Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - At the beginning of this Year of the Priesthood, inaugurated on 19 June in St Peter's, the Holy Father Benedict XVI, with his typical love for the truth and for calm, is indicating certain “focal point” to which priests and doctrine should pay attention.
His outstanding interventions, which should receive attention if we are enter into the true spirit of the Year of the Priesthood, (besides the Indiction during an address to the Plenary of the Congregation for the Clergy, on 16 March 2009), include the Pope's eloquent Letter to Priests, moving in spirit, faith and in beauty, as well as for the extraordinary love for the Church revealed therein, his Homily at Vespers on 19 June and two Catechesis during Wednesday Audiences on 24 June and 1 July. In this time of the year, when many will have a chance to devote a few days to resting, it would be interesting to read at least these texts again in order to understand what the Successor of Peter is calling us to do and where his glance rests so that we too can “look where he is looking”.
Two points would appear extraordinarily relevant and effective for encouraging our reading. The first concerns the Priest's identification with his ministry: in times when we may appear doomed to “succumbing” to “ pastoral frenzy”, which not rarely affects also the activity of Priests, we are offered as our model St Jean Marie Vianney, Cure of Ars, who totally identified himself with his ministry, never living it as “subtraction” from self, but instead as the “altar of self-sacrifice”, or , the place in which to offer one's life to Christ, in humble obedience to the circumstances which the Lord allows for our sanctification. This is the life of the new man, having abandoned everything to possess the pearl he has found, forgetting the past, he tends towards the future, filled with joyful hope, hope which is certainty, that the Lord will fulfil his human, in as much as his freedom adheres totally and his 'yes' of the first instant is renewed. The entire promise of God and all the fecundity of the priestly ministry is in fact contained in that first 'yes'!”.
Another point raised in the Magisterium in this beginning of the Year of the Priesthood, is the correction which, in fact, the Holy Father intends to suggest to “theological-pastoral” counterposition between ontologically understood priesthood and functionally interpreted service. Frequently in various papal interventions, we find the classical terminology “ontological configuration” to Christ. It sounds like a truth of faith too often neglected in recent treatises on sacramentary matters or, as it too often happens, ecclesiological themes; almost as if Holy Orders, were not a sacrament, one of Seven, but instead a “super-ministry” within an 'all ministerial' Church. If everything is 'grace' and nothing is grace, then everything is 'ministry' and nothing is ministry. Certainly, the ontological perspective, Benedict XVI recalls, does not exclude that of service, it simply objectively indicates its cause: the Priest is radically at the service of people because he is at the service of God, and it is this “ ontological change”, which affects the being of the minister, which guarantees the effectiveness of his action, the fecundity of his ministry and, of no little importance, his human realisation, if accepted with docility, consciously assumed and proudly defended, with the humility of one who knows he must safeguard the entrusted treasure. Let us prepare then, during this time of Summer rest, to listen carefully to the Magisterium of Benedict XVI, who looks ahead and, with simplicity, calls us to look with him ahead towards Christ. (Agenzia Fides 23/7/2009; righe 40, parole 559)
