Here are the slides and text for my first talk this evening to the good priests of Metuchen!
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In Search of a Liturgical Spirituality of the Diocesan Priest
Priests are among the most wonderful of human beings. They suffer from the same pains and stresses as any other group, but they are constantly fed by a burning desire to do the right thing, to give their life to Christ and to his Church.
They are in love with their people and with the faith which Christ sends them to bring to the young and the old, the bright and the not so bright, the cheerful and the depressed, the rich and the poor, and all the people in between.
But Priests are also sometimes depressed, and in sad spiritual straights. The older ones grew up in a time when the priest was the most admired man in the community. Today their brothers are accused of molesting children. The younger ones suffered under a pastoral ministry that seemed more intent on balloons and flowers than on faith and practice. Many of them labor under the burden of skepticism and a search for authentic authority.
Priests are weighed down by bureaucracies struggling to establish priorities, a media voracious for a fresh scandal, and people suffering in a world of ever-new challenges to what they believe and who they are.
It’s not all bad, certainly. There’s the great majority of parishioners who love their priest more than he deserves. I will never forget the outpouring of affection upon the death of my first pastor. As their only remaining priest, the parishioners practically anointed me with the tears they shed for this good man. The love which people hold for their parish priest is extraordinarily durable, as recent studies on the impact of the sexual abuse scandal have shown.
But still, especially for the Diocesan Priest, it can be hard to pray.
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Religious priests
While much of what I will say today and tomorrow may apply equally as well to our religious brothers, allow me to begin with a disclaimer. Religious priests are a wonderful leaven in the diocesan dough.
They bring us Saint Francis to call us back to simplicity, and Saint Dominic to make us think, and Saint Ignatius to give us a conscience. Each of the founders of religious communities still minister to us through their dedicated sons.
But these Priest sons have their Father to look to for inspiration and support. In comparison, the diocesan priest can often feel like an orphan.
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The Diocesan Priest
So where does the diocesan priest go to drink deeply of the particular charism of his calling? It is, I suggest, to the Sacred Liturgy.
Here is the center of his day, the source and the summit of all his activity, and the principle time when the Church is made manifest to him and to the world. To quote Pope Saint John Paul II:
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The celebration of the Eucharist is the most important moment of the priest's day, the center of his life. Offering the sacrifice of the Mass, in which the unique sacrifice of Christ is made present and applied until he comes again, the priest ensures that the work of redemption continues to be carried out. From this unique sacrifice, the priest's entire ministry draws its strength and the people of God receive the grace to live truly Christian lives in the family and in society. It is important for bishops and priests not to lose sight of the intrinsic value of the Eucharist, a value which is independent of the circumstances surrounding its celebration. For this reason, priests should be encouraged to celebrate Mass every day, even in the absence of a congregation, since it is an act of Christ and the Church.
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For the Sacred Liturgy is the bridge between the daily life of the people of God and Christ, who invites them to partake of his heavenly banquet. It is the pontifex between this world and the next, and the Priest is the gatekeeper. In the Sacred Liturgy two great loves of the priest’s life are brought into a holy communion: the People of God and the Lord who formed them into a royal priesthood.
Here too we can find the root and the sustenance of the diocesan priest’s spiritual life. Here he makes sense of it all, and here the priest finds the “food for the journey” on which he guides the flock entrusted to his care.
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San Pietro Soccer
I can remember years ago when I was on sabbatical in Assisi, sitting across from the Church of San Pietro and watching a bunch of kids playing soccer in the piazza in front of the Church. The twelfth century lions serves as goal posts and the door of the Church the goal.
As they were playing, the priest walked by the kids on his way to Mass and stopped. He puzzled over whether he should yell at them about possibly doing damage with their games. And then he smiled and went into Church.
They looked on with amazement at Father, this little incarnation of mercy. They wondered about him and about who he was. As they played their soccer, they trusted that he was praying for them; that when they gtt lost in the coming years, he will help them find their way home; and that when the pain would feel as heavy as a cross, he would help them to understand.
