Letter to Seminarians
"For Us God Is Not Some Abstract Hypothesis"
H.H. Benedict XVI
October 18, 2010
Dear Seminarians,
When in December 1944 I was drafted for military service, the company
commander asked each of us what we planned to do in the future. I
answered that I wanted to become a Catholic priest. The lieutenant
replied: "Then you ought to look for something else. In the new Germany
priests are no longer needed". I knew that this "new Germany" was
already coming to an end, and that, after the enormous devastation which
that madness had brought upon the country, priests would be needed more
than ever. Today the situation is completely changed. In different ways,
though, many people nowadays also think that the Catholic priesthood is
not a "job" for the future, but one that belongs more to the past. You,
dear friends, have decided to enter the seminary and to prepare for
priestly ministry in the Catholic Church in spite of such opinions and
objections. You have done a good thing. Because people will always have
need of God, even in an age marked by technical mastery of the world and
globalization: they will always need the God who has revealed himself in
Jesus Christ, the God who gathers us together in the universal Church in
order to learn with him and through him life’s true meaning and in order
to uphold and apply the standards of true humanity. Where people no
longer perceive God, life grows empty; nothing is ever enough. People
then seek escape in euphoria and violence; these are the very things
that increasingly threaten young people. God is alive. He has created
every one of us and he knows us all. He is so great that he has time for
the little things in our lives: "Every hair of your head is numbered".
God is alive, and he needs people to serve him and bring him to others.
It does makes sense to become a priest: the world needs priests,
pastors, today, tomorrow and always, until the end of time.
The seminary is a community journeying towards priestly ministry. I have
said something very important here: one does not become a priest on
one’s own. The "community of disciples" is essential, the fellowship of
those who desire to serve the greater Church. In this letter I would
like to point out – thinking back to my own time in the seminary –
several elements which I consider important for these years of your
journeying.
1. Anyone who wishes to become a priest must be first and foremost a
"man of God", to use the expression of Saint Paul (1 Tim 6:11). For us
God is not some abstract hypothesis; he is not some stranger who left
the scene after the "big bang". God has revealed himself in Jesus
Christ. In the face of Jesus Christ we see the face of God. In his words
we hear God himself speaking to us. It follows that the most important
thing in our path towards priesthood and during the whole of our
priestly lives is our personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ.
The priest is not the leader of a sort of association whose membership
he tries to maintain and expand. He is God’s messenger to his people. He
wants to lead them to God and in this way to foster authentic communion
between all men and women. That is why it is so important, dear friends,
that you learn to live in constant intimacy with God. When the Lord
tells us to "pray constantly", he is obviously not asking us to recite
endless prayers, but urging us never to lose our inner closeness to God.
Praying means growing in this intimacy. So it is important that our day
should begin and end with prayer; that we listen to God as the
Scriptures are read; that we share with him our desires and our hopes,
our joys and our troubles, our failures and our thanks for all his
blessings, and thus keep him ever before us as the point of reference
for our lives. In this way we grow aware of our failings and learn to
improve, but we also come to appreciate all the beauty and goodness
which we daily take for granted and so we grow in gratitude. With
gratitude comes joy for the fact that God is close to us and that we can
serve him.
2. For us God is not simply Word. In the sacraments he gives himself to
us in person, through physical realities. At the heart of our
relationship with God and our way of life is the Eucharist. Celebrating
it devoutly, and thus encountering Christ personally, should be the
centre of all our days. In Saint Cyprian’s interpretation of the Gospel
prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread", he says among other things
that "our" bread – the bread which we receive as Christians in the
Church – is the Eucharistic Lord himself. In this petition of the Our
Father, then, we pray that he may daily give us "our" bread; and that it
may always nourish our lives; that the Risen Christ, who gives himself
to us in the Eucharist, may truly shape the whole of our lives by the
radiance of his divine love. The proper celebration of the Eucharist
involves knowing, understanding and loving the Church’s liturgy in its
concrete form. In the liturgy we pray with the faithful of every age –
the past, the present and the future are joined in one great chorus of
prayer. As I can state from personal experience, it is inspiring to
learn how it all developed, what a great experience of faith is
reflected in the structure of the Mass, and how it has been shaped by
the prayer of many generations.
