Sustaining an Ars Celebrandi

 

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SUSTAINING AN ARS CELEBRANDI

So how do we sustain this ars celebrandi, which defines and directs our priesthood? 

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Two suggestions: Prayer and the Poor.

Sure, we also celebrate the liturgy with authenticity, proclaim the Gospel with courage, cling to the truth, forgive sins, seek out sinners….but most of all we pray and we seek out the poor.

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First, praying.

Sadly, the one thing which most often brings about the rot of a once priestly soul, is when he stops praying to do all the other “important things” in his parish.

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Remember how you prayed when you were young? the earnestness, the fervor, the trust? That is how it can be again. The same God who formed you in perfect love is waiting for you to come home.

How does the priest pray? Certainly he prays the Liturgy, as we have seen, and he prays the Psalms throughout the hours of the day, as I will soon propose. But how does he recollect, meditate, and rest in the Lord?

How does he bring to Christ the needs of the flock which has been placed into his hands, along with his own needs, and the needs of the whole world?

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Near the end of the Prayer of Ordination of a Priest, there is a hint in the words the Bishop prays on behalf of the newly ordained:

May he be joined with us, Lord,

in imploring your mercy

for the people entrusted to his care

and for all the world.

At the heart of the ministry of the parish priest is his concrete intercession for the people entrusted to his care and for all the world. 

the Vailettes at 103 and 100.

Kristine who had her knee replaced this morning

Francis who is getting a new valve for his heart…

This is because one of the questions I was asked before I was ordained a priest was whether I will be resolved “to implore with us God's mercy upon the people entrusted to your care by observing the command to pray without ceasing?”

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Like Christ the High Priest, the priest is called upon to ever intercede for his people. So important is this obligation that in the former covenant the priest Samuel saw the failure to pray for the people as a sin. 

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Nor should we forget the example of Job, who after his sons and daughters had returned from a night of revelry would rise early in the morning and “sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, ‘Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.’”

Of course this intercession is always carried out in union with the Bishop. For it is only in union with the Bishop that the priest may carry out his ministry of priestly sanctification. 

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On a practical note, the Bishop himself bears a special responsibility to see that the priest is not so burdened by other tasks that he is unable to make intercession for those under his care. In a general audience address, Pope John Paul II reminded the entire Church that such intercession is the priest’s privilege and responsibility, “for he has been ordained to represent his people before the Lord and to intercede on their behalf before the throne of grace.

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This intercession at the throne of grace takes many forms, but one of the most easily neglected is Morning and Evening Prayer, the Liturgy of the Hours.

Now, to be honest, the breviary is frequently experienced as a burden. As if the Priest’s day weren’t busy enough, running from a funeral, a wake, CCD, the Parish Council and endless letters from the chancery…now I’m supposed to sit down and devoutly prayer morning prayer, mid-day prayer, evening prayer, night prayer, and one of the daytime hours! Not to mention the Office of Readings!

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Such a reaction is understandable and real. Yet the Psalms can also be an oasis in the desert, a respite from the hurriedness of life, and a beautiful place to take deep breaths and rest with God. Because the Psalms are beautiful.

Just like life is beautiful. But life can also disappoint, distract with pain, and confuse with everyday agonies. The Psalmist knew that only too well. He tells us of days he’d rather be dead, of hearts that moan de profundis and of enemies hiding around every corner. Which is why the Psalm can be such a consolation. Because it is so close to us..so close to the joys and the pains of the human heart that it can give voice to the struggles of human flesh.

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A few years ago I buried an elderly friend whom I had previously introduced to the Psalms. She sat for hours with that little Psalter and read the Psalms over and over. One day I asked her what she was getting out of that little book which had proved to be such a good gift. I read these old prayers, she smiled, and they’re all about me.

The night she died, they found her small breviary and her rosary in the bed with her. The rosary was wrapped around her fingers, and the ribbon for morning prayer was set at the twenty-third Psalm: Though I walk through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil, for you are at my side. She read those old prayers, and they were all about her.

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As Saint Ambrose said of the Psalm:

It soothes the temper, distracts from care, lightens the burden of sorrow. It is a source of security at night, a lesson in wisdom by day. It is a shield when we are afraid, a celebration of holiness, a vision of serenity, a promise of peace and harmony. It is like a lyre, evoking harmony from a blend of notes. 

