' This God has graciously willed to share his very life with us in a dialogue by which he has gradually made himself known to us and invited us to accept his friendship. When, through his grace, we accept that friendship our sins are healed and we are elevated to a new life. In fact we are elevated to the level of the divine, to take part in that ineffable mystery of intimacy and love which constitutes the inner life of the Trinity.
9. As St. John the Evangelist teaches us, “No one has ever seen God (1:18);” but the Son has made God known to those whom the Father has given him (17:6). John also teaches us that no one can come to the Father except through the Son, who is the way (14:6). The Son is, as the letter to the Hebrews says, the great High Priest who entered once for all into the heavenly sanctuary, that he might appear before God on our behalf (9:11, 24). He is the High Priest who lives forever to make intercession for those who approach God through him (7:23)—the High Priest who assures our entrance into that heavenly sanctuary by the new and living path which he has opened for us (10:19).
10. Through Christ we have access in one Spirit to the Father (Eph. 2:18); for it is through this Spirit that we belong to Christ and have the adoption that makes us children of God and heirs with Christ (see Rom. 8:9, 14-17). So closely are we joined to Christ, that we are said to be one spirit with him (1 Cor. 6:17), living now not our own lives, but Christ's (see Gal. 4:20). As the Church celebrates in its Eucharistic liturgy, we live this new life in Christ in such a way that we share his divinity as he shared our humanity (second prayer at the preparation of gifts)—indeed, in such a way that the Father sees and loves in us what he sees and loves in Christ (Preface VII, Sundays in Ordinary Time). More importantly, through the Spirit the Father draws all things to Christ (Jn. 6:44) until that sublime moment when Christ, having received the subjection of all things, will in turn subject himself to the Father so that God may be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28).
11. Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Council, compares the Church to the mystery of the Incarnate Word.
“As the assumed nature, inseparably united to him, serves the divine Word as a living organ of salvation, so, in a somewhat similar way, does the social structure of the Church serve the Spirit of Christ who vivifies it, in the building up of the body” (n. 8, referring to Eph. 4:15).
The Church is a complex reality comprised of the human and the divine: a visible, structured community and yet an invisible participation in the life of Trinity; a concrete, even weakness-filled group of human beings in time and history, and a mystical communion transcending time through the mediatorship of its Redeemer. The Church may seem ordinary, everyday, and routine, yet its life is the mystery of communion with Christ just described. This mysterious communion is such that through Christ we go to the Father and through us Christ is heard (Lk. 10:15), Christ is accepted (Jn. 13:20) and Christ is welcomed (Mt. 10:40) by the world he came to save. For Christ specifically commissioned his Church to go forth and bear fruit that will endure (Jn. 15:16), sending it as he himself was sent (Jn. 20:21) to make disciples of all the nations (Mt. 28:19).
A. MYSTERY AS SUCH
12. It is the character of mystery to elude full grasp by our mastery or intelligence—and this more for the richness which it encompasses than for the poverty of our abilities. This elusive character belongs to mysteries which we do not ordinarily even consider supernatural. Existence itself is a mystery and is not simply another problem to be solved, as science and technology might lead us unsuspectingly to assume.
13. There is no question that scientific research has yielded the possibility for a safer, healthier, more productive, more comfortable human environment. But scientific research is often detached, impersonal and abstract in character. Furthermore, there are some aspects of reality which scientific reflection cannot even hope to touch: love, fidelity, hope, compassion, honor, endurance, integrity, courage, sacrifice—in short, the very qualities that give our humanity its greatest dignity. For these, a different type of reflection is required, for they cannot be approached in a detached manner. We must first know them by our experience of them, by our participating in them for ourselves. Another person may testify to us concerning them, but it remains for each of us to discover them on our own. Thus, prior to scientific thought, one must engage in another type of reflection in which what is known is inseparable from the way in which we have come to know it: a type of reflection in which the truth discovered is also a truth of which we are part. As in music or drama or art, the meaning which is discovered upon this type of reflection cannot be simply restated apart from the medium in which it is embodied. Indeed, this reflection would compel us to treat our very life and its mysteries with a greater reverence than that shown to a priceless work of art.
14. Often our attitude toward the mystery of faith has defined it merely as a revealed truth which we cannot fully understand in this life but can expect to understand in the next. But this approach defines mystery too narrowly in terms of our reason, too broadly in comparison with science with its emphasis on one's ability to attain mastery. Divine mystery should be described instead in relation to a different type of human capacity or faculty altogether. It should be described in a way more primordial than the distinction between knowledge and love because it contains them both. Thus what is essential in our relation to mystery is not that we can or cannot fully know it, but that we can lovingly live in its presence—now in its shadow, then in its light, never fully comprehending its overflowing love.
15. Ultimately there is only one mystery: God. The Trinity that is God's life is the central mystery that unifies the whole of divine revelation and orders our response to Him. God is a community of persons in one nature, and we are created in his image. More wonderfully, God has called us to share by means of grace, and eventually by vision, in his trinitarian community, to share in the divine inner life of love. Through salvation history God has revealed this destiny to us in a series of interventions that constitute the economy of salvation. Thus God “has given us the wisdom to understand fully the mystery, the plan he was pleased to decree in Christ” (Eph. 1:9).
16. In the New Testament, especially in the writings of St. Paul, mystery is overwhelmingly a matter of God's historical plan to reveal himself in Christ Jesus and so to reconcile all things to himself. This mystery, God's hidden wisdom, distinct from the wisdom of any given age, is revealed to the Church through the Spirit who searches the depths of God, and it can be known only by the spiritually mature (1 Cor. 2: 6-16). As that wisdom is expressed in Christ and the cross, it is absurdity to the worldly, but in fact it overturns their version of wisdom, “for the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor. 1:25).
B. MYSTERY AND APOSTOLIC OFFICE
17. For St. Paul, too, an intrinsic part of the mystery is the manner in which God has chosen for it to be manifest. The mystery is not revealed all at once and for everyone, but it must be communicated from its recipients to others, by word of mouth and by the power of the Spirit; this is the process of evangelization, or preaching the Gospel. It is clear too that St. Paul understood that the apostles were commissioned to a particular position and authority in this process. As he reminded the Ephesians:
”When you read what I have said, you will realize that I know what I am talking about in speaking of the mystery of Christ, unknown to men in former ages but now revealed by the Spirit to the holy apostles and prophets” (Eph. 3: 4-5).
Indeed the whole of St. Paul's writing shows his self-awareness of possessing a special function (”munus”) in the Church, as he enlightened, exhorted, encouraged, admonished, sanctified and interceded for the churches which he had visited or, for the greater part, had founded.
