Re-Imaging Holy Orders

Transcription

1 Re-Imaging Holy Orders Clergy Life and Ministry Conference held in North Sydney on Tuesday, 14 th July 2009 The founders of this Conference deliberately entitled this particular talk as Holy Orders, so that it would cover the aspects of bishop, priest, and deacon. It is clear that by the second decade of the second century, as early as that, these three levels of Holy Orders existed in the church, not with the same precision of definition that they now enjoy, but nevertheless actually. In this talk, I do not wish to speak of the different Orders separately, because there is a unity across all three, focused on the Eucharist. That is obvious for priests and bishops, and with deacons there is a specific orientation towards the bishop, who at the altar is the symbol of the Church, when surrounded with the presbyterate and the faithful. At his ordination, the deacon is asked, are you resolved to shape your way of life always according to the example of Christ, whose body and blood you will give to the people? In the prayer at ordination says, look with favour on these servants of yours, whom we now dedicate to the office of deacon, to minister at Your holy altar. There are common themes to the ordination of all three Orders, and deacons, priests and bishops have the same invocation in the litany Bless these chosen ones. Bless these chosen ones and make them holy. Bless these chosen ones, make them holy, and consecrate them for Your sacred duties. Holy Orders sets certain men apart, in the words of the liturgy, for the service of God s people in a special and sacramental way. Therefore, the re-imaging that applies to one, must apply to all three. Mercifully, I do not have to go into what happens to a man during the conferring of Holy Orders. I refer you to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs , for your enlightenment in that regard. It is all there the traditional scholastic notion of indelible character, a new formulation of it under the word configuration, the use of the word seal, and the notion of a personal relational consecration. Ecclesial ministry also has a personal character in as much as each minister, in virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, is responsible before 1

2 Christ who called him personally and conferred on him His mission. (Catechism, para 181) Images are pictures, and a very useful day was spent in the Archdiocese of Adelaide looking at the image of the priesthood as shown in the films Going My Way (1944), Mass Appeal (1984). There are other films which could have been shown, such as Priests in the 1990 s, and the absolutely dreadful documentary Deliver Us from Evil, the story of Fr O Grady, a horrendous serial abuser, issued in Going My Way was produced in 1944 at a time when there was a need for feel good entertainment. It was hugely successful and won seven Oscars. Those of you who remember it, will recall Bing Crosby as the young curate (even though he was aged 41 at the time!) and Barry Fitzgerald was the aged parish priest, and he was only 56 in 1944! Mass Appeal in 1984 had Jack Lemmon as the main priest, and all the themes are there, and still with us twenty-five years later, I would suggest a song and dance theology, workaholism, alcoholism, are gays able to be ministers, homophobia, comfortable life styles. There is a timeliness now about this topic. The Chicago theologian, Robert Barron writes that, This is an extremely difficult time for priests. With the revelations of clergy sexual misconduct with children and adolescents and with the resignations of prominent bishops after scandalous violations of the celibacy vow, some priests have gone beyond the point of shock and surprise to a state of numbness. Many wonder whether permanent damage has been done to the priesthood, whether we will ever recover the trust and confidence that have been lost. Some speculate that. this is the beginning of the end of the priesthood as we know it. In that same vein, the Irish Jesuit, Fergus O Donoghue wrote in The Tablet recently, in the aftermath of the Ryan Report, Irish priests and religious are being excoriated; Irish Catholicism is being condemned as fundamentally flawed. The excessive respect that we Irish priests and religious used to receive has been turned on its head. Away from the sexual scandals, Barron also notes: Too many priests feel at sea without focus and orientation, without spiritual moorings, unable to articulate for themselves who they are and why they remain faithful to their commitments. The laity have been enabled and 2