Day begins to the music of a psalm. Day closes to the echo of a psalm.

And the Psalms are beautiful because they are true. Pope Benedict XVI called them “a musical instrument which plays all the virtues.” 

The Psalmist uses the dead gut string of a lyre to create harmony from a variety of notes and send up to heaven a hymn of truth and of passion.

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The Psalms are capable of giving voice to the heart of the parish priest in any time or circumstance. As Thomas Merton once wrote, “There is no aspect of the interior life, no kind of religious experience, no spiritual need of man that is not depicted and lived out in the Psalms.”

There are Psalms for the days when everything is perfect and submission to God’s will seems easy. (For in God our hearts rejoice; in your holy name we trust.) And Psalms of luminous peace seen through a life of perfect obedience!

There are Psalms for the days when all of life (parish council, Bishop, bills, etc.) are ganging up on you, and that unjust steward is beating you about the head (See how many are my enemies, see how fiercely they hate me!) Or for those moments when the inmates seem to be running the asylum, and the stupidest people are making the most unjust decisions: (God looks down from heaven upon the human race, to see if even one is wise, if even one seeks God!)

When it gets really bad, there are Psalms which prefigure the agony of Christ (My heart pounds within me; death's terrors fall upon me),  while others rejoice at unexpected mercy or amazement that something really worked! (Praise the LORD, my soul; I shall praise the LORD all my life, sing praise to my God while I live).

All these Psalms await us as a healing balm and a cause to action. When the Psalms become a part of our regular spiritual diet, a dynamic tension is established between our inner world of prayer and the outer world of our daily lives. 

When We Get Old

People think priests pray all day long. They’re right, but you do other things too. You meet with people, do paperwork, visit the sick, and schedule ministers. You make sure the bulletins done and the diocese is paid and you show up at all those meetings. You write your homily, settle those disputes, and worry about the boiler. You envy, you fight, you resent, you gossip. You listen, you forgive, you care for, you nourish. You love, you stave off hate, you worry and you wonder. In short, the priest’s life is just like everyone else’s, except he has willingly placed it under God’s microscope. 

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What is it like to have been a priest for 25 or 40 or 60 years? To have prayed those same Psalms over and over and over. Admittedly it can sometimes be a bit like a desert. The great Carlo Caretto once wrote of what it was like to get old in such a desert, if I might paraphrase him:

I used to think that when I grew old, things would get easier. That God’s love, and old and tried companion, would embrace me gently and warm me tenderly and console all the rough parts. But as I have grown old, winter by spring, the love he offers me is often a harsh and a bitter love, filled with pain, newfound uncertainties and tinged with fear. But the difference is, I no longer wish to break the appointment!

Sustaining the Ars Celebrandi, then, is all about no longer wishing to break the appointment. Morning by evening, winter by spring, to pray. To pray the liturgy of the Church with you whole heart and soul, the Mass, the Sacraments and the breviary…and to pray for the people in the quiet of your room. To be a friend to Jesus, and to his mother, as well.

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For his mother teaches us, in the words of one liturgical book, “to celebrate the mysteries of Christ with that same spirit of reverent devotion with which she took part in the birth of her son, in his epiphanies, and in his death and resurrection. 

In particular, Mary’s example urges [us] to treasure the word of God in their hearts...to praise God exultantly...to offer [ourselves] generously...to pray with perseverance...to act in all things with mercy and humility...to cherish the law of God and embrace it with love...to love God in everything and above everything else; to be ready to meet Christ when he comes.

As Mary was a servant of the divine Word whom she carried in her womb, so we must be a servant of the divine liturgy and the Church who articulates it, not its master. 

Which leads me to the final prescription for sustaining an ars celebrandi: Hanging around with the poor.

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Priests Need the Poor

And finally, we need the poor. Jesus said they were blessed, but we who need them are far more blessed by them than they are by us.

The centrality of the Mass was crucial to Dorothy, and she considered it the greatest work of the day. In the early 1940’s, when she addressed a group of “would-be Catholic Workers ,” she admonished them that “the Mass is the Work”! All their activities were first to be offered and then united frequently with the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross and on the altar, because Dorothy felt that “ all life flowed from worship; only thus would their work be a success, irrespective of its external attainment”. 

