“The Blessed Virgin Mary’s Role in the Celibate Priest’s Spousal
and Paternal Love”
Fr. John Cihak, S.T.D.
Introduction[1]
I wrote this article more on my knees than
at my desk. It began with jottings from mental prayer over the
past year. When I finally sat down to assemble them into a
coherent whole, I had a pile of Post-It notes and scribblings on
the last pages of Magnificat issues – a collection of my
own pensées. This article is entitled, “The Blessed Virgin
Mary’s Role in the Celibate Priest’s Spousal and Paternal Love.”
[2]
I will argue in the following pages that Our Lady plays an
essential and indispensable role in the development of the
priest’s masculinity, especially its spousal and paternal
dimensions, and the manner that masculinity is lived out in
celibate love.[3]
In other words, I want to show how Our Lady helps the priest
become a husband and father as a celibate and thus come to
fulfillment as a man.
The Recent
Challenges and the Perennial Condition
I offer this
reflection in the here and now of the 21st century
Catholic Church in America, institutionally still reeling, I
suspect, from the revelations of clerical misconduct that have
shamed us, exposed us to ridicule and derision, and have also
called us to accountability. However, one easily overlooked
dimension of the recent challenge we have faced is the departure
from active ministry of those who are called “JPII priests”
(John Paul II priests). After we thought the 60s, 70s and 80s
were over, we have had a discouraging repeat of attrition of
priests from active ministry. I have known several of them who
have subsequently attempted marriage, or suffered alcohol and
drug problems. These are not dissenting priests. These “JPII
priests” are committed to the Church and the priesthood and
espouse the orthodox faith and the Church’s disciplines,
including clerical celibacy.
Why is this
happening? One obvious answer is that intellectual orthodoxy,
while necessary, is not sufficient for perseverance in the
priesthood in these times. Another obvious answer is to place
much blame on the culture and the state of family life. Many of
these men who have come unmoored in their vocations have
suffered from the effects of our culture of divorce, abuse,
materialism and sexual license. A third answer is the
deplorable example for many men given by their own fathers, who
teach through their own behavior that to be a man means sexual
conquest. A man, in this view, does not need to take
responsibility for his actions, and is responsible to no one.
Young men come to prepare for the priesthood with much more
relational brokenness than in previous generations. I believe
these answers are true, but do not go deep enough.
Perhaps more
subtly considered the “JPII priest” attrition is simply a recent
example of the perennial struggle for the celibate priest in his
affectivity and relationships, in his heart and most especially
in his spousal and paternal love. To put it simply, how are all
those natural desires—including erotic desires—to be a husband
and father supposed to function in the priest’s free promise of
celibacy? The answer that some ex-priests in the 1970s offered
was that those desires have no place in celibacy and therefore
the discipline of celibacy should change. The argument was that
the discipline of celibacy prevented a man from fully developing
as a man. When it was perceived that the Church would not change
the discipline, they left. But this answer is too superficial
for the deep mystery that is the celibate priesthood.
Nevertheless the clash is felt deeply in the heart of a man
called to celibacy in the priesthood. The gap appears not in the
alignment of one’s intellect to the truth of priestly celibacy,
but how this truth of priestly celibacy becomes enfleshed in the
priest’s heart and in his relationships as a man.
Pope Benedict has given us an initial stab
at the challenge in Deus caritas est in his treatment of
the relationship between eros and agape and the
transformation of disordered eros into an ordered eros
that provides the vitality for agape love.[4]
In the case of the celibate priest, it is the transformation of
his disordered eros into a truly spousal and paternal
love that is expressed in his celibate agape. Can
this happen? I think we would all say, Yes. But how does
this happen? There is nothing automatic about it, and there are
many potential pitfalls. Careerism, illicit relationships,
alcoholism, drug abuse, exotic vacations, collections of various
kinds, pornography and the flight into television and the
Internet are simply inadequate ways of grappling with a mystery
that lies, I would argue, at the very heart of the priesthood,
and which we will explore in a moment. Because of our fallen
nature, there is need for a deep healing of eros in the
heart of every man. I suggest that we are still coming to terms
with this challenge in our human and spiritual formation
programs, and are only beginning to come literally to the heart
of the matter. I propose that Our Lady plays an indispensable
role in the transformation of the priest’s masculinity, and the
foundation for all that is said in this article lies in the
important work of John Paul II in his Theology of the Body and
Benedict XVI in Deus caritas est.
