Year of the priest
Homebush Gathering
4th August 2009

The Priest: A man of God and a man of the Church

1. In his letter to his “brother priests” explaining his intentions and hopes in calling for a special Year of the Priest, Pope Benedict XVI explained that he sees this Year as an opportunity “to deepen the commitment of priests to an internal renewal for the sake of a more forceful and incisive witness to the Gospel in today’s world”. We priests are being called on during this Year firstly and foremost to come into a closer and more intense relationship with the Lord we serve, for each one to be a man of God.
   
   
2. The Holy Father suggests two great priests and apostles as models for this renewal: St. John Mary Vianney and St. Paul. The Curé of Ars was a simple man, a humble man, but as a priest he was conscious of being an immense gift for his people. He wrote: “A good shepherd, a pastor after God’s heart, is the greatest treasure that the Lord God can grant to a parish, and one of the most precious gifts of divine mercy”. What he was able to achieve in that parish, which on his arrival he found to be in a sorry state as far as religion was concerned, was truly miraculous. There was little love of God there when he arrived, but during his life in Ars he was able to put it there.
   
   
3. How did he achieve this? By letting his people meet Christ when they met him; by bringing Christ and his saving love into their lives and into their homes by being as close as possible to Christ in his own life, by being truly a man of God. On his arrival in the parish, he didn’t seem to have much to offer. He had struggled with his studies and his professors would have placed little hope in his future. Yet to-day he is the model for us all, the patron saint of the Priest.
   
   
4. St, Paul speaks of himself to the Corinthians as being an “aroma of Christ for God’s sake”. “We speak, he says, in Christ’s name” (2 Cor. 12). This is what every priest is called to do. St. John Vianney, although he was so humble, knew that the gift he had received in ordination was one of God’s most precious gifts of mercy. He had some very beautiful words to describe the priesthood: “O how great is the priest! … If he realized what he is, he would die … God obeys him: he utters a few words and the Lord descends from heaven at his voice, to be contained within a small host”.
   
   
5. I must admit that I had never thought of my Mass in such a way, and yet since I read those words I realize just how true they are. Actually, when I think about them, they make me tremble. Whatever may be the pastoral ministry entrusted to us, the Mass is always at the centre, or should always be at the centre of that ministry. The priest is there as a man of God. St. John Vianney asks: “What use would be a house full of Gold, were there no-one to open its door? The priest holds the key to the treasures of heaven: it is he who opens the door; he is the steward of the good Lord; the administrator of the goods”. Those “goods” are not his; they are the Lord’s; but the priest is his man, the man entrusted with their care and administration: a man of God.
   
   
6. In that house of gold, there are treasures that are entrusted to the priest and to the priest alone: baptism (except in special circumstances), absolution from sin, the special grace for those who enter into marriage, extreme unction.
   
   
7. No priest, however, is given this treasure for himself, just for his own sanctification. The priest is not a priest for himself; he is a priest for others, for the people of God: a man of God, but also a man of the Church. The same St. John Mary Vianney, like St Paul, was a wonderful pastor. He raised a parish from the dust as it were to become a model for others, by just being a pastor after the heart of Christ. Reading his life, you get the impression that he did nothing out of the ordinary, but he most certainly did the ordinary in an extraordinary way.
   
   
8. We are here this-morning because of the Church. We are a gift to others through the ministry entrusted to us by the Church. It was as members of God’s people that we were called to the priesthood; it was by ordination conferred by a bishop of the Church that we received the power of the Holy Spirit to become the extraordinary gift for others that we have been considering. What would John Vianney have been able to do for those people of Ars without the power and authority he received through the Church?
   
   
9. We owe so much to the Church, the Body of Christ; Christ’s parting gift to the world. It is true that he has placed this gift in hands that can be fragile, just as he places the gift of priesthood in our hands that can be fragile. We each of us have an obligation to make the Church worthy of its calling, faithful to its mission: a source of grace for a troubled world. At times, we are critical of the way this or that is done, but apart from the Church as priests we are nothing.
   
   
10. Was it not through the Church that we received our priestly ordination? Was it not as members of the Church that the flock entrusted to our care has come together? The Sacraments that we administer, are they not the sources of grace handed down to us by the Church? We are not lone voices setting up a stand in the Domain and proclaiming to those passing by that Jesus gave his life for them and that his gift of reconciliation is entrusted to us, but our voices are joined in bringing this message to the world by other voices, of every tongue in every part of the world, since we are the one body of Christ, the Church.
    
    
11. In placing this year under the special care of St. John Mary Vianney and St. Paul, Pope Benedict XVI explained that “though these two saints followed very different life paths, there is a fundamental factor that unites them”, and this should be our aim during this year, namely total identification with the ministry entrusted to us in deep communion with Christ, This is the challenge that we have before us: to be totally identified with the ministry entrusted to us – men of the Church -, in deep communion with Our Lord Jesus Christ.
    
    
12. We all know well how difficult it can be at times to be in deep communion with Christ while, at the same time, being occupied by the seemingly never ending demands on our time and energy by the needs of the people entrusted to us: to be at the same time totally identified with our ministry yet still in deep communion with Christ: a man of God and a man of the Church. Pope Benedict knows how difficult this can be and warns of the danger for a priest identifying the essence of the priesthood solely with the concept of ‘service’, of being a servant of his flock, but out of touch with Christ. He reminds us that before all else the priest is in Christ, the priest is for Christ and then with Christ at the service of his people.
    