3 commissioned brought to much greater involvement. All of this change has been healthy and revitalising for the church, but many priests feel that, in the process, their role has been diminished and their unique contribution undervalued. Despite all this, I think these are rather exciting times to be a person in Holy Orders in Australia. There is a coming together, a confluence of so many factors within the statistics of church attendance, new models of parishes, new styles of priesthood, the rise of lay ministry, the church acknowledging and taking stock of its scandals, and perhaps an upturn of vocations. What St Paul said in 1 Corinthians so long ago still rings very true for us people must think of us as Christ s servants, stewards entrusted with the mysteries of God. What is expected of stewards is that each one should be found worthy of His trust. And in his second go at the Corinthians, Paul wrote of the baptised, and this would pertain to us especially in Holy Orders, and we, with our unveiled faces reflecting like mirrors the brightness of the Lord, all grow brighter and brighter as we are turned into the image that we reflect; this is the work of the Lord who is Spirit. We are mirrors of the Lord who turn into His image. Andrew Grille summarises it thus despite themselves and the crisis in their morale, priests are nonetheless perceived as sacraments of a world that transcends our own. They are the sacramental persons, par excellence. That is a hint of where our imaging must find its source. The transition in the perception of those in Holy Orders would be well known to everyone in this room, granted our age. Just as there was a change from Going My Way, in 1944 to Priests in the 1990 s, so we are well aware and do not need to have elaboration on the transition summarised by James Bacik - from pedestal to participation - from classical creature to bearer of the mystery - from the lone- ranger style to collaborative ministry - from monastic spirituality to a secular spirituality - from savings souls to liberating people. If I may be permitted to adapt a Jesuit document to this situation, it is something written fifteen years ago from The 34 th General Congregation SJ in 1995, but its present relevance remains striking. It gives the context as, we live in a broken world where men and women are in need of integral healing, the power for which comes ultimately from God. 3

4 Adapting that document to this seminar, it would read,. common tasks are to be found for those in Holy Orders: how to find words to speak to the men and women of our times who are no longer moved by the Christian message; how to be faithful to the tradition of the Church and at the same time interpret it in secularised cultures; how to minister effectively to both the poor and the rich; how to integrate our spiritual ministries with our social ministries; how best to serve in a Church in which there are tensions; how to mediate between different cultures and groups within the same country; how to enable the Church to be truly Catholic in the comprehensiveness and cultural variety of its practice and faith; how to enable the world to become, in all aspects of its life, the Kingdom that Christ proclaimed. Fifteen years, ago in 1995, the contemporary challenges were described Our ministry is particularly directed towards those who have not heard the Gospel; those who are at the margins of the church or of society; those who have been denied their dignity; those who are voiceless and powerless; those weak in faith or alienated from it; those whose values are undermined by contemporary culture; those whose needs are greater than they can bear. In the re-imaging, Fr Steven Rossetti, author of the recent work The Joy of Priesthood, himself a diocesan priest from New York, writes, diocesan priesthood has long been viewed as a lifestyle with little spirituality. What spirituality it did have, it was thought, consisted of remnants adapted from the religious life and monastic enclosures. The diocesan priests spiritual life was thought of as being carved out of a busy day full of the demands of public ministry. Rossetti challenges that view admirably, in terms easier to understand than Aschenbrenner, when he writes a diocesan priest has a unique charism and thus a unique spiritual life. Instead of viewing his spirituality as one of trying to squeeze out a few sacred moments in an otherwise unspiritual day, he should recognise that the life of a diocesan priest among his people is an integral part of his spirituality and the way in which God is revealed to him..the diocesan priest is someone who lives with the people, and each becomes a part of the others life. Almost every other element of his spirituality flows from this one inescapable fact. The diocesan priest does not have a calling apart from the People of God whom he serves. He lives among them, and as the years pass, the lives of a diocesan priest and the people whom he serves become inextricably intertwined. 4