The Four Major
Dimensions of Priestly Masculinity and Feminine Complementarity
Being a man involves a set of four basic
relationships, which comprise the four basic dimensions of his
masculinity. Through these four basic relationships a man
develops, matures and attains to male fulfillment. Each
dimension is important for his development in becoming an
integral man and thus being able to become a holy and effective
priest. As Pope John Paul II taught, the priest’s human
personality is at the very heart of a fruitful priesthood; it is
the human bridge that connects others with Jesus Christ.[5]
These four relational dimensions of manhood are son, brother,
husband and father. The first two dimensions (son and brother)
are necessary preparations for manhood and the last two (husband
and father) bring about the fulfillment of manhood. In other
words, a man must be a good son, then a good brother, then a
good husband and then a good father to become a good man and
attain his fulfillment as man. All four together are necessary
to attain mature manhood, and never is any dimension left
behind. To be a good father a man still needs to be a good son,
if possible to his earthly father, and surely to his heavenly
Father, with Whom he should live in a relationship of divine
filiation. Each relationship, nevertheless, brings its own
peculiarity and focus. We know as well that in this broken
world, not every man has healthy relationships with parents and
siblings. Nevertheless, we can talk about these dimensions even
if they do not always function well in this life. Much could be
said about each dimension; for the purposes of our discussion we
will focus on the final two dimensions as lived out in the
celibate priesthood.
According to the theological anthropology
revealed in Holy Scripture (primarily Gen. 1-3, Mt. 19:3-12,
Eph. 5:21-33) especially as interpreted and developed by John
Paul II, man is in an essential, indispensable relationship with
woman. They are equal in dignity, both made in the image
and likeness of God, and complementary in mission. Being made in
the divine image, both were made for self-giving love. God alone
fulfills a man, yet the Lord has willed that this fulfillment
happen through a man’s relationship with woman.[6]
This is to say, man cannot attain mature manhood without the
help of woman and vice versa. Adam’s solitude (Gen 2:20) taught
him that he cannot attain fulfillment by himself; we could also
say that he cannot do it in relationship only with other men. In
the same way woman cannot attain her fulfillment alone or only
with other women, but only through the complementary
relationship with man.
A corollary to
this truth of male-female complementarity is that we must reject
false philosophical anthropologies often implicit in the
psychological sciences (and that sometimes surface in our human
formation programs), most especially Freud’s idea that every
human person is bi-sexual, a hermaphrodite, containing both male
and female within himself. This idea, which Freud never
substantiates but considers part of his “metapsychology” (a
mythic presupposition), is perpetuated today by the gay and
transgender movements in this country. Biblical revelation and
even DNA say otherwise. A man is man from his image of God all
the way down to his very chromosomes; a woman is woman from her
image of God all the way down to her very chromosomes. The truth
is that human beings were made for relationship, made to come
out of themselves and develop as a man or woman through a
complementarity that lies outside of themselves. Man and woman
were made for each other so that each would help the other to
attain fulfillment in his or her nature. Thus the ideal in any
psychological healing is not to try to recover some primal
monadic, hermaphroditic existence, but to cast oneself forward,
outside of oneself in love, and this can only happen in
relationships – for man and woman with God and man and woman
with each other.
