PRIESTHOOD AND PAPACY

THE CHURCH graciously accepts the promise of every priest: "...to celebrate the mysteries of Christ faithfully and religiously as the Church has handed them down to us for the glory of God and the sanctification of Christ’s people". The trustworthy minister safeguards the integrity of Sacred Scripture and the prayers of the Mass. Eschewing personalistic interventions, affectations and mawkish pageantry of any kind, he preserves the Sacred Liturgy from corruption and banality. Knowing that the day of his initiation to heaven’s liturgy approaches, the faithful minister perseveres with humility and obedience. Many priests are distracted from evangelization, that is, the salvation and care of souls. Believing that a multitude of lesser duties and office work takes precedence, they have little time to "devote themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word". Our Lord himself affirmed the primacy of this divine duty and its sovereignty in the life of his disciples.

SECULARIST CULTURES, standing outside Christ's covenant and disdaining the authority of his hierarchical Church, cannot determine the norms and conditions by which her ministry is replenished with workers for the harvest. However stimulating and innovative secularist idioms may appear, such obliquities are not the fertile soil required for the emergence of genuine candidates for the ministerial priesthood. Neither is the <em>spirit of the age</em> which proposes that priesthood be subject to the implacable ambitions of any person or special interest group. Christ who determined the paradigm of invitation and the model of priestly vocations has entrusted to the Church alone the authority to mediate both. Consequently, the norms of the ministerial priesthood and the discernment of worthy candidates are subordinate to the ministry of Peter whose discrete and disinterested governance conserves the will of God.

THERE IS no human debt greater than that owed by us to God Who created man in love. This holy debt cannot be calculated, because it is our very life that we owe to God. This debt begs to be paid, for it could not otherwise be called a debt, and we did not create God. Therefore each of us is beholding to God for our very self and for God’s creation of the whole human family. This divine obligation of love exists for all human beings even if all do not love God, for God has loved all His creatures from the beginning, and man is the highest of His creatures. It is to fulfill this divine obligation that I must preach, whether the subject is nice and easy or hard and rough, whether it has been heard once or a thousand times, whether I receive appreciation or scorn. For I am accountable to Christ for the salvation and care of the souls he has entrusted to my care and for my fidelity to his indefectible Church. There is only one way for priest and lay faithful alike to make a return on the love we receive from God, and to repay our divine obligation of gratitude.

SOME CATHOLICS stay away from sacramental reconciliation citing the deportment of one or more priests. Certainly anyone who has a truly unpleasant experience in the confessional deserves sympathy. Also deserving of our compassion are all who have been affected directly or indirectly by clergy who have betrayed the trust of their congregations and their Church. Holy Scripture reserves its strongest condemnation for hypocrites: men of God who preach one thing and practice another. Sacred Scripture denounces these leaders as faithless shepherds, false shepherds and assures the flock that they too will face God’s judgment:  "Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require my sheep at their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep; no longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them."

THROUGH THE laying-on of hands—a sacred, visible sign—the presiding priest invokes the invisible grace and power of the Holy Spirit of God on behalf of the worshiping assembly. The laying-on of hands—the invocation of mercy and Christ’s sacrifice on the cross—breaks the power of sin and lifts up the sinner in the sight of God. The laying-on of hands exemplifies the priest’s presbyteral authority to justly mediate the sanctifying grace of the Lord Jesus Christ through the sacramental life of the community of faith. The ceremonial act of imposing hands, encompassing as it does the whole person of the priest who acts in <em>persona Christi</em>  (Lat. in the person of Christ), solemnizes what God has accomplished through the order of grace.

THE PRIEST is not an endpoint or the ultimate result of a series of spiritual activities, experiences or tendencies. Rather, he sets his face towards God so that the faithful might do likewise. While aided by the Spirit, many priests will fail to pursue the spiritual quest to its beatific end. They will have yielded to fear and turned away from the <em>narrow gate</em>, the cross of Christ! Their failure to keep the evangelical counsels--to live simply, chastely and in obedience to lawful authority--will be the downfall of a multitude of souls, for children on milk cannot lead other children to solid food. The faithful can perceive in the priest a reflection of the <em>Alpha</em> and <em>Omega</em>, the only-begotten Son through whom all things were made: By mediating the mysteries of salvation on the altar of the cross of Christ, the priest of God prophesies the omega, the cosmic perfection of the order of grace.