5 Bishop Tim Costelloe from Melbourne notes that the Pontificate of John Paul II, which ended in April 2005 was marked among other things by a constant concern for the situation of ordained ministry within the Church. It is as if John Paul II picked up the sentiment that the promotion of the laity in Vatican 2 had led to a devaluation of those in Holy Orders. As we know, there has been much talk about a crisis in the clerical state. John Paul II response was prolific. In his many writings and addresses he came back to the idea of the significance of the ordained ministry. He began the practice of writing an annual letter to priests for Holy Thursday. He spoke on the ordained ministry in his series of Wednesday addresses, and in so many homilies. He gave to the Church the Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis after the 1990 Synod of Bishops on the priesthood, a document that is a treasure. His writings have also been a forceful impact in their re-imaging of Holy Orders. He sees the ordained ministry as constituted by a special relationship to Christ the Priest, a flowering of the more fundamental relationship established in baptism. Like the priesthood of Christ, those in Holy Orders are called to self-sacrifice, an act of self- offering to God on behalf of humanity. He sees priestly figures in Christ as priest, shepherd, spouse and head. There is only one priesthood in the Church, the priesthood of Christ, and all the faithful share in that through baptism. The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of the ministerial priesthood being at the service of the common priesthood of the faithful. The ordained are to serve the priesthood of the faithful. All the faithful are baptised as priests, prophets and kings, and ordained ministers are to work to enable the priesthood of all believers to exercise itself in the world, so that the Church, which is the body of Christ, might continue through all its members, lay, consecrated and ordained, to be the presence of Christ for the world, fulfilling the mission of anointer, healer, preacher and shepherd. John Paul II wrote The apostles and their successors, in as much as they exercised an authority which comes to them from Christ, the head and shepherd, are placed with their ministry in the forefront of the Church as a visible continuation and sacramental sign of Christ in His own position before the Church in the world (PDV 16) John Paul II s thought is far away from any re-imaging that would condone clericalism. A recent issue of Inform quotes St Gregory of Nyssa though in outward appearance he (the priest) is the same as before, by certain unseen power and grace, he is transformed into a higher being. 5

6 Using that type of imagery could be a dangerous step backwards, giving fuel to a resurgence in clericalism. Clericalism has done much damage to the Church, placing both heavy demands and unwarranted power in the hands of the ordained, and at the same time relegating the laity to a role of passive and subservient dependence on the clergy, as Bishop Costelloe says. John Paul II is quite clear in this area The priesthood is not an institution that exists alongside the laity or above it. The priesthood of bishops and priests, as well as the ministry of deacons, is for the laity, and precisely for this reason it possesses a ministerial character, that is to say, one of service. Moreover, it highlights the baptismal priesthood, the priesthood common to all the faithful. (Holy Thursday Letter to Priests, 1990, Paragraph 3) Costelloe again it is the Church, the community of the baptised, which is a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God s own people. In John Paul s thought, the ordained priesthood exists in the Church as a ministry of service in order to enable the Church to be what it is called to be a priestly people. As St John Vianney said a long time ago The priest is not a priest for himself; he does not give himself absolution; he does not administer the sacraments to himself. He is not for himself, he is for you.. The priesthood is the love of the Heart of Jesus. So what new images are coming forward as we consider the re-imaging? Robert Barron states that what could kill us as a Church is losing the sense of Mystery. What could contribute mightily to that loss is the weakening and dissipation of the priesthood. The time has come not for dismantling the priesthood (Holy Orders) but for building it up. He says that one of the greatest post-conciliar mistakes was to turn the priests into psychologists, sociologists, social worker, counselor - anything but a uniquely religious leader. He argues that we should look again at the notion of ontological change that occurs at ordination. Those in Holy Orders are made different, while at the same time eschewing applications that make it elitist and exclusive. Situating Holy Orders within the context of baptismal ministry helps lessen that danger. There are three images for those in Holy Orders that might suit this paper. They are the wounded healer, the bearer of mystery and prophets of the Church. 6