18. Lumen gentium notably adopts as its own the general New Testament notion of mystery, declaring that in the life of the Church the persons of the Trinity extend salvation history even to our day. The constitution describes the mystery of the Church using the biblical images of sheepfold, cultivated field, vineyard, house, temple, city, mystical body - all in a type of poetic reflection. But even when considering the Church in the most generic terms, as simply “mystery;” the constitution insists on the uniqueness of the apostolic office as part of that mystery:
”There is only one Spirit who, according to his own richness and the needs of the ministries, gives his different gifts for the welfare of the Church (cf. 1 Cor. 12: 1-11). Among these gifts, the primacy belongs to the grace of the apostles to whose authority the Spirit himself subjects even those who are endowed with charisms” (cf 1 Cor. 14) (n. 7).
19. Thus the apostolic office, and its continuation through the centuries in the episcopacy, in the priesthood and in their interrelationship, is intrinsic to the mystery of the Church and shares in the Church's nature of mystery. Like the Church, the structure of the apostolic office cannot be fully and finally subject to scientific or technocratic questioning and problem-solving, even though the effort to understand the office better and to implement it more effectively can never cease. Since the apostolic office itself is a mystery, it must primarily be approached with that other type of reflection to which I adverted earlier.
20. Such an approach, for instance, can be found in the Church's liturgy, where the apostolic office is celebrated with holy reverence and gratitude as a gift of Christ to his Church. The liturgical calendar contains feasts in honor of the apostles, celebrating them as the inspired first preachers and guardians of the Gospel, who ultimately testified to their conviction of its truth by giving their lives. Above all, in these liturgical occasions, the Church remembers and celebrates “the Eternal Shepherd, who never leaves his flock untended” (Preface of the Apostles, I), as well as the incarnational nature of Christ's pastoral care for his flock—a care continuously embodied in the successors of the apostles, the bishops, along with the co-workers of the latter, the priests.
21. A similar approach to the apostolic office is contained in the very structure of liturgical ceremonies themselves: in the appointed liturgical roles of bishops and priests; in their vesture, placement, and gesture; in their being reverenced with bows or with incense. Perhaps the most moving celebration of the apostolic office occurs in the ceremonies of ordination, in which a variety of ancient rites of taking office are applied to those being ordained in order to symbolize their being assimilated to a new role before God and in the Church.
II. THE MYSTERY OF THE PRIESTHOOD
22. To bring this whole discussion of mystery to focus on the priest, the simplest thing to say is that he is a man of mystery. While he is called forth from among the members of the Church and ever remains human and a sinner, he is nonetheless set apart for sacred duty and thus is permanently marked with a special character. He becomes by that which he has been marked a special participant in the continuing drama of salvation (1. Cor. 15:9-10). When the priest is serious about the holiness and pastoral charity which this character requires, a spontaneous respect and even reverence of him is present in the church. His priestly character has become more intensely visible. He himself is a symbol.
23. Christians bear the name of Christ and must manifest him to the world. Yet who is to manifest Christ to the Christian? The Roman Catholic Church is not a leaderless assembly which waits until a spontaneous inspiration is given to one among them. Since the need for such inspiration and leadership is an abiding one, “Christ the Lord instituted in his Church a variety of ministries which work for the good of the whole body;” including “those ministers who are endowed with sacred power” (Lumen gentium, n. 18)
24. So, in a special way the priest is a reflection of Christ within the Church. Like Jesus himself, who was “a man like us in all things but sin” (Eucharistic Prayer IV), the priest will reflect solidarity with his people, express compassion for them, and be empathetic with them. Throughout the year the pastoral practice of Catholic priests in the United States has reflected well this solidarity. Perhaps as a consequence of generations of work—religious, social, and political—within the various Catholic immigrant communities, priests have enjoyed a degree of closeness to their people not often found elsewhere.
25. But again, like Jesus himself, who was the Christ, the Son of God, a priest will also somehow reflect the otherness of the holy. He is not just “one of the guys;” Although he is always a brother, he is also set apart for others, and he is called in some way, however seemingly impossible, to embody the transcendence of God as well as his immanence, his awesomeness and his closeness. If the Catholic priest is at once the Christ of the banquet table: familiar, convivial, feasting with outcasts and sinners, he is also, by the grace of God, the Christ of Mount Tabor, transfigured, glorious, translucent of the divine—however obscure that embodiment may be.
26. Recent pastoral practice of Catholic priests in the United States seems to reflect a difficulty with this second aspect of the priestly mission. Perhaps the egalitarianism and populism of American society and politics excessively reinforce a natural human reluctance before the enormity and challenge of this God-given role. But must not someone reflect to us that God's ways are not ours, that the all-holy deserves our reverence and awe as well as our love? In an incarnate Church, must we not have—as well as ministerial encounters that console and encourage us—encounters that leave us to ask, “Were not our hearts burning within us?” (Lk. 24:32).
A. PRIESTHOOD AND SACRIFICE
The Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II, Dominicae Coenae, of February 24, 1980, reaffirmed the traditional link of the priesthood to the Eucharist, and of the Eucharist to the notion of sacrifice:
“The Eucharist is the principal and central raison d'etre of the sacrament of the priesthood, which effectively came into being at the moment of the institution of the Eucharist, and together with it.
“The priest fulfills his principal mission and is manifested in all his fullness when he celebrates the Eucharist and this manifestation is more complete when he himself allows the depth of that mystery to become visible, so that it alone shines forth in peoples’ hearts and minds through his ministry” (n. 2).
The priest is united in a particular way to the Eucharist: in the Pope's expression, he derives his existence from it and exists for it. The Eucharist, in turn, bears a sacrificial character, to which priest is therefore related:
“The Eucharist is above all else a sacrifice. It is the sacrifice of the redemption and also the sacrifice of the New Covenant.
“Consequently, the celebrant, as minister of this sacrifice, is the authentic priest, performing - in virtue of the specific power of sacred ordination - a true sacrificial act that brings creation back to God” (n. 9).
In virtue of the specific power of sacred ordination, the priest in the Eucharist renews the redemptive sacrifice of Christ and unites to it the offerings of the participants. But there is more to be said. In the humanity of those who offer the sacrifice—the participants, the priest, the Redeemer himself—the whole order of creation is summed up and symbolized: mineral, biological, psychological, and spiritual. Therefore, in the Eucharist, creation itself returns to the God from whom it has come.
28. In the popular religious imagination, the image of an Old Testament or pagan priest usually involves the activity of sacrifice. Whether Aaron, Zadok or the high priest of Thebes, he is almost always pictured with arms uplifted as smoke curls from the holocaust. In the New Dispensation, the smoke has disappeared, and the priest and holocaust are the same: Jesus of Nazareth, the risen Lord and Christ, who bears in his glorified body the marks of his awesome passion, a sign that priest, victim and sacrifice live forever to save. In the book of Revelation, we meet him: the Lamb standing “as though slain” (5:6), who makes of us “a kingdom and priests to serve our God” (5:10). He has offered a perfect sacrifice once for all; it will never be repeated. But he reaches across time into every succeeding age to draw us into that one, perfect act, to make that act here and now present through the sacramental ministry of the priest. The Church firmly believes that her Lord has willed his sacrifice to continue in her midst and that this same Lord, in drawing her to himself, draws her into his “holy and living sacrifice” (Eucharistic Prayer III).
