Knights of Columbus

Several men prostrate themselves before the altat of St. Peter's Basilica during their ordination.

"Let us consider our call, brethren" (1 Cor 1:26). Let us remember and discover who we are!

This is the impassioned and persistent invitation Pope John Paul II has made to his brothers in the priesthood since his first Holy Thursday letter in 1979. In this ongoing dialogue with his brother priests, the pope urges rediscovery of the greatness of the mysterious gift of the priesthood by looking to the eternal priest: Jesus Christ, incarnate Son of the Father born of the Virgin Mary.

Today more than ever the priest runs the risk of embracing the mentality that an individual’s stature is measured only by his accomplishments. How easy it becomes for us to think that a priest is just a replaceable administrator of spiritual goods. Or that he is a Church bureaucrat. Or that his identity depends on the opinions of his foes and his friends.

Aware of the dangers in thinking this way, the pope has spent his 25 years of papacy, and almost 57 of priesthood, communicating the beauty of being a priest, and helping priests to live that mission which constitutes them (Catechesis on the Creed, 304).

The pope's own life is a moving witness that the identity of the priesthood derives its greatness from the priesthood of Christ, which has its roots in the mystery of the Trinity (Gift and Mystery, 75). The Father, rich in mercy, did not abandon man to his own misery. He sent his only-begotten Son to offer that perfect sacrifice which is able to restore the friendship between God and man. Christ, the redeemer of man, returns the love of the Father by giving back to him the whole of creation in that unique and complete offer of himself on the cross.

Christ's loving exchange allows the unfathomable love of the Father to reach every human being through the Holy Spirit, who is the bond of love between the Father and the Son, and their unlimitedly rich fruit. In Jesus of Nazareth, the one sent by the Father, through the Holy Spirit, man can encounter, experience and intimately participate in that divine love without which man remains incomprehensible to himself (Redemptor Hominis, 10).

Christ accomplishes his mission to communicate the mystery of the triune God by imitating the Father, that is to say, by generating communion and friendship (John 5:19; 15:15). Jesus of Nazareth chose some men and made them his friends. He offered them such a unity with himself that he gave them his very mission. To encounter them was to encounter Jesus Christ and the Father who sent him (Matt 10:40). They became his "sacramental representation" (Pastores Dabo Vobis, 15). The identity of the Apostles, and of the priests after them, derives from the love of the Father given in Christ, to whom they are sacramentally united through the power of the Holy Spirit. As the pope persuasively recalls, even before what he manages to accomplish, the priest prolongs the presence of Christ because he is alter Christus or "another Christ" (Catechesis of the Creed, 304).

The Father, who gives us his Son through Mary, also in Christ gives his being to the priest through Mary, mother of the Redeemer and mother of the Church. "Mary leads us to Christ ... and Christ leads us to his Mother" (Gift and Mystery, 28). In the same way as Christ took his humanity from Mary, his first tabernacle (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 55), the priest is also called to nurture the Marian dimension of his own being. The pope tells us that when at his ordination the priest lies prostrated to receive the Holy Spirit, he re-echoes Mary's fiat ("Thy will be done"). To imitate her availability and to bring forth the same presence, the pope encourages priests to pray the Angelus and the rosary. The priest's existence is called to be a permanent magnificat, praising God's deeds, and continuously meditating on God's Word. As Mary's gladness was able to embrace Simeon's prophecy that a sword would pierce her heart (Luke 2:35), the priest, certain of Christ's resurrection, is called to welcome the cross. He is, in fact, sacerdos et hostia, priest and sacrificial victim.

The priest is to welcome the Virgin Mary as his mother, as John did at the foot of the cross. This gracious act implies lovingly accepting the labor of allowing Christ to take flesh in the earth of one's own existence and of educating into the faith those whom the Father gives him. The priest becomes fruitful when, like Mary, he returns Christ's love for him with a virginal, undivided heart. In our overly sexualized Western culture, which has forgotten the meaning of human love, the pope's defense of the celibate priesthood is also prompted by his awareness that it is through the flesh that Christ shows that he alone is the ultimate fulfillment of man's desires. It is only when the priest does not experience the fullness of love which Christ brings that his life peters out and is no longer a consoling sign of Christ's beauty. The priest is called to give everything of himself to Christ because Christ gives himself completely and personally to the priest — so much so that the priest's very being changes.

Aware of man's weakness, the pope invites priests to give all of themselves to Christ through Mary for the sanctification of every man. This is indeed what his motto, Totus tuus ("All Yours"), proclaims (Gift and Mystery, 30). The pope's desire that all of the daily existence of his brother priests be configured to Christ and be spent for the salvation of man led him to re-propose the French priest St. John Vianney (1786-1859) as an incomparable model of life and priestly service ("Letter on Holy Thursday," 1986). The pope's closeness to the Mother of our Redeemer has allowed him to educate priests and seminarians by showing the fundamental importance of the Marian dimension of the priesthood.

The priest's relation to Christ is a treasure given not only for the priest to enjoy, but also for him to share. Christ brings some men into communion and friendship with him because he desires that through them everyone be part of the Father's merciful love. For the pope, the priest is a steward, one who is being brought into the dwelling place of God to distribute his riches. He gives what has been given to him, the sacramental presence of Christ, and he speaks of Christ, the one in whom and for whom everything is made.

The priest cannot communicate Christ without giving his very self, and he does it with and through all of his humanity. This is why, for the pope, the priest is not only ordained to celebrate the Eucharist. His whole life is to be eucharistic. Every Holy Thursday the pope reminds his priests with moving words that, in the Upper Room, the priesthood and the Eucharist are born together and that this unity is a sign of what they are to be and to give to others "to the end."

John Paul II's numerous trips, meetings, audiences and celebrations are his response to a tremendous need. In a world overflowing with words, images and slogans people need to encounter the humanity of Christ. Man is interested in participating in the communion with Christ only after he has seen that Christ makes man's life beautiful. In John Paul II we can see that Christianity is communicated only in an encounter, person to person. He shows that the priest is a prophet; that is to say, someone who proclaims through his own flesh that Christ is present, that he is the fulfillment of man's desires. The priest is not to repeat ready-made phrases or confine himself to the rectory. He is to meet the human family one by one, there where each one is — humanly and culturally speaking — and to extend to every one friendship and communion with Christ. Men and women of any culture and age throng to meet him because he communicates what the human heart is thirsting for, Christ.

The priest is not left alone to live his vocation. His ordination places him within that "sacramental brotherhood" formed by the bishops and priests in union with the pope (Catechesis on the Creed, 378). This fraternity, integral to his being, sustains him and allows him to grow in sanctity. Nevertheless, since the ordained priesthood flourishes from the sacrament of baptism, the priest also shares a brotherhood with all the baptized. He needs Christian families to become what they are, a sign of God's triune love (Familiaris Consortio, 17). How often a priest's faith is sustained and refreshed by the witness to Christ given by the people he is called to serve! As the pope often recalls, priests need the company and friendship of the laity to rediscover and to respond to their own vocation: to witness to Christ's mercy.

Father Antonio López is a member of the Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo. He is assistant professor of theology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C.