Through this essential and complementary
relationship with woman, a man in the natural order can grow in
his four dimensions as son, brother, husband and father in order
to attain full maturity. A son has a mother, a brother hopefully
has sisters and brothers, a husband has a wife and together they
become father and mother. In the order of nature, we can begin
to see the importance of women in the development of the priest
as a man: his mother and his sisters help to lead him into
maturity as a good son and brother. A man’s relationship with
his mother begins in utero where as son he begins to
become attuned to his mother, her heartbeat, her bodily
processes, her movements, her emotions; we could say even her
soul. In infancy, it is hoped, at some point the mother’s smile
awakens him to self-consciousness. Her smile gives him his
awareness in the midst of her feminine love that he is a unique
person. The beauty, goodness, and truth evinced in the mother’s
smile awakens in the child an awareness of the beauty, goodness,
and truth of the world, and by analogy, of God.[7]
Psychiatry and neurobiology describe this as a process of
“secure (healthy) attachment,” a subtle attunement between
mother and child which is essential for normal brain and
psychological development, as well as normal spiritual
development, especially in those crucial first five years of
life. This relationship continues in childhood where a boy
continues to learn how to be a son and eventually a brother. In
all of this development the mother’s (and sisters’) role is
neither as an object to be used, nor as being overprotective or
cultivating a “womanish” affect in her son – all of which would
be a collapsing of the masculine-feminine complementarity. The
healthy son or brother does not identify with the mother or
sister in such a way that he imitates her femininity (e.g., in
imitating effeminate characteristics himself); rather, he
relates to her as truly an “other” with whom he, in his
masculinity, can relate through a process of complementary,
self-giving love.
A man’s mother
is his primal relationship to the feminine out of which he grows
in all his relationships with women. Of course his father and
brothers, if he has them, have essential roles as well,
especially in how his father treats his mother. In his father, a
man finds the primary masculine response to feminine
complementarity; the father hopefully confirms it: cherishing
his wife, loving her, and giving himself over to her. A mother
also prepares her son for his wife.
In marriage, a
man’s wife changes him. He practices giving himself in love to
her. He allows himself to be determined by her. He must attune
himself to her, and she engages his heart and helps to develop
his eros into agape love. As a man, he desires to
protect her, to provide for her, to give her children, to do
mighty deeds for her, to cherish her and shower his affection
upon her. Of course this describes something ideal, and does not
automatically happen in marriage. But the reader can see what I
mean.
The Blessed
Virgin Mary’s Role in the Celibate Priest’s attainment as
Husband and Father
In the life of
grace, we immediately grasp Our Lady’s role in helping a man be
a good son. As the archetype of Mother Church she gives birth to
him and nurtures him through grace. She plays an essential
feminine role in leading him to relate to the Father, her
Incarnate Son and the Holy Spirit. She teaches her sons about
trust, surrender, and the acceptance of weakness and poverty
without self-hatred. She cultivates in her sons the spirit of
childhood. But what about the last two dimensions for the
celibate priest? In the natural order, a man’s wife helps him
develop into a husband and father. I suggest that in the order
of grace, the Blessed Virgin Mary assumes this role in a very
real, though nuanced way.
When it comes
to developing the spousal and fatherly dimensions of his
masculinity, we cannot help but see the Freudian in the audience
raise his hand in objection that the idea that the Blessed
Virgin Mary helps bring about the celibate priest’s fulfillment
as husband and father is simply rife with Oedipal “stuff”. I
think our response to such an objection begins with the
distinction between the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Church; she
is a type of the Church, in fact, she is the archetype of
the Church. Mary is not the spouse of the celibate priest as the
Church is. Our Lady is the spouse of the Holy Spirit, not her
Incarnate Son. There is nothing Oedipal going on here if we
understand the relationships correctly, and understand them in
symbolic and spiritual terms and not in a crude, literal way.
Moreover, we cannot forget that the concrete form of the priest’
spousal love is a celibate love.
With this
distinction, allow me to be a bit provocative. Our Lady herself,
in a very concrete way, brings a celibate priest into his
spiritual marriage with the Church and his spiritual paternity
as he participates in Christ’s spousal relationship to the
Church. She engages him deeply in his masculine heart, even in
his eros, with her feminine love to bring about this
transformation in her priest from a disordered eros to an
ordered eros and celibate agape.
The Central
Mystery: The Cross
This
complementary engagement of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s feminine
love with the priest’s masculine love happens within the central
mystery of the priesthood: the Cross, and specifically in the
scene of Our Lady and St. John at the foot of the Cross. Call to
your imagination the scene: there is Our Lord nailed to the
Cross, bloodied and broken in His passion. At the foot of the
Cross, we find Our Lady and the only priest who stood with Our
Lord eis telos (Jn. 13:1), St. John. The Blessed Virgin
Mary is in utter agony; both she and His priest are being
interiorly drawn into His crucifixion.