7 People are familiar with the notion of Wounded Healer coming from Henri Nouwen. It goes back before Nouwen s writings on that matter, to Karl Rahner s work, for example, Servants of the Lord, published in 1968, where he has a section entitled The Man with the Pierced Heart. Wounded Healer is an easier phrase to handle. Rahner wrote, in a word, tomorrow s priest will be the man with the pierced heart, from which alone he draws strength for his mission. With the pierced heart, pierced through by the godlessness of life, pierced through by the folly of love, pierced through by lack of success, pierced through by the experience of his own wretchedness and profound unreliability he is a man with the pierced heart because he is to lead men to the very core of their existence, to their inmost heart, because he can only do so if he has found his own heart; because he and others can only find this central existence, the heart, if they accept its being pierced, pierced by the incomprehensibility of love that is pleased to conquer only in death He no longer carries out his mission from a little ecclesiastical state, he is no longer a village pope, he no longer figures automatically among the notabilities; social privilege and social prestige are slipping away. By degrees he is becoming no more than what he is meant to be the man who is God s religious man, who believes, hopes, loves..the man with the pierced heart that is God s true temple and the fountain of the Spirit and the true strength of his mission and credibility. When I read that back in 1968, I thought Rahner was way off the planet, wallowing in teutonic lugubriousness. But he was talking of the priest of tomorrow, and he wrote that more than forty years ago, so presumably tomorrow is around about now. I can acknowledge much truth in this talk of the wounded healer, but I am not sure what to do with it, except to place myself at the back of the temple rather than up the front with the Pharisee. Michael Buckley, an influential spiritual writer in the States, has a recent article which commences Are you weak enough to be a priest? Buckley has been the Rector of a Theologate. One can agree with his starting point that if a man is clever enough or devious enough, or poised enough, he can limit his horizons and expectations and accomplish pretty much what he would want. He can secure his perimeters and live without a sense of ineffectual efforts, a feeling of failure or of inadequacy or of shame before his temperament or his past. Buckley talks of Jesus and body image. Psychologists tells us that we evaluate ourselves in terms of our spontaneous body images, that we sense about our bodies is what we sense and feel about ourselves. So how does Jesus perceive His body and so perceive Himself? He perceives a body that was broken for us, 7

8 blood that was shed for us. He understands Himself as a sacrificed self, effective only passing through His destruction, giving life and freedom only because He Himself has moved through death and terror and achieved new life. He makes a very intriguing comparison between Socrates and Christ, a judgment between divine and human excellence. Socrates went to his death with calmness and poise. He accepted the judgment of the court, discoursed on the alternatives suggested by death and on the dialectical indications of immortality, found no cause for fear, drank the poison and died. Jesus was almost hysterical with terror and fear; He cried a thousand tears to Him who was able to save Him from death. He looked for Peter and his friends for comfort and prayed for an escape from death, and He found neither. Finally He established control over Himself and moved into His death in silence and lonely isolation, even into the terrible interior suffering of the hidden Divinity, the absence of God. Buckley does not believe that the difference between drinking hemlock and being nailed to a cross explains the different response. He believes that Jesus was a more profoundly weak man than Socrates, more liable to physical pain and to weariness, more sensitive to human rejection and contempt, more affected by love and hate. Socrates never wept over Athens. Socrates never expressed sorrow and pain over betrayal of friends. He was possessed and integral, never over extended, convinced that the just man could never suffer genuine hurt. And for this reason, Socrates one of the greatest and most heroic men who have ever existed, a paradigm of what humanity can achieve within the individual was a philosopher. And for the same reason, Jesus of Nazareth was a priest ambiguous, suffering, mysterious, and salvific. In that excellent work Spiritual Direction, writings from Nouwen, he comments how we tend to hide ourselves from God and from others, presenting to God and to others only parts of ourselves with which we feel comfortable, and which we feel will evoke a positive response. Nouwen says, however, spiritual guidance affirms the basic quest for meaning. We must allow all the daily expressions of life joy, loneliness, fears, anxiety, insecurity, doubt, ignorance, the need for affection, support, understanding, and the long cry for love to be recognised as an essential part of the spiritual quest. It seems to me that if we are to adopt or accept a model of one in Holy Orders as a bearer of Mystery, then the notion of the wounded healer is essential if spiritual pride is not to destroy us. 8