NATIONAL LITURGICAL CONF AND CATHOLIC WORKERS … social workers and interior designers!

We’re always trying to drive the poor away because they remind us of our own fragility: that we are never really in control. That we could be as they are but for the grace of God. That in what really matters, selfishness and sin, we’re probably poorer than they are.

And yet Jesus calls them blessed. The same Jesus who said “judge not, lest ye be judged,” and means it. The same Jesus who says ‘whatever you do to the least, you do to me,’ and means it. The same Jesus who says, if they slap you on one side, give them the other,’ and means it. The same Jesus who says, ‘love one another as I have loved you,’ and then dies on the cross for us.

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That means that the priests must always be a home for the poor: the poor in heart, the poor in stomach, the poor in love. It means that we are truly priests of Jesus Christ if we attract the lonely, the crazy, the dysfunctional, the addicted, the hungry, the guilty, the broken and those who have learned how to alienate almost everyone else in the world. 

Any church modeled on the person of Jesus Christ is a place where the weird, the queer and the rejected of the world find a home. And any priest who serves in such a parish must be so in touch with his own sinfulness, his own weirdness, his own brokenness that they he is ready to welcome other broken little ones with open arms and a heart filled with compassion and understanding.

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SELMA AND THE ALTAR CLOTHS

Selma may not have known the medieval origins of the altar cloth or its proper color or liturgical function. She probably could not translate the rubrics which referred to it, but she did know what it was for: to cloth the Lord. And she understood something else, as well: that we are little and God is big. That our poor attempts to praise and adore him in the Sacred mysteries are just that. Poor attempts to articulate the ineffable, to use creaturely rites to glorify our creator.

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We are little and God is big. A realization indispensable to maintaining a grateful and obedient heart as we prepare to go to the altar of God, the God who gives joy to our youth.

Thank you.

Toward an Ars Celebrandi

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Toward an Ars Celebrandi

Ars Celebrandi

In the spring of 2001, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments met in plenary session to consider the major questions before the church in this period of the post-conciliar liturgical renewal. It is significant that among the major issues up for discussion by the Bishop members was the idea of ars celebrandi, a subject addressed at some length by Cardinal George Pell. 

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His Eminence stressed that for the Priest in particular, “ars celebrandi is not only a matter of preparation of mind, body, and heart, but also an appreciation of the gestures, the attitude of the body, and the dignity of a humble leadership that is evident to the people in a man who is loving and able to pray the liturgy, able not only to cover himself in sacred vestments, but above all, to be clothed with the Lord Jesus Christ.”

His Eminence's emphasis on the ars celebrandi was to be echoed in the second half of the paragraph in the General Instruction which I cited last night. The first half, you will recall, provided a job description of who the priest is at Mass. 

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This last part of the paragraph provides a sort of performance review of the priest at Mass. In one of the most succinct and challenging statements, the paragraph goes on: 

“When he celebrates the Eucharist, therefore, he must serve God and the people with dignity and humility, and by his bearing and by the way he says the divine words he must convey to the faithful the living presence of Christ.”

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You’ve heard the oft quoted maxim that the job of the priest at Mass is to “say the black and do the red,” that is to say the words of the Missal as handed down to us over the centuries and exactly perform the rubrics. But the Missal is asking something more of the priest here. It is not just the words he says, but the way in which he says them, from the heart. It is not just how high he raises the chalice, but how he raise it, with his whole being. 

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As the great poet Paul Claudel once wrote:

Your prayers, and your faith, and your blood, with his in the chalice; These, like the water and wine, form the matter of his sacrifice.

This is what is truly meant by fostering an ars celebrandi, an art of celebrating the Mass and it is, I suggest, the key to an authentic spirituality of the Diocesan priest. For this ars celebrandi is not so much a matter of mastering skills, as conforming my heart to the Lord into whose Priesthood I have been ordained, and with whom I seek to join his holy people.

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Sacrosanctum Concilium

The Council Fathers first articulated this truth in the oft-quoted fourteenth paragraph of the Conciliar Constitution Sacrosanctum concilium. Have you ever listened to a talk on the Sacred Liturgy which has not recalled that the "full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else..."? 