There is so
much silence around this mystery. We are basically only told the
geographical facts of the scene. Jesus is the one who sets it
all in motion with His gaze: “When Jesus saw his mother,
and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said…” (Jn.
19:26). It begins with a gaze from our Lord seeing His Mother
and His priest. None of the Lord’s words in the Gospels are
superfluous, especially those he uttered while upon the Cross.
Therefore, these words from the Cross are some of the most
important words uttered to Our Lady and one of His first
priests.
She hears,
“Woman, behold your son” (Jn. 19:26). He calls her “Woman”, not
“Mom”. Feel the distancing. These words must have been
especially painful for her. As mother all she wants is to be
close to Him and even to die with Him so that she can be close
to Him. “Woman” isolates her from Him. He pushes her away, not
in cruelty, but so that she can become the New Eve, the mother
of all those who would live eternally. Her agony is the labor
pains giving birth to the Church. Here the distinction between
Our Lady and the Church, which should never be a separation, is
perhaps a little more pronounced. Here she is giving birth to
the Church, acting as Mother of the Church, through her interior
agony.
St. John is at
her side. It is no coincidence that a priest of the new covenant
stands at the Cross with Jesus. St. John also is undergoing his
own interior crucifixion, being conformed as priest to the Cross
of the eternal High Priest. Perhaps we can sense St. John’s
helplessness. There is no worse feeling for a man than to that
of helplessness. What words could he utter seeing her in such
agony? The sword piercing her Immaculate Heart is going through
his priestly heart as well. This is not some heroic charge to
victory. It is blackness, loneliness, a dark night; it is the
whole messed up incongruity of the collision between love and
sin. It feels like and is death.
“Then Jesus
says to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother!’” (Jn. 19:27). At
this moment, Jesus asks the Apostle in the depth of his own pain
to attune himself to her. As priest, he must decide to put her
first, attune himself to her heart. He must put her suffering
ahead of his own. I imagine St. John turning toward Our Lady,
and looking at her with such tenderness and reverence. Jesus
sends His command deep into the heart of his priest, “Look at
her…receive her…take care of her.” As a man, he must feel
helpless and inadequate, but now he has been given a manly task.
St. John is commanded to care for her, to comfort her, to hold
her, to protect her because she is so alone and vulnerable at
that moment. Such a command would resonate deeply in the heart
of such a man: he must look beyond his pain and accommodate
himself to her, and have all that is best about being a man rise
up within him in a great act of celibate agape. The
choice to be attentive to her pain brings him to the threshold
of entering into his spousal love and paternity as a celibate,
as the Church is coming to birth.
I like to
meditate on that scene, pondering the eyes of Our Lady and St.
John as they meet in their mutual agony. Neither of them seems
to have Jesus anymore. At that moment she needs St. John; she
also allows him to help her. She is so alone at that moment. She
who is sinless allows her great poverty of spirit to need this
man and priest beside her. Her feminine complementarity draws
out the best in St. John’s masculine heart. The need for his
support and protection must have connected to something deep
within him as a man. How does he help her? St. John says that he
then took her “into his own” (in Greek, eis ta idia).
What does this mean? “His house,” as many translations read?
“His things”? What about “everything that he is”? Perhaps it
indicates that he takes her into his life as a priest.
She also is
supporting him. He is depending on her in that moment for he too
is so alone. I wonder if he felt abandoned by the other
apostles. She leads the way in sacrificing herself, for her
feminine heart is more receptive and more attuned to Jesus’. She
is not only present but leads the way for him, helping the
priest to have his own heart pierced as well. There is much here
to ponder as she engages his masculine love. He gives himself
over to her, to cherish her and console her. At this moment she
needs him and needs him to be strong, even if she is the one
really supporting him.