9 Bearer of Mystery Although Michael Hehir s book, The Lost Art of Walking on Water Reimagining the Priesthood (2004) speaks of priests as Bearers of Mystery, Richard Barron was promoting this notion ten years earlier, with his work Priest as Bearer of the Mystery. It is a view of reality, of the presence of God as the source of all being in all things. As the country priest says in the novel by Bernanos, everything is grace. He says at the heart of Christian faith is the recognition of Christ as passionate, unconditional love, and the priest is taken up by that power and leads the people of God into an evermore intimate contact with it, being one who performs the sacrifice, linking heaven and earth, mediating between the mystery of being as supported by God, and the love of God which charges all being. There is a raft of other writers on the same theme. Rahner wrote earlier still, Some people live with the comprehension that they do not belong to themselves, that they are consecrated to the Mystery to whom they have said yes with all their being. They live in a way that awakens the experience of God in others. They awaken in others the question of Eternal Life. These people seem to dwell completely in God s explicit nearness and announce that, if only by their poise and bearing. They have the scent of the forgiving, loving God about them. They herald that love transcends all egotism, giving witness to the fact that we are most ourselves when we give ourselves away. Rahner speaks of tomorrow s priest being one whose real success is always vanishing into the mystery of God and because he is not a psychotherapist dressed in the old fashion costume of a magician. He will speak softly; he will not imagine that any eloquent argumentation of his conveyed in light the darkness of life and the constant assaults to which faith is exposed; he will calmly let God triumph for he himself is defeated. The Baltimore priest, Joseph Gallagher writes that we re meant to heal souls and speak of mysteries that are too good to be true, to awaken minds and imaginations to the new order and new being that is God s gift to all. Barron says that the mystagogue is the one who has been entrusted with the sacred symbols and given the responsibility of making them speak. John Paul II says that the one in Holy Orders is called through his witness to prolong the presence of Christ among those whom he serves. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin wrote in 1995 of priests as religious leaders, doctors of the soul 9

10 The priest of Jesus Christ is, first and foremost, the on e who bears the Mystery of God and initiates others into it.. The priest is the one who bears that strange power and who leads the people of God into an evermore intimate contact with it. In carrying out this task, one is most authentically a priest. This notion of the person in Holy Orders bishop, priest, deacon is one called to be a bearer of the Mystery, is a very challenging and very summoning image. It summons us from wherever we are to go deeper, to discover the heart of God within our own hearts. Rohan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, once wrote that a vocation is what we have when all the games have ended. Those in Holy Orders can play any games, and the games can carry us on, for many years. But when they have ended, are we bearers of the Mystery? I pray to have the outlook that the country priest had in Bernanos s novel, that everything is grace. In the year that I studied that novel in French, the diary of the country priest, we also studied Jean-Paul Sartre, and the contrast between the two is staggering. In his play, No Exit, Sartre has the famous line that hell is other people. Independently from him, the country priest in his diary says, hell is to no longer love. To be a bearer of the Mystery we must go further within. We would also need, as people in Holy Orders, to have the mystery of the Eucharist as the prism through which we view all reality. In the Eucharist we are constantly re-presenting ourselves and the people to the mystery of Calvary and Easter, re-presenting to the sacrament of salvation that transforms the world. And there is an outlook to which a Bearer of Mystery would aspire, such as the outlook contained in the description given by Teilhard dechardin in his Mass on the World, the reflections he made when he found himself in China in the 1920 s without bread or wine. He made his Eucharistic prayer of a hymn to the universe All the things in the world to which this day will bring increase: all those that will diminish: all those too that will die: all of them, Lord, I try to gather into my arms, so as to hold them out to You in offering. This is the material of my sacrifice; the only material that You desire over every living thing which is to spring up, to grow, to flower, to ripen during this day say again the words: This is My Body. And over every death-force, which waits in readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down, speak again Your commanding words which express the Supreme Mystery of faith: This is My Blood. 10

11 This year and this month, on July 20 th, marks the 40 th anniversary of when man first walked on the moon. What is not quite so well known is what happened as Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong prepared to take that walk, which was a small step for man and a great step for mankind. While Armstrong prepared for the moon-walk, Aldrin unpacked bread and wine and put them on the computer console. They then read the passage from St John, I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Aldrin writes I poured the wine into the chalice..in the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine twirled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup. It was interesting to think that the first liquid ever poured on the moon and the very first food eaten there were the bread and wine of Communion. Prophets of the Church The third image is that of those in Holy Orders as prophets of the church. The Catechism states (para 321) that the two sacraments of Holy Orders and Matrimony confer a special grace for a particular mission in the church to serve and build up the people of God. There is much written about those in Holy Orders being the givers of vision and gadflies. Without the activity of zealous bishops, deacons and priests, the history books are full of examples of whole populations of Christians drifting into indifferentism. To build up the church one must be a giver of vision, to take the marvelous descriptions of the Christian calling and identity that are found in the Scriptures. In an age when the credibility of the church has been seriously tarnished, and when there seems to be a retreat into forms and styles from which we believed we had moved ourselves, the role of those in Holy Orders as prophets, speaking out and on behalf of the church is of special significance. The prime role of the prophet in these circumstances is educational, to move with the Spirit and reinforce and enhance the vision of the faithful as baptised to being priest, prophet and royal person. It is one of the most exciting challenges in the church for the ordained ministry, to help the church live its vocation as a priestly people, the whole church. In that article of forty-plus years ago, Rahner asked, what will a priest of tomorrow be like and look like if he is to prove in some sense worthy of his mission? He makes the response that the person in Holy Orders will not be simply the official of a religious institution, and makes the challenging comment: Instead of his bearing witness through the church, the church will rather bear witness through him. 11