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However, seldom is the paragraph quoted in context. For this seminal challenge is immediately followed by the strikingly blunt assertion that it "would be futile to entertain any hopes of realizing this unless the pastors themselves, in the first place, become thoroughly imbued with the spirit and power of the liturgy.”

For priest are the primary agents of the liturgical reform. The success or failure of the conciliar vision is largely in their hands. But success must begin and end with the renewal of their priestly hearts.

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Internalization 

Our beloved Pope emeritus, Benedict XVI, frequently returned to this theme, as he did in a conversation with diocesan priests from Albano on August 21, 2006. The ars celebrandi, he insisted, first demands that “the priest enter truly into [the dialog between God and man, which is at the heart of the sacred liturgy]. Announcing the Word, he must feel himself in colloquy with God.”

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Of course, we might be tempted to reply. Every priest knows that when he stands at the altar he is in dialog with God. But does he? Is our focus at Mass always on Christ or on the performative and relational dimensions of the ritual we have been taught to enact? Are the individual relational aspects of this work sometimes prior to and obstructive of the divine dialogue into which he is called to lead us?

"He is in a dialog with God," the Holy Father reminds us, precisely "because the texts of the Holy Mass are not theatrical lines or some such - they are prayers, thanks to which, together with the congregation, I as priest talk to God."

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Pope Benedict XVI then introduces us to the mystagogical dimension of the ars celebrandi, recalling how the Rule of Saint Benedict describes the monk's praying of the Psalms as Mens concordet voci. The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council has this in mind, as well, when they insisted that in the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy we must attune our mind to our voices when praying. What we do and say must be an authentic expression of what we feel and thing, as what we feel and think is deepened by what we do and say.

This relationship between the internal disposition and its external expression is expressed in an entirely new paragraph of the new Roman Missal, which attempts to explain that a common posture observed by all at Mass, “both expresses and fosters the intention and spiritual attitude of the participants.”

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Back to the Pope emeritus. An authentic celebration of the Liturgy with heart, mind, body and voice (all working in harmony) means that our celebration of the Sacred Mysteries (here he quotes Pope Saint John Paul II) is nothing less than “a continuation of a permanent growth in adoration….[by which we] “join our minds and hearts to the voice of the Church."

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Here we find the true context of a liturgically rooted spirituality of the Diocesan priest, for it is rooted in the we of the liturgical assembly,…”praying with the Church, with the words of the Church, and being truly in colloquy with God.” Thus does the Holy Father insist on internalization as the first prerequisite for an authentic Priestly ars celebrandi. 

A number of years ago, I was invited by the Cathedral Rectors' Association to address them on how to improve cathedral Liturgy. While they were probably expecting a dissertation on the fine points of the latest rubrical disputes, that's not what they got. For to make better Priest celebrants, I suggested to them, you need to encourage Priests to be holier: to seek after sanctity, to long for prayer, to rejoice in virtue, to be conformed more and more to Christ. That is the secret of the ars celebrandi: obedience, authenticity, humility, and love for the sacred rites and texts are by-products of a life lived in close communion with Christ. It's the same secret known by Chaucer in the Parson's tale: "Christe's lore and his apostle twelve he taught...but first he followed it himself."

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Internalization and John Paul II

Our consciousness of the heart of the priest as the proper forum for the renewal of the Sacred Liturgy was really born in the time of Pope Saint John Paul II, who encouraged us never to forget the "intimate bond between the Priest's spiritual life and the exercise of his ministry.” And the same Pontiff who issued perhaps the most challenging words of the first forty years of the liturgical reform, when her reminded the Bishops of the United States in the course of their ad limina visit that 

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“prayer for the needs of the Church and the individual faithful is so important that serious thought should be given to reorganizing priestly and parish life to ensure that priests have time to devote to this essential task, individually and in common. Liturgical and personal prayer, not the tasks of management, must define the rhythms of a Priest's life, even in the busiest of parishes.”

Would that we would heed those prescient words!

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An American Disability

But why don't we spend more time praying than we do fighting about the arrangement of the sanctuary? Why is it that the liturgical reform of our day has been seen more as the source of contention than the source of a deepening of unity in prayer to Christ?

Is it because we share in an American obsession with doing over being, with relating over reflecting, with performance over substance, with pleasure over patience, with satisfaction over truth? Is it because we fear the silent, the reflective, the quiet presence of God in the heart of a listening child?