The Blessed
Virgin Mary’s role is to call out of the priest this celibate
agape to help him become a husband to the Church and a
spiritual father—a strong father, even in his weakness. She does
this at the Cross by drawing the priest out of his own pain to
offer pure masculine love in the midst of her own pure feminine
love. This scene becomes an icon of the relationship between the
priest and the Church. The priest hands himself over to the
Church in her suffering and need – to have his life shaped by
hers. At the foot of the Cross the Church agonizes in labor to
give birth to the members of the mystical body. I am struck by
the next verse in this passage from the Gospel of St. John:
“After this Jesus, knowing that all was now finished,
said… ‘I thirst’” (Jn. 19:28). It was after this exchange of
love at the foot of the Cross that “all was now finished”.
St. Charles
Borromeo often gave conferences to his priests when he was
Archbishop of Milan. In the opening lines of the conference he
addressed to his diocesan synod on April 20, 1584, he draws the
connection between the woman of the Apocalypse in Revelation and
Rachel in Genesis to the Church:
She was with child and she cried out in
her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery.” (Rev 12:2)…. O
what pain, O what wailing of Holy Church! She cries out with
prayers in the presence of God, and in your presence through my
mouth, pronounces divine words to you. It seems that I am
hearing her saying to her betrothed, the Lord Jesus Christ, what
Rachel had formerly said to her husband Jacob, “Give me children
or I shall die” (Gen 30:1). I am truly desirous of the one to be
born. Indeed I dread this sterility; so unless you [priests!]
come to Christ and give to me many sons, I am precisely at this
very moment about to die.[8]
The implication
of St. Charles’ words is that Holy Mother Church cries out to
her Divine Bridegroom, and to the one who participates in
Christ’s spousal relationship – the priest, for children. It is
at the Cross where the priest in the sting of his celibacy
becomes a husband to the Church and a spiritual father. For the
celibate priest, the Cross is his marriage bed, just as it was
for Our Lord.
It is through
the love exchanged between Our Lady and St. John at the foot of
the Cross that the priest’s own fallen eros begins to be
healed and transformed to image the celibate priestly love that
Jesus is revealing on the Cross. We priests get into trouble
when we try to run away from this mystery or refuse to enter
into it. The only fruitful love is the love that flows from the
Cross. For this reason the celibate priest’s spousal and
paternal love must be more, not less, and it has the potential
to become superabundant because it is so sacrificial. No offense
to my brother priests of the eastern churches who are married,
but I think they would agree that there is an eschatological,
and even ontological, primacy of celibacy in the priesthood.
This is not to claim a moral primacy since promising celibacy is
no guarantee that a celibate priest will live it well or fully.
Only to the degree that he allows himself to be taken into the
mystery of Calvary with the Blessed Virgin Mary can the celibate
priest attain the lofty call that is celibate spousal love and
spiritual paternity.
When I was
newly ordained and I heard older priests complain about
loneliness in the priesthood, I must confess I thought that it
was due to a lack of good relationships or prayer life. And of
course for some this was true. We are often lonely because we do
not have good, deep friendships with others, especially with
other priests, or quite simply we do not pray. However, after
ten years as a priest I have come to a more realistic
conclusion. There is an essential felt loneliness in the
priesthood because there is an essential loneliness in the
Cross, the Cross that stands at the very center of the
priesthood. We priests feel the sting especially in celibacy,
and understandably we struggle to come to terms with it. We know
the terrifying loneliness that comes crashing in, the coldness
of walking back into the rectory – certainly exhausted and tired
of people – but lonely because there does not seem to be anyone
to share it with or who understands our hearts. A pious thought
would be to pray, but prayer in those moments may well seem dry
and distasteful.
This is not
giving way to self-love. It is simply being a man. There is
something deep inside us that longs for a woman’s understanding
and comfort, and a longing to comfort and understand a unique
woman and to generate life with her. Some try to numb this
longing through careerism in the Church, food, drugs, alcohol,
illicit relationships, pornography; probably the most common
forms of numbing are through the television or Internet. Nor is
this to suggest that “life is tough so get over it.” Rather, it
is an invitation for the celibate priest to enter more deeply
into precisely this mystery of caring for the Church at the foot
of the Cross and becoming united to her. The priest must
struggle in accepting being co-crucified with Jesus and entering
the compassion of Our Lady. She for her part comes to the aid of
the priest by engaging his masculinity as a husband and father
to help bring about his union with the Church, not in sexual
union but through crucifixion, by dying for her. The
priest, in his loneliness, becomes attuned to the Church’s
loneliness in this world.
