The Priesthood

Let’s look at the priesthood together in this column, since we hosted a clergy conference at the parish this past Thursday, Bishop Barres celebrated the 5PM Mass here this weekend, and this upcoming Friday we’re hosting a Diocesan Holy Hour for Vocations.

It goes without saying, I suppose, that the lifestyle of the priest is not all that attractive to young men these days. The priest lives alone - at the place where he works - unmarried and childless. Okay. So, not a great start. But, those facts don’t account for the whole story.

If a young man (or older man, for that matter) is graced to touch that part of Christ’s heart that finds pleasure in sacrificing those goods (the goods of marriage and child bearing, for example), that man will begin to know a secret joy - the joy of the priesthood.

That may contradict popular notions of happiness, but the priesthood is, after all, a mystery gifted to men from above. So I don’t think we priests need to pitch it by saying things like, “Well, I get to have fun too,” or, “This life is how I find personal fulfillment.”

Those things may be true, but they are not the reason a man becomes a priest. The only reason to become a priest is because the man perceives in his heart a call (a vocation) from God. Even then, he entrusts the judgement of that call to the Church through the seminary.

So, the priesthood does not conform to this world’s way of conceiving things. It is, as Pope John Paul II (who died 20 years ago this past Wednesday) was fond of saying, a gift to the man and to the world. The priesthood is a sign of God’s love for the world.

That, at least, has been my heart: that a man answers the call to the priesthood not because he hates the world, but because he loves the world. God does not send priests into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through them.

It is by participating deeply in the death of Christ that a man can be this for the world. We talk a lot about imitating Christ; and there’s something to be said for that. But we forget that God is calling us to become one with Christ, which is something even more.

It may sound pietistic, or just abstract, but I don’t mean it to be. In fact, the whole point of the priesthood is to incarnate the love of God - to allow it to become a living reality in our towns and parishes - to allow Christ, even now, to become flesh and to dwell among us.

I hope you’ll come to the church this Friday evening for the Holy Hour for Vocations, because I’ll be preaching about the priest who first touched my heart, Monsignor McDonald, who was born on April 10th, 1941, and who died with Christ every day of his priesthood. +