We live in a society which loves to "get things done." We are great "doers." Thus we are able to embrace with gusto the aspect of the liturgical reform which called us to "do more." But we're not so good at reflecting, at meditating on the mysteries we celebrate. Without such meditation, without a life of reflective prayer, we will never be able to celebrate the Mass fully, consciously or actually.

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The Presentation of the Instrumenta 

How can a priest approach the sacred mysteries, speak the sacred texts, or give his body, mind, and voice over to the immemorial rights unless he is willing to seek the secret of this mystery in the silent beauty of the God who whispers to his heart? If the Priest is not passionately in love with Christ and the sacred rights which join us to his Sacred Heart, if he is unwilling or unable to empty his heart in the same way that Christ the lead for him from across, then how can he take up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the lord?

For the secret, you see, is in three little words spoken to the priest when the chalice filled with wine and that paten with bread are first placed into his hands: agnosce, imitare, conforma: know what you are doing, imitate what you touch, and conform your life to the cross. I suggest that these mandates describes a radically new and challenging way of relating to the liturgy and plot a certain course for growing in the ars celebrandi.

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Accept from the holy people of God 

the gifts to be offered to him.

Know what you are doing, 

and imitate the mystery you celebrate:

model your life on the mystery of the Lord's cross.

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Agnosce: Know What You Are Doing

So liturgical formation must clearly begin with us, and it must begin from the inside out, with prayer. But, as the second clause of that sentence from Sacrosanctum Concilium 14 which we quoted earlier insists, it must also involve a certain instruction. And in order to accomplish instruction we must first be instructed. 

Over the course of my work at the BCL, as Seminary Rector and now, once again, as parish priest, I have been privileged to speak to the priests of almost every Diocese in this country on a variety of topics liturgical. But I will never forget the invitation I received around the turn of the millennium to a diocese on the 1989 revision of the Order of Christian Funerals. By that time, the 1989 edition had become the only approved way for Catholic priests to celebrate the rites of Christian death and burial. At the end of the first session I was perplexed by the questions they were asking and so at the beginning of the second session I asked “How many of you own a copy of the 1989 Order of Christian Funerals? After ten years, only 40% of the presbyterate had bought a copy of the book!

Such a situation is scandalous. But equally as scandalous is the fact that many priests, while possessing a copy of the liturgical books (it’s a good start!) had ever read the introductions, the rubrics or the full course of optional prayers contained therein. Do know what we are doing in the liturgy? Do we know the rites we celebrate? Do we read the introductions to the liturgical books? Do we pray the prayers and make them our own? The first step in opening ourselves up to the wonderfully transforming and sanctifying power of the liturgy is to know the rites we celebrate. Such a discovery comes by way of hard work and study, searching for Christ in liturgical prayer.

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The second demand of the presentation of the priestly instrumenta is Imitare: Imitate the Mystery You Celebrate.

We are called to be transformed by the sacred mysteries we celebrate, to imitate the very mysteries we touch. Such change, however, can only be the result of a profound appreciation of the Scriptures, a typological mystagogy which enters deeply into the language and the life of the Sacred Liturgy and its rites and texts.

When a Priest picks up the Chalice at Mass, how can this change him? If he sees this Sacred Vessel simply as a cup to be raised to prescribed heights and over which he must sing or say prescribed formulas, I suggest that not much will happen to him. However,

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• if in the quiet of his room late at night he meditates on the cup of suffering which the Lord prayed would pass him by (Mt.26.39); or of the "cup of blessing" of which St. Paul writes.

• If each day, in the name of Jesus, he offers to those in need that "cup of cold water" of which our Savior spoke (Mk.9.4)

• If before the Blessed Sacrament he recalls the life-giving "cup of the new and everlasting covenant" (Lk.22.20)

• If when he looks upon Christ on the cross he see a chalice, emptied that we might be filled, "obedient unto death, death on a cross" (Phil.2.7-8).