Our line of
thinking brings us to consider the joy of the Cross. The
transformation of the priest through consoling the Mother of God
at the Cross not only brings him into his spousal and paternal
love, but also transforms his whole notion of joy. From its
revaluing by the Cross, Christian joy is less a passing
emotional state and more of a spiritual condition. Joy is not
found in the lack of suffering or on the other side of suffering
but in self-giving love. Thus joy can flow clearly and directly
from suffering. This is joy as a fruit of the Holy Spirit and
thus something indestructible, something the world cannot give.
Helping the
Seminarian or Priest to embrace the Mystery
How do we help our seminarians and priests
enter into this profound mystery of the development of their
masculinity as celibate priests? I think we need to continue
freeing our human and spiritual formation programs from the
narrowness of an overly psychological perspective. The
psychological sciences are important and necessary. But human
and spiritual formation is wider than psychology can measure. We
must keep in mind that psychological approaches when they depart
from the physiology of the human body cross over into
philosophical and theological realms. As Dr. Paul Vitz observes,
every psychological theory whether it is recognized or not is an
applied philosophy of life.[9]
Human formation should be founded on a sound philosophical and
theological anthropology. I have yet to find a more solid
anthropology than that from St. Thomas, especially as
interpreted by John Paul II. I would add further insights from
scholars following a more Augustinian line of thinking, such as
Pope Benedict XVI and Hans Urs von Balthasar. I think a human
formation program for priests needs also to draw from the best
of our spiritual theology, especially the ascetical theology of
St. John Climacus, Don Lorenzo Scupoli and St. Francis de Sales.[10]
These treasures of the tradition resonate well with all the
excellent research emerging in neurobiology, social biology and
brain development.[11]
Perhaps the four-fold dimensions of relational masculinity could
provide an initial framework.
From this wider
perspective, the important work of the psychological sciences
comes into play. As formators seek to help men become better
sons, brothers, husbands and fathers, sometimes the need for
therapeutic intervention arises to heal broken relationships
with father and mother and to develop secure attachments, so
that one becomes capable of agape love. Such intervention
should be done by therapists who fully appreciate and understand
sound philosophical and theological anthropology, and grasp the
priest’s unique ecclesial mission and vocation.
It is also important to integrate into our
human formation programs, and insist upon, a masculine
affectivity in both formators and seminarians. I think anyone
who grew up in a semi-normal family has some idea about what a
masculine affect looks like. No matter what one’s home life was
like, much good material can be gleaned from the holy men of
Scripture including David, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, St. John the
Baptist, St. Joseph, St. Peter, St. John, St. Paul, and the holy
men who are saints, especially the priest saints. I think there
is still much from the lives of St. Francis de Sales and St.
John Vianney that can show seminarians and priests what priestly
masculinity looks like and how it is lived out concretely in
diocesan life. It is not politically correct, even within some
ecclesial circles, to follow the mind of the Church with regard
to same-sex attraction as clarified by the Congregation for
Education in 2005.[12]
The difficulty surfaces precisely when we begin to talk about
the priest’s spousal and paternal love. Everyone seems fine with
the concept of the priest as a son or a brother. But begin to
speak of the priest as a husband and father, and in some circles
resistance begins to emerge. Nevertheless, in Pastores dabo
vobis masculine affectivity is repeatedly coupled with
“pastoral charity”. The love that the seminarian or priest shows
Our Lady at the foot of the Cross is exactly that – charity, the
highest form of love, but it must be a masculine incarnation of
it. Pastoral charity is where a man’s disordered eros
becomes ordered into celibate agape, in his care for the
Church in the concreteness of a single soul.