    
13. When I was in Bangladesh in the 1970s, I met with most of our priests working in that very strong Muslim country. There were small communities of Catholics scattered all over the area, most of the priests were still missionaries, although accompanied by a growing, young local clergy. Among the missionaries there were a number engaged in much needed various social programmes, like providing pumps for wells, teaching more efficient ways of caring for crops, introducing new species of fish into the village ponds, and so on. Their work and aid was appreciated. Yet, I was surprised to learn from our local Catholics in some of those villages that the priest they – and the Muslims – most loved was not one of those involved in social work, but an elderly Italian missionary who brought them not aid, but love – Christ’s love. They saw him as a man of God. I do not want in any way to lessen my admiration for those who were doing so much to better the lives of the Bangladeshi people or to suggest that they were not in communion with Christ. In fact, they were doing a great job in the hardest of economic situations, and their service was greatly appreciated. But they were often seen just as social workers. That made me think then as it still does thirty-five years later!
    
    
14. The ‘deep commitment to Christ”, of which the Holy Father speaks is I believe at the heart of the life of a priest. It implies being at the same time in deep communion with Christ: commitment through communion. Again, St. John Mary Vianney is an example for us. One cannot bring Christ to others without being in deep communion with Christ through prayer. As priests we don’t have to go far to be in the real presence of Our Lord. He is there in our tabernacles, and St. John Mary Vianney went there constantly for the grace and inspiration he needed to change the life of his parishioners. He was committed to their conversion, but knew he needed Christ to be Christ for them.
    
    
15. St. Paul wrote in Colossians 3:11: “There is only Christ; he is everything and he is in everything”. It is his priesthood that we share in a special way, but to which all those baptised are called. I am always moved by the words of St. Peter that we read in the First Preface for Sundays in Ordinary Time: with all those baprtised into the Body of Christ, “through his cross and resurrection he freed us from death and called us to the glory that has made us “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart to proclaim the mighty acts of God who called you out of darkness into his own wonderful light” (cfr. 1 Peter 2,9). Surely this makes our task as ordained priests a matter of communion and commitment: communion with Christ and commitment to making Him known and loved.
    
    
16. I think that we can all agree with something Pope Paul VI said at the time of the Second Vatican Council: Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses to the Gospel than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses”. I am convinced that this is even more the situation to-day than it was even then. Pope John Paul II, in my opinion, exemplified that same fact in his life. He was a great teacher, but that was not what brought all those hundreds of thousands of young and old to be present at his funeral, or to pass by in never-ending lines of faithful to pray at his tomb in St. Peters. In the time that I was close to him, in daily discussions or on travels around the world, there were so many times when the thought came to mind on seeing him with people that such must have been what Jesus was like as he met people on his way!
    
    
17. In a ministry that has taken me to many different countries and to the Church in greatly diverse situations, I treasure the fact that I am a man of the Church. There is just one Catholic Church, of which we are priests. The Church I knew in India was not the Indian Catholic Church, but the Catholic Church in India. The same in Burma, Bangladesh, Southern Africa, China, Latin America. If I mention this, it is because at times I have the impression that some here in Australia would like us to be more the Australian Catholic Church, than the Catholic Church in Australia. It is not just a matter of words, as the example of the Churches of the Anglican Communion demonstrates very clearly!
    
    
18. I experienced sadly a vibrant, apostolic Catholic Church in the Netherlands that sadly began to think of itself as the Dutch Catholic Church. It would do things the ‘Dutch’ way. Forty years later, there was little of any Church left there. They thought they had found a nice inlet, more beautiful than the main stream and more to their liking. Once cut off from the main stream, however, it gradually dried up. What seemed to many so exciting then, has since lost its attraction and the work of evangelization has to be done all over again. God has to be given back his place in the life of the Church.
    
    
19. Pope John Paul II reminded us in the Apostolic Exhortation “Pastores Dabo Vobis”, that the priesthood has a radical “communitarian form”, and can be exercised only in communion of priests with their bishop. Pope Benedict, referring to this goes on to explain in his letter to the priests of the Church: “This communion between priests and their bishop, grounded in the sacrament of Holy Orders and made manifest in the Eucharistic concelebration, needs to be translated into various concrete expressions of an effective and affective priestly fraternity. Only thus will priests be able to live fully the gift of celibacy and build thriving Christian communities in which the miracles which accompanied the first teaching of the Gospel can be repeated”.
    
    
20. I trust these reflections of mine may be of some help to you as you reflect on your own part in the Year of the Priest. I leave you with Pope Benedict’s final words of his letter to his brother priests, since they remind us of a powerful friend, intercessor and guide that we all have in our efforts to be more like the Master we serve, Jesus Christ.

To the Most Holy Virgin I entrust this Year of the Priests. I ask her to awaken in the heart of every priest a generous and renewed commitment to the ideal of complete self-oblation to Christ and the Church which inspired the thoughts and actions of the saintly Curé of Ars. It was his fervent prayer life and his impassioned love of Christ crucified that enabled John Mary Vianney to grow daily is his total self-oblation to God and the Church. May his example lead priests to that witness of unity with their bishop, with one another and with the lay faithful, which to-day, as ever, is so necessary. Despite all the evil present in the world, the words which Christ spoke to his Apostles in the Upper Room continue to inspire us. “In the world you have tribulation, but take courage. I have overcome the world”. Our faith in the Divine Master gives us the strength         to look to the future with confidence. Dear priests, Christ is counting on you. In the footsteps of the Curé of Ars, let yourselves be enthralled by Him. In this way, you too will be for the world in our time, heralds of hope, reconciliation and peace!

Quotations are taken from the letter of Pope Benedict XVI to the Priests – Vatican Information Service 19/6/2009 – www.vatican.va