They needed him to be holy. To be a man who says his prayers. They needed him to be the image of Christ for them.
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The world wants him to be….
The problem is, the rest of the world is often demanding that the priest be something else. The Diocesan Finance office wants him to be an accomplished accountant; the Capitol campaign folks want him to be an effective fundraiser; the religious ed people want him to be headmaster of the parish CCD program; the local hospital needs him to be a master in bioethics, etc. etc.
Very often they want him to be the conductor of an orchestra, whose success is measured by the harmony of his parish. Others want you to be the politician, whose job it is to convince, cajole, and energize the base. Many want you to have the qualities of a late night talk show host, engaging them and making the audience think and respond. Not far away are those expecting him to be an entertainer, whose jokes and easy manor keep them coming back week after week. There are even those who want him to be the magician, whose mysteries never cease to amaze.
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Some even expect the Parish priest to be perfect…read list…
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But who does Christ want the parish Priest to be? The Liturgy helps us to figure that out in two articles from the General Instruction of the Roman Missal. The first describes who the Priest is at Mass:
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At Mass or the Lord's Supper, the people of God are called together into unity, with a priest presiding and acting in the person of Christ, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord or Eucharistic sacrifice…
That seems like a fairly standard definition, but let’s take a closer look. First, the people do not gather of their own volition, this assembly does not belong to them They are “called together into unity” by Christ. Like the priest, they are chosen and assembled into a holy people, a royal priesthood, Christ’s own mystical body. This is an important starting point because none of us, priest or people, are ultimately in control. It was not us who chose him, but he who chose each one of us.
The priest is described as having two jobs: to preside over the assembly Christ has gathered and to act in the person of Christ. In persona Christi had a hard time of it in the sixties and seventies. Perhaps it was because the culture was increasingly egalitarian, perhaps it was because the pastor Father remembered translated in persona Christi as ‘I’m God Almighty.’ In any case, priests ordained right after the Council usually cringe when you start to talk about in persona Christi, until they understand what it really means.
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And that’s where our next paragraph from the General Instruction comes in:
A priest also, who possesses within the Church the power of Holy Orders to offer sacrifice in the person of Christ, stands for this reason at the head of the faithful people gathered together here and now, presides over their prayer, proclaims the message of salvation to them, associates the people with himself in the offering of sacrifice through Christ in the Holy Spirit to God the Father, gives his brothers and sisters the Bread of eternal life, and partakes of it with them.
Notice the words used to describe who the Priest is at Mass. They are the same words used to describe the paschal sacrifice of Christ upon the cross;
- The priest stands at the head of the people (praeest) just as Christ our High Priest reigns from the wood of the cross (regnavit a ligno Deus) and as “the head of the human race” offers the paschal sacrifice, drawing all things to himself.
- The priest presides over their prayer (praesidet) just as at Christ, who presided over the offering of his own Body and Blood upon the cross, now ‘presides invisibly over this Eucharistic celebration.’
- The priest proclaims the message of salvation (proclamat) just as he who is the truth and who “enlightens every man” proclaims the Mystery of Faith from the altar of the cross.
- The priest joins the people to himself (sociat) in offering ‘his sacrifice and theirs’ just as “Christ always truly associates the Church with himself in this great work wherein God is perfectly glorified and the recipients made holy.”
- The priest gives them Christ’s body (dat) just as Christ first said to his apostles, “take this, all of you and eat it…” and from his pierced heart poured forth “the sacraments destined to impart the treasures of redemption on the souls of men.”
- The priest partakes of it Christ’s Body and Blood (participat) which Christ offered from the wood of the cross for the salvation of the world.
The priest does what Christ does…he acts in the person of Christ.
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IN PERSONA CHRISTI
This is why Pope Pius XII, and the Council fathers after him, remind us that the actions of the priest are the actions of Christ, the same Lord who now “offers through the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross; only the manner of offering is different."
What the priest is called to do, therefore, is to conform his actions to Christ’s paschal sacrifice. Who the priest is called to be at Mass is the mirror into which people might look to see, not him, but the Christ who lives in him.
