November 4, 2009
The mystery of the priesthood: men sealed for the sacred
By Father Daniel Cardo.
When someone goes to confession and tells their sins to a priest whose face cannot be seen and who they may not know, something extraordinary happens. The priest who hears of this sin committed against another person says, “I absolve you from your sins.”
Why? Who should be forgiving the sinner but the one against whom the sin has been committed? And moreover, what right or power does this priest have to wash away the guilt of an offense committed by another
person?
This mystery is constantly occurring within the Church. Men with weaknesses of their own give strength to the broken. Fragile men forgive the sins of others.
What’s more, sinners bring God to the world on the altar.
This is the great mystery of the priesthood. It is the unmerited gift of being able to do that which one could never have done with one’s own efforts. It is the impressive gift of representing Christ on earth.
It is the deeply moving gift of being able to speak with Jesus’ own “I” and to thus be able to say, “I absolve you from your sins” and “This is my Body.” When a priest pronounces these words, it is a mere man who says them, but it is God himself who makes them efficacious.
An impenetrable mystery: Christ speaks through the priest. It is He who becomes present in the bread. It is He who pardons. It is He who heals. Christ speaks and acts through the person of the priest. Christ is truly among us in the voice, the hands and the life of the priest.
That is what makes the priest different from any other person. It isn’t that he is necessarily better, nor holier. It isn’t because he is stronger or more worthy. What distinguishes him is that he has been elected to be another Christ and has been consecrated to that calling.
Through the sacrament of holy orders, the priest receives the anointing of the Holy Spirit, which causes a most profound change in his very being. In his nature, he is the same. But by grace, he is not the same, for he has been configured to the Christ-head and, therefore, truly acts in the person of Christ. This is how he can say to someone who has sinned against another, “I absolve you.” It isn’t because he has the power to do so, nor because he was the one offended. Rather, the priest is able to say such words because it is Christ who speaks with his voice.
All the People of God participate in the universal priesthood, having been consecrated to it in baptism so that they can offer their lives to God by living faith, hope and charity. Within this universal vocation, however, the priestly vocation is a gift that bishops and presbyters receive. The difference between these two vocations is an essential one, and it is not one of degree. This important difference is a sacrament whose mark cannot be erased because the man who is ordained becomes “a priest forever.”
The prayer with which a bishop consecrates a priest specifically asks that the man’s heart be renewed with a “spirit of holiness.” Every member of the Church is called to be a saint. But for the priest, this vocation is particularly urgent: a good priest is a holy priest. At the heart of this holiness is the particular vocation to friendship with Jesus.
In his last homily before being elected pope, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spoke some touching words about this call: “Truly, the love and friendship of God was given to us so that it might also be shared with others. We have received the faith to give it to others—we are priests in order to serve others. … He reveals his face and his heart to us. He shows us the tenderness he feels for us, his passionate love that goes even as far as the folly of the cross. He entrusts himself to us, he gives us the power to speak with his ‘
During ordination, after the bishop has anointed the hands of the new priest and the newly ordained is vested with the outward signs of his new office—the stole and chasuble—the bishop presents a chalice and paten to the new cleric. The newly ordained receives them while on his knees, and he hears the bishop say: “Know what you are doing, imitate the mystery you celebrate—model your life on the mystery of the Lord
The priestly vocation is a mystery: the priest is a man like any other but sealed for the sacred. His path of fidelity and holiness is marked by that exhortation, which he ought to remember all of his days as though for the first time: “Know what you are doing.” The priest must always be aware of what happens when he pronounces some simple yet profound words and makes a few gestures. He must be conscious of the fact that God comes to us whenever he asks. He ought to marvel that he, poor and unworthy, is capable of so much because God works through him.
This is what makes the priest different. This is what should make him call out to God daily, full of gratitude and humility, as did that rural priest in Bernanos’ novel, “The Diary of a Country Priest.” There the priest, after becoming conscious of having been the instrument by which God reconciled someone who had been far from Him, declared, “Oh, miracle—thus to be able to give what we ourselves do not possess, sweet miracle of our empty hands.”
Father Daniel Cardó is a member of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae and is chaplain at St. Malo Retreat Center in
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