29. Because there is only one sacrifice in the New Covenant, Christ is the one priest of the New Covenant community. This is why Roman Catholic priests are said to possess the priesthood of Jesus Christ. It is not, strictly speaking, their priesthood, but his. It is not something which they do on their own but something which he himself does through them.
B. THE UNIVERSAL PRIESTHOOD OF THE BAPTIZED
30. Even before we speak of priests as such, however, there is a more encompassing sense in which Christ has willed his priesthood and sacrifice to continue in the Church: in the universal or common priesthood of the baptized. It is sometimes referred to as the priesthood of the laity, but does not belong to the laity alone; it belongs to all the baptized, ordained priests and religious men and women included. It is the priesthood invoked by Preface I for Sundays of Ordinary Time, when the Church celebrates its calling as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart:” In this, the Church simply repeats the words of the first letter of St. Peter (2:9), who himself recalled the even more ancient prerogatives of Israel recited in the book of Exodus, “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation” (19:6).
31. What is this universal priesthood of the baptized, and how is the ordained priesthood related to it? Lumen gentium answers the first part of this question as follows:
”The baptized, by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated to be a spiritual house and a holy priesthood, that through all the works of Christian men they may offer spiritual sacrifices and proclaim the perfection of him who has called them out of darkness into his marvelous light (cf. 1 Pet. 2: 4-10). Therefore all the disciples of Christ, persevering in prayer and praising God (cf. Acts 2: 42-47), should present themselves as a sacrifice, living, holy and pleasing to God” (cf. Rom. 12:1) (n.10).
Later, speaking of the universal priesthood as it is exercised specifically by the laity, the constitution adds:
“To those whom he intimately joins to his life and mission (Christ) also gives a share in his priestly office, to offer spiritual worship for the glory of the Father and the salvation of man. Hence the laity, dedicated as they are to Christ and anointed by the Holy Spirit, are marvelously called and prepared so that even richer fruits of the Spirit may be produced in them. For all their works, prayers and apostolic undertakings, family and married life, daily work, relaxation of mind and body, if they are accomplished in the Spirit—indeed even the hardships of life if patiently borne—all these become spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Pet. 2:5). In the celebration of the Eucharist these may be most fittingly offered to the Father along with the body of the Lord. And so, worshipping everywhere by their holy actions, the laity consecrate the world itself to God” (n. 34).
The concept that is found in both of these passages and that holds the key to understanding the universal priesthood is the notion of the spiritual sacrifice, a notion with roots in the Old Testament.
32. When the great prophetic movement began in Israel in the ninth century B.C., it appeared that traditional religion in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah had fallen on hard times. Kings, their courts, and higher officialdom had gradually lost sight of the demands of the covenant, with the result that a situation of idolatry, injustice, and ritualism ensued. The royal courts worshiped the gods of foreign-born nobility. The powerful became oppressors, with little care for the poor, neglected, and needy. The religious rites of the temple as well as religious practices such as fasting, while scrupulously observed in externals, came to have little internal meaning.
33. Into this situation the prophets were sent by God. Like a whirlwind they came, first demanding worship of the one God of Israel and second demanding a worship from the heart, an interiorized worship that would issue in works of justice and mercy. The eighth-century prophet Hosea simply expressed the idea in an oracle: “For it is love that I desire, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than holocausts” (6:6). Psalm 50 expresses the same idea in a passage clearly influenced by the prophets:
“Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you
for your holocausts are before me always.
I take from your house no bullock,
no goats out of your fold.
If I were hungry, I would not tell you,
for mine are the world and its fullness.
Do I eat the flesh of strong bulls,
or is the blood of goats my drink?
Offer to God praise as your sacrifice
and fulfill your vows to the Most High.
He that offers praise as a sacrifice glorifies me;
and to him that goes the right way,
I will show the salvation of God.”
(vv. 8-9, 12-14, 23)
In other words, the prophets did not rebuke the rituals of sacrifice, but only the attitude by which participants in the ritual failed to realize internally the meaning of what they were doing.
34. The language of the internalization of worship in the sacrifice of praise has survived to our own day in the liturgy of the Eucharist. Originally, this “sacrifice” may have been a simple psalm of praise offered by participants while their sacrificial gift was offered by the priest. It was their way of internalizing the external gesture of the ritual. But the prophets demanded more than the internalization of liturgical ritual; they demanded an internalization that expressed itself in the rest of one's life: by the observance of the commandments and by a generosity that reached out to the helpless. This broadened sense of sacrifice is the spiritual sacrifice of which St. Peter speaks in his first letter (2:5), of which the documents of the Second Vatican Council still speak, and which is still offered in the Roman liturgy of the Eucharist, most expressly in Eucharistic Prayer I.
35. Thus the universal priesthood is exercised in the day-to-day activity of the Christian life. In the case of the laity, Lumen gentium makes this point even more strongly:
“Their secular character is proper and peculiar to the laity...By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God's will. They live in the world, that is, they are engaged in each and every work and business of the earth and in the ordinary circumstances of social and family life which, as it were, constitute their very existence. There they are called by God that, being led by the spirit of the Gospel, they may contribute to the sanctification of the world, as from within, like leaven, by fulfilling their own particular duties. Thus, especially by the witness of their life, resplendent in faith, hope and charity, they must manifest Christ to others. It pertains to them in a special way so to illuminate and order all temporal things with which they are so closely associated that these may be effected and grow according to Christ and may be to the glory of the Creator and Redeemer” (n. 31).
It is perhaps because of this secular character that the universal priesthood is also referred to by the title of royal priesthood. The king after all was an anointed figure, but a layman, deeply involved in temporal affairs. In a similar way, the royal priesthood of the baptized concerns the daily living out of an incarnate Christian life within time.
36. True, the royal priesthood is a sharing in the priestly kingship of Christ. However, we must also bear in mind the care and insistence with which Christ himself in the Gospels corrected his disciples' mistaken notions of kingship. This messiah, he challenged them, came to suffer and only in that way to enter his glory. He was to be rejected, not acclaimed. He came to serve, not to lord his authority over others. He insisted on making his way to victory by the power and authority of his own weapons: humility, obedience and poverty, not by the sword. Moreover, he made it clear to his disciples—and he makes it clear to us—that if rejection and misunderstanding were the treatment afforded to him, we the disciples could expect the same.
The universal priesthood of the baptized will be royal only in the manner of Christ, the shepherd-king who laid down his life for the sheep. As St. Paul told the Philippians (2: 5-11):
“Your attitude must be that of Christ: though he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. Rather he emptied himself and took the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men.
“He was known to be of human estate, and it was thus that he humbled himself, obediently accepting even death, death on a cross!
“Because of this, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name above every other name.