• If the Priest come to deeply understands the Chalice that he holds in his hands, then he too will become a chalice: ready to be emptied, ready like Christ, to learn through obedience to the will of the Father. (Heb.5.8 )

A true understanding of what it means to take that Sacred Chalice in my hands gives me the grace to accept the kind of suffering I would instinctively shun, even as Jesus did in the garden (Mk.14.36). For most assuredly, in our own Gethsemenes we will find this same chalice offered to us over and over, until we have drunk it fully and thereby been "conformed to the image" (Rom.8.29) of Christ. Each day, then, as we raise that Chalice at Mass, we can make our own the words of Psalm 116, so appropriately incorporated into the offertory of the old Dominican rite:

What return shall I make to the Lord for all the good things he has done for me The cup of salvation I will take up, and I will call upon the name of the Lord.

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Conforma: Conform Your Life to the Lord’s Cross

The third imperative is nothing more than a restating of the first two. For if we know what we are doing, 

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if by prayer and study and sweat and agony we embrace the liturgical heritage which is ours in the sacred liturgy;

if we turn our lives into a cup of thanksgiving, poured out to the world, 

if we conform ourselves to the body of the Lord who has been broken to make us whole;

if we proclaim the Word made flesh in season and out;

if our lives are conformed to the mysteries we celebrate,

then the liturgies which we celebrate will be grafted onto the one great heavenly liturgy, the Pasch of the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. And that is what holiness is all about.

The idea here is that the priest, in order to preside in the person of Christ at the liturgy, must conform himself to the cross. At the heart of the mystery of the cross is the radical obedience of Christ, an “obedience unto death, death on a cross.”

The priest presider who thus conforms himself to the cross will be characterized by obedience. Obedience to the prayer of the Church, obedience to the word of God which calls him to die to himself in the model of Christ, and obedience to the euchology and rites he prays. 

Such an obedience makes of the priest presiding at liturgy a humble servant. He is not a host, like Stephen Colbert, his success is not gauged by how “entertained” people feel. He is not a performer like Anthony Hopkins; His success is not gauged by how much he stirs human emotions. He is not a politician like Joe Biden; his success is not gauged by how popular he is. He is a servant-priest in the likeness of Christ Jesus, whose success is gauged by how transparently he shows forth Christ, how effectively he leads people to Christ and how obediently he dies to himself so that it is no longer he who lives but Christ Jesus who lives in him, no longer he who is seen, but Christ Jesus who is alive and acting and present to his Church through him.

All of which brings us full circle to what the Church asks of the priest when he celebrates the Sacred Liturgy. Like the words of the Council Fathers with which I began, the homily provided for the bishop in the rite for the ordination of priests begins with a description of the unique role the priest is given by God in the Church and in her liturgy. 

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In sacred ordination, there is conferred on priests that sacrament through which “by the anointing of the Holy Spirit they are sealed with a special character and so configured to Christ as priest that they are strengthened to act in the person of Christ the Head.”

I suggest that a this sentence wonderfully uncovers a description of the distinctive character of priestly ministry and how it differs from every other ministry in the Church and in the liturgy. The Council of Trent made clear and the fathers of the Second Vatican Council reaffirmed that the one chosen to preside at Sacred Liturgy does so in the person of Christ and that such an order is transmitted from the Holy Spirit through the successors of the apostles, for it is not who choose God, but he who chose us. The use of the typically Thomistic vocabulary of conferral of the sacrament of orders on the priest so that he might be sealed with a sacred character and configures to Christ describes the way in which the priest is prepared for Sacred worship. 

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This is the vocation to which we have been called, the order into which the Church has ordained us. It is a responsibility to be taken with all the seriousness of which we are a capable. For we have been called to nothing less than to be the door through which God enters the lives of his people and the portal through which their prayers come before him. 

It is a great vocation of which none of us are worthy. But the fact remains that Christ has called us. May we strive each day to re-hear the words spoken at our ordination from the ordination homily I referenced above. May we hear the words spoken by the bishop and coming from Christ and his Church:

When joining men and women to the people of God through baptism, and remitting their sins in the name of Christ and the Church through the sacrament of Penance;

when supporting the sick with holy oil and celebrating sacred rites;

when you praise with thanksgiving and offer prayers throughout the hours of the day not only for the people of God but for the whole world as well,

be mindful that you are taken from among the people and set apart for the people in those things which pertain to God. Therefore, with true love and unfailing joy carry out the office of Christ the Priest, attending not to your own concerns but to those of Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Toward a Liturgical Spirituality of the Diocesan Priest

 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.

Discernment for Diaconate 2

 Please click here for the slides.