Seminarians and priests should be helped
to pray from the heart. One initial suggestion is to encourage
praying the Rosary using Ignatius’ application of the senses
that help engage the heart of the one praying. Sr. Mary Timothea
Elliot, RSM offers insight into how to pray like Mary: to hold
the word of God tenaciously, to ponder it with other words, to
apply it to the life situation, and to mature in the word.[13]
A helpful way to pray from the heart is taught by the Institute
for Priestly Formation through the memorable phrase, “Pray like
a Pirate!”[14]
A pirate says, “ARRR!”, which stands for a helpful acronym:
Acknowledge, Relate, Receive, Respond. Acknowledge means to be
real and honest in prayer. Relate means to be in relationship
and to grapple with whatever is there, to engage the Lord, to be
present to Him. Receive means to allow Him the freedom to do
what He wishes. Respond means that having received from Him, one
is able to respond to Him in love. Praying in this manner helps
to cultivate honesty in prayer, and help one practice giving
oneself in sincerity.
Part of praying
from the heart is praying with the Blessed Virgin Mary, not as
an idea but as a woman. As men and priests we need to develop an
affective relationship with her, and let her help us become
attuned to her heart. As I read St. Louis De Montfort, I think
this is what he was really seeking to accomplish. His
spirituality is not simply emotive sentimentalism, but learning
to model one’s heart on hers. His spirituality is a spirituality
of attunement. This important spiritual work in learning how to
love with the heart and to truly give oneself in prayer will
help build the habit of giving oneself in the offering of Holy
Mass, to enter into the fire of Calvary with arms wide open.
As human and
spiritual formators, we must strive to enter deeply into this
mystery ourselves, and then lovingly cast forth these wonderful
priests and priests-to-be into this mystery, to help them
grapple and wrestle with it, to allow the fire of Calvary to
penetrate the depths of their hearts and finally to incarnate
this mystery. Then a priest can enter into the spousal and
paternal reality with all the eros of his masculine heart
taken up into celibate agape.
The Mystery
Transposed: Holy Mass at Ephesus
I cannot leave
this scene at the foot of the Cross that reveals Our Lady’s role
in the celibate priest’s spousal and paternal love without
describing another scene. This scene came to me on one of those
days when it was not thrilling to be a priest and I was praying,
reluctantly. It began with the scene at the Cross, but the scene
was transposed at some point to a later event. It was Ephesus
and St. John was preparing to offer the Mass. Mary was there
with him. Bear with me if some anachronisms crept into the
meditation. She was helping him vest, first with the amice, alb,
cincture, etc. Her fingers working to make sure everything was
fitting correctly. I can imagine their eyes meeting. Nothing
need be said, especially when she lifts up the stole to put it
on him. They both know from where the generative power
symbolized in the stole comes. I can see the delight in her eyes
to see him as a priest, a man who is truly and totally her son.
The joy and love in her eyes makes him strong, and confident to
go and offer this sacrifice whereby his spousal and paternal
love is once again confirmed and made fruitful. I think these
can be fruitful scenes for any priest to ponder every time he
goes to offer the Mass: the feminine presence of Our Lady at the
foot of the Cross and before Mass at Ephesus.
Conclusion
My intention is
not to offer a deductive investigation and proof that answer the
contemporary challenge and perennial condition of the celibate
priest’s spousal and paternal love. What I do offer is an
emerging interior conviction that the answer to the perennial
condition of the celibate priest’s masculinity lies in the depth
of this mystery—the apostle’s pure embrace of the Mother of God
at Calvary. This is no saccharine or sugar-coated Marian piety.
This is a Marian piety that is so real it will give you
splinters, will make you shed tears and will even drive a lance
right through the heart of a priest. This is a real Marian piety
for real men.
I suggest that
this mystery lies at the center of every priest’s life whether
he can recognize it as such or not. Priests leave, misuse their
sexual powers or turn to other things because they cannot seem
to surrender to and embrace this mystery. It is the mystery of
his masculinity and the Cross. The Blessed Virgin Mary is there
to draw it out of him and help him bring it to a new level of
realization as husband and father. The only way the priest will
make it through the Cross is by allowing her to help him and for
him to unite himself mystically to her in her suffering. Through
her feminine love the celibate priest becomes a husband to the
Church and spiritual father to all. And from the depths of his
masculinity the priest can say, “It is no longer I who live, but
Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).