“So that at Jesus' name every knee must bend in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth, and every tongue proclaim to the glory of God the Father: Jesus Christ is Lord!”
Ill. THE DISTINCTNESS OF THE ORDAINED PRIESTHOOD
37. Then how is the ordained priesthood distinct from the universal? In the formula of Lumen gentium, it is distinct “in essence and not only by degree” (n. 10). The ordained priesthood is not simply a concentration of the universal priesthood, nor is the ordained priest himself any sort of super-Christian. Rather, the ordained priesthood is an essential distinction in the life of the Church, by which the ordained priest himself bears a special mark of service within the Church, becoming a Christian “set apart for the Gospel of God” (Romans 1:1). Ordination does not separate the priest from the rest of the Church but indeed designates him in the midst of the Church for a unique service to his brothers and sisters. The preface of the Chrism Mass, which is also used at the ordination of priests, celebrates this reality. In words of gratitude and praise addressed to the heavenly Father the bishop prays:
“Christ gives the dignity of a royal priesthood to the people he has made his own. From these, with a brother's love, he chooses men to share his sacred ministry by the laying on of hands. He appoints them to renew in his name the sacrifice of our redemption as they set before your family his paschal meal.”
Through the ministry of the ordaining bishop, Christ shares his own priestly ministry with the ordinand, who is thus “taken from among men and appointed for men in the things which pertain to God, in order to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins” (1). Consequently, when the priest celebrates among God's family the redemptive sacrifice of the Eucharist, he experiences and embodies what Pope John Paul II has called, in the document cited earlier, the raison d'etre of the priesthood. This is precisely the element that constitutes the distinctness of the ordained ministry.
38. The words of Lumen gentium are forceful:
“The ministerial priest, by the sacred power which he possesses, forms and rules the priestly people; in the person of Christ he effects the eucharistic sacrifice and offers it to God in the name of all the people” (n. 10).
The crucial amplification in this passage lies in what is said of the priest's sacred power who, once ordained with the Spirit of holiness, acts “in the person of Christ.”
39. Dominicae Coenae explains this priestly power in an even more succinct way:
“The priest offers the holy sacrifice in persona Christi; this means more than offering “in the name of'' or “in place of'' Christ. In persona means in specific sacramental identification with “the eternal High Priest” (opening prayer, second votive Mass of the Eucharist) who is the author and principal subject of this sacrifice of His, a sacrifice in which, in truth, no one can take His place. Only He - only Christ - was able and is always able to be the true and effective “expiation for our sins and ... for the sins of the world” (1 Jn. 2:2; cf. 4:10). Only His sacrifice - and no one else's - was able and is able to have a “propitiatory power” before God, the Trinity, the transcendent holiness. Awareness of this reality throws a certain light on the character and significance of the priest celebrant who, by confecting the holy sacrifice and acting in persona Christi, is sacramentally (and ineffably) brought into that most profound sacredness and made part of it, spiritually linking with it in turn all those participating in the Eucharistic assembly” (n. 8).
In the Eucharistic sacrifice, Christ himself acts through his priest. The priest, while remaining the same man, the same person, the same human being, is also at once identified with, even transformed into, Christ, so that in the truest sense the priest may say, “This is my body”—because it is Christ who says it in him. One might also add that, in exactly the same manner, the priest absolves sins in the person of Christ in the sacrament of Reconciliation, for the New Covenant in the blood of Christ's sacrifice is given “so that sins may be forgiven?”
40. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger describes this sacramental identification in an interview published in his book, “The Feast of Faith” (2):
“You raised the question, ‘Do we need a priest with the power to consecrate?’ I would prefer not to speak of ‘power,’ although this term has been used since the early Middle Ages. I think it is better to approach it from another angle. In order that what happened then may become present now, the words, ‘This is my body—this is my blood,’ must be said. But the speaker of these words is the ‘I’ of Jesus Christ. Only he can say them; they are his words. No man can dare to take to himself the ‘I’ and ‘my’ of Jesus Christ—and yet the words must be said if the saving mystery is not to remain something in the distant past. So authority is needed, and authority which no one can assume and which no congregation, nor even many congregations together, can confer. Only Jesus Christ himself, in the ‘sacramental’ form he has committed to the whole Church, can give this authority. The word must be located, as it were, in sacrament; it must be part of the ‘sacrament’ of the Church, partaking of an authority which she does not create, but only transmits. This is what is meant by ‘ordination’ and ‘priesthood’.”
Ordination is the focal point at which an authority possessed by Christ alone is transmitted to the priest: an authority to speak the “I” of Christ himself. Moreover, that authority involves a sacramental word. It involves an efficacy by which Christ renders the saving mystery of his once-for-all death present now so as to catch us up into his sacrifice. Thus, in virtue of his ordination the priest becomes the locus of that authority and efficacy in the Eucharistic assembly —not by his own merits, not by any merely human activity of the Church, but by the sacramental intervention of Christ.
41. Theologians sometimes speak of priestly ordination as conferring an “ontological” change on the ordained—that is, a change in his very being. From what has been described above, one can see why they would consider such a change to be necessary. Only Christ, and only his sacrifice could reconcile us to God; no other human or earthly efficacy could serve us. Therefore, in a priest appointed to renew that sacrifice in the person of Christ, a transition must occur from the unavailing level of the merely human to the efficacious level of Christ. This transition occurs thus in the ordination of a priest when through the laying on of hands and the invocation of the Spirit of holiness the bishop ordains a priest.
42. We are accustomed to thinking that such changes occur in the sacraments. In Baptism, sinners are changed into the children of God. In the Eucharist, bread is changed into the Body of Christ. In both instances, we recall that the divine power which once created the universe is the same power at work in the sacraments. It is a power over being itself, summoning something from nothing, lovingly conserving and governing what it has summoned, transforming and reordering this still-incomplete universe, until the whole of creation—physical, moral and spiritual—is ordered to the praise of God. Just as the sanctifying grace of our Baptism enables us finite creatures to participate in the infinite life of the Trinity, so the grace of Holy Orders enables the priest, in all his weak humanity, to act in the incomparable person of Christ, the sinless, God-incarnate Redeemer.
A. TASK-ORIENTATION AND PRIESTLY IDENTITY
43. In a practical, function-based, task-oriented society such as that of the contemporary West, it is easy to lose sight of this mystical reality at the heart of the ordained priesthood, easy even for priests themselves. Ours is a society obsessed with doing; questions of being seem remote to us. The liturgy, with its lofty unused spaces and its untroubled pace, seems an intrusion that must be made more serviceable. Even our leisure does not relax us, as we fill holidays with activity after activity and need a vacation to recover from vacation. If we lose sight of what the priest is, we focus instead on what he does. If we undervalue the liturgy and sacraments, then we may conclude that most of the priest's functions can be discharged by another just as well. And so the priesthood itself could seem an arbitrary and superfluous leftover from another time or culture.