12 We have heard so much about the person in Holy Orders being the teacher of vision, because it is vision that draws us. As a Sydney headmaster once said, what a person believes in is crucial: a belief in Christ will produce one type of society, a belief in Lenin another. Take one example, from 2 Corinthians, how we might set the faithful alight if we were able as prophets of the church to convey the images of Paul. And we, with our unveiled faces reflecting like mirrors the brightness of the Lord, all grow brighter and brighter as we are turned into the image that we reflect; this is the work of the Lord who is Spirit. We grow into being the images of Christ in the world. And there is the astonishing prayer of the Liturgy, in the Preface, which prays that the Father might see and love in us what He sees and loves in Christ. Those in Holy Orders are not to be summarised or defined simply by what they do, as worker, preacher, minister, counselor. The one in Holy Orders is to be defined not by what he does, but by who he has become, by virtue of that ordination. John Wesley, brother of the founders of Methodism, once described his preaching style I set myself on fire, and people come out and watch me burn. There is a fire of the love of Christ behind such statements, and the fire of the love of Christ must suffuse all that we do in Holy Orders. As prophets of the church, we must also have an attitude of feeling and love for the church. Despite the scandals, despite the certain exclusivism, despite all sorts of things, the church remains a community with characteristics that cannot be replaced elsewhere. We have to sell a vision of the church to our people, so that they know that it is their community, not simply a strange society. It must be seen to be a home, the community where they belong, the one which gives meaning to their aspirations. And the church, transcending all its limitations, remains a place of the Word, because that is where the Scriptures were formed, and which in turn form it, and out of those Scriptures comes the vision that we try to preach. The church is also the servant of the weak, and throughout its history has shown a special care for those at the edges, in the great history of the religious orders, and the response of the church to human suffering. It is also the home of the saints, not exclusively so, of course, but nevertheless in times of its greatest scandals it has produced people outstanding in holiness. Look at our own Mary MacKillop, achieving such heights of heroic virtue despite the actions of the official church. Fundamentally, however, the church is for us the Giver of the Bread of Life. We cannot receive the Bread of Life elsewhere. We have to communicate this notion of the church as the community enhanced by those attitudes, so that people will feel drawn to the Father through their membership of this community. 12

13 There is also the image of the church which transcends institutionalism, and historical overloads. In Chapter 20 of St John s Gospel Jesus appears amongst His followers. He stood among them, the resurrection coming into transform. He said to them, peace be with you and we are to be bearers of peace. He said that as the Father had sent Him, so we too are being sent on mission. He told us that we were to receive the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, and that we were to be a community which forgives. We were also to retain some sins, so that we could recognise evil, and name it as such. And He showed them His hands and His side, the hands of compassion and justice and tenderness, the side which enters the heart, to reveal the love out of which all of this flows, that God so loved us that He sent His only Son so that all might be saved. We need our brothers to support us in this vocation, as we try to live these new images. When the friends lowered their mate down before the Lord, Jesus was impressed. The Gospel, says, seeing their faith, He said unto him It was the faith of the friends who helped to save. We need the community of our brothers in Holy Orders to help us keep true to our vocation. And for all of us may there be the prayer made by all the people at our ordination, as priest, deacon or bishop Thank you. Bless these chosen ones Bless these chosen ones and make them holy Bless these chosen ones, make them holy, and consecrate them for their sacred duties. Bishop Greg O Kelly SJ Bishop of the Diocese of Port Pirie 13