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In his great encyclical Mediator Dei, Pope Pius XII offered a profound reflection on this fundamental truth:
The priest is the same, Jesus Christ, whose sacred Person His minister represents. Now the minister, by reason of the sacerdotal consecration which he has received, is made like to the High Priest and possesses the power of performing actions in virtue of Christ's very person. Wherefore in his priestly activity he in a certain manner lends his tongue, and gives his hand" to Christ.”
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Dignity and Humility
The work of the priest, then, is to become like Christ. But GIRM paragraph 93 goes on:
When he celebrates the Eucharist, therefore, he must serve God and the people with dignity and humility…
The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council described the priesthood in these words:
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“Even though Priests do not possess the fullness of High priesthood…they are nonetheless linked to the Bishop in priestly dignity by virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, in the image of Christ the Eternal high Priest…”
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Dignity
What is this “dignity of the priesthood”? It is a rank with certain attendant responsibilities.
“Human dignity” imposes the duty to honor the gift of life received as a holy work, and to use it for the good for which God intended it, So does the “dignity of the priesthood” impose on its recipients the work of shepherding, reaching and sanctifying in the person of Christ the High Priest.
However, as the English work suggests, this dignity demands something more than just doing a job. The dignity of the work makes demands upon the worker. Living out this dignity requires a constant pursuit of the holiness of Christ in the life of the priest. Thus is the granting of the dignity of the priesthood inextricably linked with a renewal of the Spirit of holiness deep within the heart of every priest. This is why the Bishops first asks that God grant the ordinandi “the dignity of the priesthood” and then immediately prays, “Renew deep within them the spirit of holiness.”
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As Pope Benedict XVI once reminded the seminarians of Rome, “holiness is the secret of the true success of your priestly ministry.”
The “dignity of the priesthood” is not, therefore, a call to triumphalism, but a title of service, in the model of Christ, the High priest who came to serve and not to be served and who offered his own body upon the altar of the cross.
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Humility
This is why the words dignity and humility go so well together. The dignity of the priesthood is a kenotic dignity, authentic to the extent that it pours itself out and dies for the other. True presbyteral dignity requires the radical humility of him who died for the very ones who nailed him to the cross. Unless the priest becomes the least for the sake of the littlest, he is not living out the priestly dignity he received on the day of his ordination.
We have all known priests who have understood how priestly dignity is born of humility. Some of them are listening to these poor words right now. They are the ones who day by day let go of ambition and pride and seem to thrive on sacrificing, consoling, forgiving, and loving like Christ the High priest.
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I remember an old priest when I was a young boy, who I later found out never balanced a check book in his life. He was an administrative disaster who could drive any parish into chaos in a matter of weeks. But the people venerated him, not for what he did, but for who he was. He was, as Saint Clare used to say of Saint Francis The man of God.
You knew by the way he moved that you were loved and cared for. When he walked into a room, everyone felt better just for his being there. And when you spotted him at the end of the procession at Mass, you knew there was a God.
So, too, in the way he spoke. There was an inner peace and a calmness that told you everything was now going to be alright. And when he prayed, even in a language I did not yet understand, there was such an easy familiarity between him and his God that you felt you were listening in on two old friends, like the easy conversation of a couple who has been married for fifty years.
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Friend of Jesus
About fifteen years ago, in a Chrism Mass homily, Pope Benedict XVI said it best when he said that the deepest meaning of being a priest is found in your “becoming the friend of Jesus Christ.”
Friendship means sharing in thought and will. We must put into practice this communion of thought with Jesus, as St Paul tells us in his Letter to the Philippians (cf. 2: 2-5). And this communion of thought is not a purely intellectual thing, but a sharing of sentiments and will, hence, also of actions. This means that we should know Jesus in an increasingly personal way, listening to him, living together with him, staying with him.
A friend of Jesus, offering the holy and living sacrifice, and looking just like him.
And therein lies the spirituality of the parish priest.