44. Many philosophers, psychologists, and social theorists have criticized this contemporary obsession with task and function. In various ways they have uncovered a profound restlessness and even sorrow at the root of our incessant activity: a lack of peace with the self, an inability to accept the self as a gift from God, an absence of the sense that this self is beloved of God and someone in whom he delights. Missing in our depths is an affirmation of our being. And, since no human being or human society can live without such affirmation, what results is a frantic drive to “earn” such affirmation through one's own efforts: through one's work, one's performance, one's own initiative. However, since none of these things can provide an affirmation that lasts and, rather than concluding to the futility of our effort, we step the process up, perpetuating the cycle. Some even learn to prefer their work over their family or their community and cut themselves off from whatever chance of breaking the cycle.
45. Some have spoken of a “forgetfulness of Being” as the contemporary crisis of the West: an obscuring mist spreading through Western spirit. Quaint as the expression sounds, we need to pay attention to it. For the current uneasiness of the West is not a diminution of physical existences or things; it is a subtle contraction of spirit, an impoverishment, a deeply felt (yet scarcely understood) loss—all while our daily life continues in its reassuring, nonchalant way.
46. The only remedy for the restlessness and sorrow at the root of our drivenness is a personal confidence and self-acceptance based on the love of God. We must learn to put our work into proper perspective. We must learn that God loves us no less on our day off—when we sleep late and putter around—than on our most productive work days. We must somehow recover in prayer that sense of God's fatherhood over us. For just as a human father looks at his adult son and fondly remembers the little boy he still sees, so too, as God looks on us, he remembers that day without equal, when he saw his reflection in the wet clay of the earth, picked it up, molded it, gave it the breath of life—and created man and woman. He was pleased then, too, because he saw that this creation was very good.
47. If we can recover such as sense, it will not be by simply adding another effort—now spiritual —to the many we already have. It will come, in part, only at right angles to the plane of our activity. It will come as a gift, a dispensation, a relaxation, even an interruption. And it will come in prayer. For this gift, this sense, this confidence, this self-acceptance together form part of a contemplative dimension for which we must make room in our lives. The priest as well must allow room for contemplation. He must set aside time, he must go off to a lonely place, in which he can allow himself to be touched by God's love. The constant exhortation of the Church, the constant testimony of priestly experience holds that prayer is essential to the nurturance of a priestly identity.
48. The priest himself first must appreciate the mystical character of the priestly office, and appreciate the change of being that his ordination has brought about in him. The challenge of priestly spirituality is that, by God's grace, the priest realize in his consciousness, in his deeds, indeed in his entire life the graced transformation that occurs because he acts in the person of Christ. In other words, his life is an effort to embody the holiness of Christ himself, especially in those moments when the priest celebrates the sacraments so that the people of God may truly see Christ in him, and experience through him the care which Christ has for his Church. In the rite of priestly ordination, the bishop presents the gifts of bread and wine to the newly ordained and tells him, “Imitate the mystery you celebrate.” It is the whole pattern of the priest's conscious life. The medieval philosophers taught, agere sequitur esse, “acting follow being.” What we do follows from what we are. Or as St. Paul put it more pointedly, “Since we live by the spirit, let us follow the spirit's lead” (Gal. 5:25). When the life of the priest imitates the mystery which he celebrates, he becomes in the contemporary phrase, “a man for others”—as Christ Jesus was, for his Father and for us. Subsequently, everything the priest does, precisely as priest, derives from that reality.
49. The priest, of course, will be conscious of his sinfulness, of his unworthiness of the gift, of his many failures to respond adequately to the challenge of his state. This is why, in the Eucharist, he prays privately before he receives communion. Like every other Christian, he must learn what it is to have faith in the love and mercy of Christ. For sinfulness has no more to say in one's receiving the gift of the priesthood than in one's receiving the life of grace itself. Both are Christ's gift, heedless of our merits. The letter to the Hebrews, speaking of the high priesthood, reminds us, “No one takes this honor on himself, but only when called by God” (5:4). And Christ himself, in John's Gospel, tells us, “It was not you who chose me, it was I who chose you, to go forth and bear fruit, fruit that will last” (15:16). The preface of the Chrism Mass, as we have seen, celebrates the fact that Christ makes this choice “with a brother's love.” For who knows failings better than a brother, only to love just the same?
50. Christ's commission to bear fruit is an important aspect of the priestly call. In the entirety of the Judeo-Christian tradition, divine election is always for the purpose of service of some sort. God's elective favor is not an end in itself. If the priest is a chosen one, he must also bear in mind that it belongs to the chosen in a particular way to realize the attitude of service, the servant humility and obedience of Christ.
B. THE MYSTICAL MEANING OF PRIESTLY CELIBACY
51. Christ's commission to bear fruit has another meaning for the priest, since the priesthood of the Latin Catholic Church is exercised in celibacy, “at once a sign of pastoral charity and an incentive to it as well as...a source of spiritual fruitfulness in the world” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, n. 16). Just as it is necessary that the vine be pruned in order to increase its yield (Jn. 15:2), so the life of the celibate is, by the call of Christ, pruned of the ordinary attachments of family life, good as these are, in order to bring forth fruit of a different nature. As the Second Vatican Council taught:
“There are many ways in which celibacy is in harmony with the priesthood. For the whole mission of the priest is dedicated to the service of the new humanity which Christ, the victor over death, raises up in the world through his Spirit and which is born ‘not of blood nor of the will of man, but of God’ (Jn. 1:13). By preserving virginity or celibacy for the sake of the kingdom priests are consecrated in a new and excellent way to Christ. They more readily cling to him with undivided heart and dedicate themselves more freely in him and through him to the service of God and of men. They are less encumbered in their service of his kingdom and of the task of heavenly regeneration. In this way they become better fitted for a broader acceptance of fatherhood in Christ” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, n. 16).
Since Christ himself was unmarried, we may find it strange at first that the Council speaks of fatherhood in Christ. Yet the hymn Summi parentis filio speaks of Christ as the father of the world to come. If we bear in mind what St. Paul teaches us about the spousal love of Christ for his Church (see Eph. 5: 22-33), we will see that this world to come is nothing less than the child of that union, the fruit of that love.
52. As celibacy is an imitation of Christ, it imitates too the union of Christ and the Church. The Council continues, “By means of celibacy, then, priests...recall that mystical marriage, established by God and destined to be fully revealed in the future, by which the Church holds Christ as her only spouse. Moreover, they are made a sign of that world to come, already present through faith and charity, a world in which the children of the resurrection shall neither be married nor take wives” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, n. 16).
The priest, in union with Christ, takes the Church for his spouse to love, to cherish and to nurture. And from that union, a true spiritual fatherhood ensues. It is not for nothing that the priest is addressed as “Father” by his people. As with the fatherhood of Christ, that of the priest points to the world to come: his solitude and earthly barrenness a prefiguring of death; his prayer, pastoral charity and spiritual fruitfulness a sign of God's power which is a work now to sanctify and so to yield eternal life.