3. The sacrament of Penance is also important. It teaches me to see
myself as God sees me, and it forces me to be honest with myself. It
leads me to humility. The Curé of Ars once said: "You think it makes no
sense to be absolved today, because you know that tomorrow you will
commit the same sins over again. Yet," he continues, "God instantly
forgets tomorrow’s sins in order to give you his grace today." Even when
we have to struggle continually with the same failings, it is important
to resist the coarsening of our souls and the indifference which would
simply accept that this is the way we are. It is important to keep
pressing forward, without scrupulosity, in the grateful awareness that
God forgives us ever anew – yet also without the indifference that might
lead us to abandon altogether the struggle for holiness and
self-improvement. Moreover, by letting myself be forgiven, I learn to
forgive others. In recognizing my own weakness, I grow more tolerant and
understanding of the failings of my neighbour.
4. I urge you to retain an appreciation for popular piety, which is
different in every culture yet always remains very similar, for the
human heart is ultimately one and the same. Certainly, popular piety
tends towards the irrational, and can at times be somewhat superficial.
Yet it would be quite wrong to dismiss it. Through that piety, the faith
has entered human hearts and become part of the common patrimony of
sentiments and customs, shaping the life and emotions of the community.
Popular piety is thus one of the Church’s great treasures. The faith has
taken on flesh and blood. Certainly popular piety always needs to be
purified and refocused, yet it is worthy of our love and it truly makes
us into the "People of God".
5. Above all, your time in the seminary is also a time of study. The
Christian faith has an essentially rational and intellectual dimension.
Were it to lack that dimension, it would not be itself. Paul speaks of a
"standard of teaching" to which we were entrusted in Baptism (Rom 6:17).
All of you know the words of Saint Peter which the medieval theologians
saw as the justification for a rational and scientific theology: "Always
be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an
‘accounting’ (logos) for the hope that is in you" (1 Pet 3:15). Learning
how to make such a defence is one of the primary responsibilities of
your years in the seminary. I can only plead with you: Be committed to
your studies! Take advantage of your years of study! You will not regret
it. Certainly, the subjects which you are studying can often seem far
removed from the practice of the Christian life and the pastoral
ministry. Yet it is completely mistaken to start questioning their
practical value by asking: Will this be helpful to me in the future?
Will it be practically or pastorally useful? The point is not simply to
learn evidently useful things, but to understand and appreciate the
internal structure of the faith as a whole, so that it can become a
response to people’s questions, which on the surface change from one
generation to another yet ultimately remain the same. For this reason it
is important to move beyond the changing questions of the moment in
order to grasp the real questions, and so to understand how the answers
are real answers. It is important to have a thorough knowledge of sacred
Scripture as a whole, in its unity as the Old and the New Testaments:
the shaping of texts, their literary characteristics, the process by
which they came to form the canon of sacred books, their dynamic inner
unity, a unity which may not be immediately apparent but which in fact
gives the individual texts their full meaning. It is important to be
familiar with the Fathers and the great Councils in which the Church
appropriated, through faith-filled reflection, the essential statements
of Scripture. I could easily go on. What we call dogmatic theology is
the understanding of the individual contents of the faith in their
unity, indeed, in their ultimate simplicity: each single element is, in
the end, only an unfolding of our faith in the one God who has revealed
himself to us and continues to do so. I do not need to point out the
importance of knowing the essential issues of moral theology and
Catholic social teaching. The importance nowadays of ecumenical
theology, and of a knowledge of the different Christian communities, is
obvious; as is the need for a basic introduction to the great religions,
to say nothing of philosophy: the understanding of that human process of
questioning and searching to which faith seeks to respond. But you
should also learn to understand and – dare I say it – to love canon law,
appreciating how necessary it is and valuing its practical applications:
a society without law would be a society without rights. Law is the
condition of love. I will not go on with this list, but I simply say
once more: love the study of theology and carry it out in the clear
realization that theology is anchored in the living community of the
Church, which, with her authority, is not the antithesis of theological
science but its presupposition. Cut off from the believing Church,
theology would cease to be itself and instead it would become a medley
of different disciplines lacking inner unity.