Fr. John Cihak,
S.T.D. is pastor of Sacred Heart-St. Louis parish in Gervais,
Oregon (USA) and professor of fundamental theology at Mount
Angel Seminary. He is the author of
Balthasar and
Anxiety (London: T&TClark, 2008) and several articles in
fundamental theology and priestly formation.
[1]
This article originated as a presentation at the
Marian Symposium for the Bicentennial Celebration of
Mount Saint Mary Seminary, Emmitsburg, Maryland (USA), 9
October 2008. I am grateful to Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, MD,
Deacon Theodore Lange and Fr. Jerome Young, OSB for
their helpful comments on earlier drafts.
[2]
I began an exploration of this topic of the spousal and
paternal dimensions of priestly identity in an earlier
article, cf. Cihak,
John. “The Priest as Man, Husband and Father,” Sacrum
Ministerium 12:2 (2006): 75-85.
[3]
Attention is focused on the area of human and spiritual
formation since they figure most prominently in
Pastores dabo vobis (John
Paul II, Post Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Pastores dabo vobis, 25 March 1992, nn. 43-50), and
where the greatest need in seminary formation still
exists.
[4]
Benedict
XVI, Encyclical Letter Deus caritas est, 25
December 2005, especially nn. 3-18.
[5]
Perhaps the most well known passage from Pastores
dabo vobis, n. 43.
[6]
Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn.
371-372.
[7]
These are insights especially developed by Hans Urs von
Balthasar in his theological anthropology, for example
in his
Wenn ihr nicht werdet wie
dieses Kind (repr.
2, Einsiedeln-Freiburg: Johannes Verlag, 1998);
Unless you become like
this Child,
trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991);
and his essay “Bewegung zu Gott,”
Spiritus Creator: Skizzen
zur Theologie,
vol. III (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1967);
“Movement Toward God,”
Explorations in Theology,
vol. III: Creator Spirit, trans. Brian
McNeil, CRV (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993),
15-55.
[8]
Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis,
Pars II, 20 April 1584, 347. [Trans. Gerard O’Connor]
[9]
Cf. Vitz,
Paul,
“Psychology
in Recovery,” First Things 151 (2005), pp. 17-21.
[10]
Cf. Climacus,
St. John. The Ladder of Divine Ascent in The
Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah: Paulist,
1982); de Sales,
St. Francis. Introduction to the Devout Life,
trans. John Ryan (New York: Doubleday, 1989);
Scupoli, Lorenzo. The Spiritual Combat, trans. William
Lester (Rockford: TAN, 1990).
[11]
Cf. Ainsworth,
Mary, Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study
of the Strange Situation (Mahwah: Erlbaum, 1978);
Bowlby,
John. A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and
Healthy Human Development (New York: Basic Books,
1990); Greenspan,
Stanley, Building Healthy Minds: The Six Experiences
That Create Intelligence and Emotional Growth in Babies
and Young Children (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2000);
The Growth of the Mind: And the Endangered Origins of
Intelligence (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 1998);
Siegel,
Daniel,
The
Developing Mind:
Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience
(New York: Guilford, 1999);
Stern,
Daniel, The Interpersonal
World of the Infant:
A View from Psychoanalysis and
Developmental Psychology
(New York: Basic Books, 2000).
[12]
Cf. Congregation
for Education. Instruction Concerning the
Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to
Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their
Admission to Seminary and Holy Orders, 2005.
[13]
Elliott,
Mary Timothea. “Mary – Pure Response to the Word of
God,” presentation at the Marian Symposium for the
Bicentennial Celebration of Mount Saint Mary Seminary, 8
October 2008.
[14]
In my view, the Institute for Priestly Formation, under
the direction of Fr. Richard Gabuzda and Fr. John Horn,
SJ, is currently doing some of the best work in the
United States on the spiritual and human development of
seminarians and diocesan priests.
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
Copyright © 2006 SCTJM