53. On a number of occasions, most recently in his letter to priests this past Holy Thursday, Pope John Paul II has spoken of the priesthood as a type of spiritual motherhood as well as fatherhood. By this image, he invokes the memory of St. Paul's letter to the Galatians, in which the Apostle compares his work with that Church to the travail of childbirth (Gal. 4:19):
“Is not Paul's analogy on ‘pain in childbirth’ close to all of us in the many situations in which we too are involved in the spiritual process of man's ‘generation’ and ‘regeneration’ by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Giver of life? The most powerful experiences in this sphere are had by confessors all over the world—and not by them alone...Moreover, does not God himself, the Creator and Father, make the comparison between his love and the love of a human mother (cf. Is 49:15; 66:13)? Thus we are speaking of a characteristic of our priestly personality that expresses precisely apostolic maturity and spiritual ‘fruitfulness’” (n. 4, emphasis in text).
In developing this image of motherhood for the priest, the Holy Father makes use of an extensive comparison with the Blessed Virgin Mary whose motherhood is an instruction for the Church as a whole and for the priest in particular. Just as she became a mother by faithfully welcoming the word of God, so must we. Just as she was given to the Church at the foot of the cross when the disciple whom Jesus loved took her into his home, so must we take her into our hearts, especially we who are priests.
“Each of us, then, has to ‘take her to our own home’ like the Apostle John on Golgotha; that is to say, each of us should allow Mary to dwell ‘within the home’ of our sacramental Priesthood, as mother and mediatrix of that ‘great mystery’ (cf. Eph. 5:32) which we all wish to serve with our lives” (n. 4).
In so welcoming her and thus in acknowledging a motherly dimension to our priesthood, we may expect to gain a more profound understanding of our celibacy, for the virgin mother has much to teach us about spiritual fruitfulness. The Pope encourages us to place our choice of lifelong celibacy “within her heart” (n. 5), that heart which suffered alongside the divine Son at Golgotha as he consummated the salvation of the world. In welcoming her, too, we may also expect to discover “in a new way the dignity and vocation of women, both in the Church and in today's world” (n. 5).
54. Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Archbishop of Paris, in his book, “Dare to Believe” (3), describes ministerial celibacy as a “spiritual choice” of the Latin Catholic Church:
“A spiritual choice is achieved when an individual, a group, or a church chooses to respond to the call of God, thus entering in a way of holiness and spiritual fruitfulness. What matters most at that moment is in no way the expected effectiveness nor the rational coherence of objectives with means, but the fulfillment of a divine will calling for an act of self-oblivion, self-surrender to the power of God. When Joan of Arc went to the stake, she made a spiritual choice and not a choice of political coherence or diplomatic effectiveness. When Saint Vincent de Paul threw himself totally into the love of the poorest, he might certainly have answered economic needs, but in fact he responded to a spiritual choice. When the Western church made this spiritual choice, she was aware of obeying a call from God, and it is truly in such a way that all the reformers, the popes, the men of God, the spiritual people and popular consensus perceived priestly celibacy—as a demand of holiness, first of all and essentially a demand of holiness, whatever taboos or complexes might have been mixed with it” (p. 204).
Thus the historical decision of the Latin Catholic Church in the Middle Ages to extend ministerial celibacy from the episcopate to the entire Western priesthood was not a practical matter but rather, commitment to a certain type of ministerial holiness. In this commitment, both the Church and the celibate priest freely surrender their freedom to God, to allow the Holy Spirit to open a new path before them. The Church subjects its own choosing of priests to the previous evidence that God has called certain men to the celibate vocation, and it freely restricts ordination to these alone. It is a choice with practical consequences:
“The spiritual choice of the Western church is thus not to link priestly ordination with mere pastoral needs that could be tallied and projected by statistics. (This) enables us, paradoxically, to give way to a logic of gratuitousness, that is, of grace—since God does not reason in a technocratic way—to transform the number of ordinations from an administrative decision into a gift of faith” (p. 209). The spiritual choice of the Roman Catholic Church has bracketed
the question of an adequate ratio of priests to pastoral needs and has radically placed it in the hands of the provident God who leads us on our communal pilgrim path. Cardinal Lustiger explains in more detail:
“I cannot as a bishop say that for the good of my diocese, which has a certain number of communities and a certain population, I need a certain number of priests and that this need is a demand. Such reasoning would be a challenge to God. I can, in the best of cases, say this: there are many communities and it would be good if we had that many priests. But I could not tell young men or a community that I demand so many priests. I can only pray with them that God awaken in the community enough generosity so that some will fully devote themselves to follow Christ” (p. 207).
Thus the Cardinal proposes an essentially spiritual approach to what is widely perceived as a crisis of numbers in the Roman Catholic priesthood. In effect, he suggests that seemingly practical needs are to be subjected “to the sovereign freedom of the charisms and grace” (p. 206).
55. More to the point, he is clear sighted about the element of risk involved in such a strategy:
“This then is a spiritual gamble for the church. How indeed are such charisms born? One could say that they come from the intertwining of human and divine freedom, but one can also say without falling into contradiction that they arise from the fervor inspired by the faith, hope, and charity of a community, which thus becomes the ground for the charisms. In this view, we will say that the church bets that God does not cease to call men to make the spiritual offering of their whole life” (p. 206, emphasis in text).
It is a gamble for the Church to set aside practical considerations and to give herself radically to the faith that God provides vocations to the celibate priesthood in sufficient numbers to meet contemporary pastoral needs. But as St. Paul told the Corinthians, “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). Faith itself is a gamble, at times a leap. If faith is strong, it can support the corporate risk of mandatory priestly celibacy, and it can do so in the spirit of trust and surrender to God's providence which that risk demands of both the community and the celibate. If faith is strong, it will inspire in the Catholic Church of Northern Colorado the earnestness and fervor for the Gospel that can give rise in an individual to that at-first audacious and awesome thought, “Can God be calling me to the priesthood?”
IV. RELATING THE TWO ORDERS OF PRIESTLY SYMBOLISM
To this point, we have examined the universal priesthood of the baptized and the distinction of the ordained priesthood within the Church. Is it now possible to relate the two more clearly? For certainly, if the two are distinct, they nonetheless reflect the one priesthood of Christ Jesus, with its one mediating sacrifice. Perhaps it is best to look on the two orders of priestly symbolism in the Church as two distinct ways of focusing on that single act of mediation. In the universal priesthood of the baptized, the focus is on the universal efficacy of Christ's mediation: on the fact that through the mediation of Christ all who belong to him indeed approach the Father (Heb. 7:23). In the ordained priesthood, the focus is on the unique mediator, Christ himself, the Head of the Body, the Church: Christ as represented by the priest. Here the focus is on the fact that without Christ, we can do nothing (Jn. 15:5), on the fact that no one can come to the Father except through Christ (Jn. 14:6). But whether our focus is on the universal efficacy or the unique agent, the single reality we encounter is the one mediating act of Christ.