6. Your years in the seminary should also be a time of growth towards
human maturity. It is important for the priest, who is called to
accompany others through the journey of life up to the threshold of
death, to have the right balance of heart and mind, reason and feeling,
body and soul, and to be humanly integrated. To the theological virtues
the Christian tradition has always joined the cardinal virtues derived
from human experience and philosophy, and, more generally, from the
sound ethical tradition of humanity. Paul makes this point this very
clearly to the Philippians: "Finally, brothers, whatever is true,
whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if
there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things" (4:8).
This also involves the integration of sexuality into the whole
personality. Sexuality is a gift of the Creator yet it is also a task
which relates to a person’s growth towards human maturity. When it is
not integrated within the person, sexuality becomes banal and
destructive. Today we can see many examples of this in our society.
Recently we have seen with great dismay that some priests disfigured
their ministry by sexually abusing children and young people. Instead of
guiding people to greater human maturity and setting them an example,
their abusive behaviour caused great damage for which we feel profound
shame and regret. As a result of all this, many people, perhaps even
some of you, might ask whether it is good to become a priest; whether
the choice of celibacy makes any sense as a truly human way of life. Yet
even the most reprehensible abuse cannot discredit the priestly mission,
which remains great and pure. Thank God, all of us know exemplary
priests, men shaped by their faith, who bear witness that one can attain
to an authentic, pure and mature humanity in this state and specifically
in the life of celibacy. Admittedly, what has happened should make us
all the more watchful and attentive, precisely in order to examine
ourselves earnestly, before God, as we make our way towards priesthood,
so as to understand whether this is his will for me. It is the
responsibility of your confessor and your superiors to accompany you and
help you along this path of discernment. It is an essential part of your
journey to practise the fundamental human virtues, with your gaze fixed
on the God who has revealed himself in Christ, and to let yourselves be
purified by him ever anew.
7. The origins of a priestly vocation are nowadays more varied and
disparate than in the past. Today the decision to become a priest often
takes shape after one has already entered upon a secular profession.
Often it grows within the Communities, particularly within the
Movements, which favour a communal encounter with Christ and his Church,
spiritual experiences and joy in the service of the faith. It also
matures in very personal encounters with the nobility and the
wretchedness of human existence. As a result, candidates for the
priesthood often live on very different spiritual continents. It can be
difficult to recognize the common elements of one’s future mandate and
its spiritual path. For this very reason, the seminary is important as a
community which advances above and beyond differences of spirituality.
The Movements are a magnificent thing. You know how much I esteem them
and love them as a gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church. Yet they must
be evaluated by their openness to what is truly Catholic, to the life of
the whole Church of Christ, which for all her variety still remains one.
The seminary is a time when you learn with one another and from one
another. In community life, which can at times be difficult, you should
learn generosity and tolerance, not only bearing with, but also
enriching one another, so that each of you will be able to contribute
his own gifts to the whole, even as all serve the same Church, the same
Lord. This school of tolerance, indeed, of mutual acceptance and mutual
understanding in the unity of Christ’s Body, is an important part of
your years in the seminary.
Dear seminarians, with these few lines I have wanted to let you know how
often I think of you, especially in these difficult times, and how close
I am to you in prayer. Please pray for me, that I may exercise my
ministry well, as long as the Lord may wish. I entrust your journey of
preparation for priesthood to the maternal protection of Mary Most Holy,
whose home was a school of goodness and of grace. May Almighty God bless
you all, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
From the Vatican, 18 October 2010, the Feast of Saint Luke the
Evangelist.
Yours devotedly in the Lord,
BENEDICTUS PP. XVI
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