A. IN THE EUCHARIST
Beyond this consideration in principle, the clearest avenue for relating the two notions of priesthood lies in the Eucharistic liturgy itself. Above all, it is in the Eucharist that the two notions of priesthood come together. For in the Eucharist, Christ is present in manifold ways. According to Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy promulgated by the Second Vatican Council, Christ is present in his minister, he is present in the Eucharistic species, he is present in the proclaimed word, and he is present in the Church that prays and sings (n. 7).
Likewise, in Lumen gentium, 10, the Council taught that the two priesthoods are ordered to one another and share, each in its proper way, in the one priesthood of Christ. As such, in the Eucharist, the faithful “by virtue of their royal priesthood” offer their spiritual sacrifice, bringing forward their works, prayers, family life, leisure, hardships, their very selves as the gifts of bread and wine are presented at the altar.
58. Then, as we have seen in the words of Dominicae Coenae, the priest celebrant, acting in the person of Christ and sacramentally united with the sacredness of his sacrifice, in turn unites to that sacrifice the lives and sacrifices of all those participating in the Eucharist. As Lumen gentium says of priests exercising their sacred functions in the Eucharist:
“There, acting in the person of Christ and proclaiming his mystery, they unite the votive offerings of the faithful to the sacrifice of Christ their head, and in the sacrifice of the Mass they make present again and apply, until the coming of the Lord (cf. 1 Cor. 11:26), the unique sacrifice of the New Testament, that namely of Christ offering himself once for all a spotless victim to the Father” (cf. Heb. 9:11-28) (n. 28).
The members of the universal priesthood offer his or her spiritual sacrifice in the Eucharist. The ordained priest by virtue of his sacramental priesthood, unites that sacrifice to the sacrifice of Christ, which he makes present.
59. This combination of priestly symbolisms may seem strange or even contradictory: One might respond, “If we have a universal priesthood, then why an ordained priesthood?” or, “If we have an ordained priesthood, is the universal priesthood anything more than window-dressing?” To answer these questions, we must remember that religion and the liturgy obey the rules not of logic, but of another realm—a realm that must be approached by a special type of reflection and discourse—the realm of symbols. For this realm usually combines symbols to reveal its secrets; it is untroubled by seemingly overlapping symbols and seldom sees contradiction where logic might readily do so. This is important to remember for other reasons as well.
60. It is, for instance, a characteristic of some communities of the Reformation to insist on disjunctive “either-or” solutions to complex religious realities. One of the strengths of the Roman Catholic Church is its sensitivity to the hidden laws governing the realm of symbols and its tolerance of the paradoxical tensions that result. Catholicism takes a characteristically “both-and” approach to the same complex realities others would simplify with recourse to the either-or solution. It does not choose between the universal priesthood and the ordained, it chooses both. The challenge of living in the resultant tension is to accept that we will never fully understand the reality we affirm—not, at least, to satisfy logic. But this unknowing is precisely what it means to live the reality of mystery.
B. IN THE LIFE OF THE PRIEST
61. The two priesthoods also come together in the life of the priest himself. In its decree Presbyterorum Ordinis, the Council observes that the priest, in addition to uniting the spiritual sacrifices of the people of God to the sacrifice of Christ, must also in that same act unite his own self-offering to that of the Lord (n. 13). Indeed, he makes that self-offering precisely by means of his whole ministry; he is “made strong in the life of the spirit by exercising the ministration of the Spirit” (n. 12). He acquires personal holiness by exercising his priestly functions “sincerely and tirelessly in the Spirit of Christ” (n. 13). In particular, the Council says: “When priests unite themselves with the act of Christ the Priest they daily offer themselves completely to God, and by being nourished with Christ's Body they share in the charity of him who gives himself as food to the faithful” (n. 13).
It was in fact in that sublime moment of self-giving on the Cross that Christ most fully manifested who he is: the eternal Son, lovingly come down from heaven “for us men and for our salvation”
(Nicene Creed). He is the friend who gives his life for his friends in love than which there is no greater (Jn. 15: 13). This is the divine charity in which priests partake when they give themselves wholly to their ministry: receiving gratefully for themselves and sharing generously with others.
62. In John 21: 15-17, Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?” Three times, when Peter answers “yes,” Jesus gives him the care of the flock: “Feed my lambs; tend my sheep, feed my sheep:” Perhaps a more apt Gospel description of the priestly ministry does not exist; for it is precisely in the work of “feeding” the flock, of caring for the faithful, that the priest, like the Apostle Peter, expresses his own personal love of and commitment to Christ. Like each of the Twelve, with whose successors he is a co-worker, the priest is called by Jesus to be simultaneously a companion and an apostle: to be with Jesus and to be sent by him to preach the good news with spiritual power (see Mk. 3:14).
63. The spirituality and holiness of the priest is realized precisely through his priestly ministry, and especially in the Eucharist. The Council earnestly recommended to the priest that he celebrate the Eucharist daily, not only for the benefit to himself, but above all for the benefit of the Church, since “in the mystery of the eucharistic sacrifice...the work of our redemption is continually carried out” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, n. 13). The priest is sanctified by his service of the Church and, to the extent that his service is a reflection of Christ, the Church itself is sanctified as well—and this in a twofold sense. First, the Church benefits from the work of the Redeemer, sacramentally rendered present through the ministry of the priest. But second, as the Council teaches, “the very holiness of priests is of the greatest benefit for the fruitful fulfillment of their ministry,” for God “prefers to show his wonders through those men who are...submissive to the impulse and guidance of the Holy Spirit and who, because of their intimate union with Christ and their holiness of life, are able to say with St. Paul: ‘It is no
longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.’” (Gal. 2:20) (n. 12).
C. IN THE COOPERATION OF PASTORS AND LAITY
64. A third manner in which the notions of the universal and ordained priesthood come together is in the increasingly common cooperation of pastors and laity in the work of the parish. The recent pronouncements of the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, have reminded us of the doctrine of the Second Vatican Council that the primary lay apostolate is a secular one—in the world—namely, to order all of creation to the praise of God. The Council envisioned this apostolate at work in our commerce and leisure and in the politics and culture of human society so as to transform society “as from within like leaven” (Lumen gentium, n. 31). Nonetheless, the Council also spoke of an exercise of the lay apostolate within the Church. It is in this second exercise that we see yet another synthesis of the two orders of priestly symbolism.
65. In general, according to the Second Vatican Council, the relation between pastors and the laity within the Church should be a familiar one. Pastors are to recognize and promote the dignity, responsibility, zeal, initiative, and liberty of the laity, allowing them scope for action. The laity are to disclose their needs with confidence to their pastors, accepting pastoral decisions “in Christian obedience” (Lumen gentium, 37). Likewise, they are to manifest their opinions in those matters for which they are particularly qualified to do so. Indeed, the Council teaches that at times they are obliged to speak out for the good of the Church, though prudently and through effective channels.
66. In September of 1987, during his visit to the United States, the Holy Father cautioned Catholics in America against two possible distortions of ministerial cooperation: the clericalization of the laity and the laicization of the clergy. In this, he simply insisted on the perspective of the Second Vatican Council. The lay apostolate is not meant to replace the clerical. Conversely, the clerical apostolate is principally a service within the Church. The Holy Father has insisted, for example, that priests not campaign for or hold civil office, in part because the world of politics and civil government is a field of the lay apostolate.
67. In learning an appropriate cooperation between pastors and laity, we must learn ever again the two-edged meaning of Paul's dictum, “There are a variety of gifts, but one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:4). Certainly, there are more gifts than simply the ordained ministry in the Church; there are many gifts—all ordered to the benefit of the whole. But neither do the many gifts obviate the Church's eternal need for the unique gift of the apostles, first in rank among the gifts and likewise given for the benefit of the whole. Discord and contentiousness show an absence of the Spirit, a failure to have learned the shared responsibility to which the Spirit is leading us.
The Gospels are, throughout, a lesson in an ecclesiology of service, and never more so than when speaking of authority. The followers of Christ do not exercise authority in the manner of princes, but as Christ did, who came “not to be served by others, but to serve, to give his own life as a ransom for the many” (Mt. 20:28). Where this lesson is learned, the Church's ministry is rendered more effective by the complementarity of gifts and by the mutual support of pastors and laity. The fruits of the Spirit will be abundant.
CONCLUSION
68. I opened these reflections with a prayer for wisdom of heart concerning the mystery of priestly consecration, a prayer which is all the more necessary because wisdom is a divine gift. In concluding, I want to make some recommendations concerning that prayer.
69. First, we need as a Church to deepen our personal faith in the power of the Spirit in the consecration of priests: that Spirit of holiness sent by the Father who is the source of every honor and dignity. We need to ask in prayer for this deepening of faith, since faith too is a divine gift. Moreover, we need to open ourselves to receive that gift; perhaps we even need to seek that openness in prayer. Wisdom is the daughter of faith, and we who desire any measure of understanding of the mystery of the priesthood must, in St. Augustine's classic formula, first believe in order to understand.
70. Then we need to ask for the gift of understanding, that perfection of the gift of faith by which the Holy Spirit himself moves our mind to an intuitive penetration of revealed truth. I have shown
already that in the hierarchical ministry the Church possesses an essential element of the mystery of its life in Christ Jesus. Through the gift of faith, God enables us to live that mystery in all its aspects; through the gift of understanding, he enables us to have some sense of what that living means, even if we can never fully articulate that sense. Together, these two gifts establish in the Church a sense of sympathy for the mystery of God's purpose—a sympathy that supplies at least patience for the halting way in which that mystery is lived and expressed by weak human beings in the Church.
71. I want to recommend this prayer especially to priests and to priesthood candidates. For priests the need of these gifts of faith and understanding is an ongoing one, since their personal identity now in some sense, by the grace of God, incorporates the mystery of the priesthood. As I have said earlier, prayer is essential to the nurturance of a priestly identity, with its sacramental link to the sacrifice of Christ. Moreover, since the gift of faith alone gives meaning to the spiritual choice of celibacy, we priests must pray for that faith, to live that choice with a full heart.
72. In connection with this call for prayer, I wish to add a further recommendation to the priests of the Archdiocese: that every rectory contain an oratory, with the Eucharist reserved, to facilitate this prayer of priests individually and together and to demonstrate the essential, dynamic relationship between the priesthood and the Eucharist.
73. As I bring these reflections to a close, two images are uppermost in mind. One is the magnificent vision of the Second Vatican Council, described in Sacrosanctum Concilium (n. 41) and the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (n. 74), a vision which the Council itself borrowed from St. Ignatius of Antioch: that celebration of the Eucharist at which the bishop presides, surrounded by his deacons and ministers and by the college of his presbyters, and in which the people of God take a full and active part. This celebration, as both texts state, is the principal symbol in which the Church manifests the mystery of what it is. In this celebration we see both the hierarchical diversity of ministries and their ordering to one another for the unity of the Church.
74. More to the point, in that ordering, that is, in a mutual submission of one Christian to another in charity and in service, the Church shows forth most fully the image of the Master, “who loves
us and freed us from our sins by his own blood, who has made us a royal nation of priests in the service of his God and Father” (Rev. 1:5-6). The culminating realization of that image is the Chrism Mass of Holy Week, when the assembled Church at once celebrates the priesthood, blesses the healing balm which the priest administers, and re-enacts the source of all ecclesial and sacramental life in the Paschal Mystery. May that liturgy hold for us the importance which
it deserves.
75. The second image is an image of ministry within that grace-filled assembly: the image of Jesus rising from the table at the Last Supper, putting aside his outer garment, putting on an apron, and washing the feet of his apostles (see Jn. 13: 1-17). Let all Christians, especially priests, bear that image in mind as they begin the Eucharist. If Jesus, whom we address as Teacher and Lord, could humble himself to wash our feet, then we must do the same for one another. In part, it is a shocking image, and Peter's protest anticipates our own; but it is a deeply affecting image, for each of us recognizes the truth of Jesus' reply to Peter: we must allow him to serve us; we simply do not have the wherewithal to attain on our own a share in his divine life. As ministers, let us allow the image to speak from within us, wordlessly and without self-consciousness. “Let us love in deed and truth, and not merely talk about it” (1 Jn. 3:18).
76. Today is the feast of Vincent de Paul, the Apostle of Charity, the Father of the Poor and the Light of the Clergy. As we offer our prayer for faith and understanding in the mystery of the priest-hood, let us ask St. Vincent's intercession for the same effective charity, the same poverty of spirit and the same love of the priesthood that motivated his heroic life for the spiritual and temporal benefit of seventeenth-century France. Let us offer prayers, too, for the sons of Vincent and for their co-workers at Saint Thomas Theological Seminary here in the Archdiocese: let us pray that together they may continue their work of priestly and ministerial formation in the spirit of their founder. The Archdiocese and I personally hold them in deep affection and gratitude.
77. My brothers and sisters, in concluding these reflections, I leave you with my own prayers and a blessing. May God grant us vocations to the priesthood and to the ministry, sufficient to meet our needs. May God continually inspire and guide our priests, deacons, religious, lay-ministers, and seminary community in their respective works for the Church. May God save all his holy people: may he deliver us from every evil and grant us his peace. Amen.
Most Rev. J. Francis Stafford
Archbishop of Denver
The Feast of St. Vincent de Paul
September 27, 1988
Notes
1 - Vatican Council II, “Decree on the Ministry and Life of
Priests,” Presbyterorum Ordinis 3; referring to Heb. 5:1.
2 - San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986, p. 94.
3 - New York; Crossroads, 1986.