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Sacred Scriptures/Liturgy- Advent
Meditation |
"Servants and
Friends of Jesus Christ"
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFMCap, Pontifical Household Preacher
First Advent Sermon, 2009
www.zenit.org
1. At the source of every priesthood
In the choice of subject to propose in these homilies in the Papal
Household I always try to be guided by the particular grace that the
Church is living. Last year it was the grace of the Pauline Year, this
year it is the grace of the Year of Priests, for whose proclamation,
Holy Father, we are profoundly grateful.
Vatican Council II dedicated to the subject of the priesthood an entire
document, "Presbyterorum Ordinis"; in 1992, John Paul II addressed to
the whole Church the post-Synodal exhortation "Pastores Dabo Vobis," on
the formation of priests in the present circumstances; the present
Supreme Pontiff, in proclaiming the present Year of Priests, has
sketched a brief but intense profile of the priest in the light of the
life of the Holy Curé d'Ars. Innumerable are the interventions of
individual bishops on this subject, not to speak of the books written on
the figure and mission of the priest in the century that just ended,
some of which are literary works of great worth.
What can be added to all this in the brief time of a meditation? I am
encouraged by the saying with which, I remember, a preacher began his
course of exercises: "Non nova ut sciatis, sed vetera ut faciatis": what
is important is not to know new things, but to put into practice those
that are known. Hence, I give up any attempt of doctrinal synthesis, of
global presentations or ideal profiles on the priest (I would not have
either the time or the capacity) and I try, if possible, to make our
priestly heart vibrate on contact with some word of God.
The word of Scripture that will serve as the guiding thread is 1
Corinthians 4:1, which many of us remember in the Latin translation of
the Vulgate: "Sic nos existimet homo ut ministros Christi et
dispensatores mysteriorum Dei": "Thus all of us should consider
ourselves: servants of Christ and administrators of the mysteries of
God." Alongside it we can place, for certain aspects, the definition of
the Letter to the Hebrews: "For every high priest chosen from among men
is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God" (Hebrews 5:1).
These phrases have the advantage of referring us to the common roots of
every priesthood, that is, to that stage of revelation when the
apostolic ministry was not yet diversified, giving place to three
canonical degrees of bishops, presbyters and deacons, that, at least, in
regard to their respective functions, became clear only with St.
Ignatius of Antioch, at the beginning of the second century. This common
root is brought to light in the Catechism of the Catholic Church which
defines Holy Orders as "the sacrament through which the mission
entrusted by Christ to his apostles continues to be exercised in the
Church until the end of time: thus it is the sacrament of Apostolic
ministry" (No. 1536).
And it is to this initial stage that we attempt to refer to as much as
possible in our meditations, for the purpose of grasping the essence of
the priestly ministry. In this Advent, we will take into consideration
only the first part of the Apostle's phrase: "Servants of Christ." If
God so wills, we will continue our reflection in Lent, meditating on
what it means for a priest to be "administrator of the mysteries of God"
and what are the mysteries that he must administer.
"Servants of Christ!" (with the exclamation mark to indicate the
greatness, dignity and beauty of this title): see the word that should
touch our heart in the present meditation and make it vibrate with holy
pride. We are not speaking here of practical and ministerial services,
how to administer the word and the sacraments (of this, I said, we will
speak in Lent); in other words, we are not speaking of the service as
act, but of service as state, as essential vocation and as identity of
the priest and we speak of it in the same sense and with the same spirit
of Paul who at the beginning of his letters always introduces himself
thus: "Paul, servant of Christ Jesus, apostle by vocation."
On the invisible passport of the priest, the one with which he presents
himself every day in the presence of God and of his people, to the call
"profession," one should be able to read: "Servant of Jesus Christ." All
Christians of course are servants of Christ, but the priest is so in a
wholly particular title and sense, as all baptized persons are priests,
but the ordained minister is so in a title and sense that is different
and higher.
2. Continuators of the work of Christ
The essential service that the priest is called to render Christ is to
continue his work in the world: "As the Father has sent me, even so I
send you" (John 20:21). In his famous Letter to the Corinthians, Pope
St. Clement comments: "Christ is sent by God and the Apostles by Christ.
... They, preaching everywhere in the country and in the city, appointed
their first successors, having been put to the test by the Spirit, to be
bishops and deacons" (1 Clementis 42: 1-2). Christ was sent by the
Father, the apostles by Christ, the bishops by the apostles: It is the
first clear enunciation of the principle of apostolic succession.
However, this word of Jesus does not have only a juridical and formal
meaning. It does not only found, in other words, the right of ordained
ministers to speak as "sent" by Christ; it also indicates the motive and
the content of this mission which is the same for which the Father sent
the Son to the world. And why has the Father sent his Son to the world?
Here we also give up global and exhaustive answers for which it would be
necessary to read the whole Gospel; we will focus only on some
programmatic declarations of Jesus.
Before Pilate, he affirmed solemnly: "for this I have come into the
world, to bear witness to the truth" (John 18:37). To continue the work
of Christ implies therefore for the priest to give witness to the truth,
to make the light of what is true shine. It is only necessary to take
into account the double meaning of the word truth, aletheia, in John. It
oscillates between divine reality and knowledge of divine reality,
between an ontologic or objective meaning and a gnoseologic or
subjective one. Truth is "eternal reality in so far as it is revealed to
men, whether referring to reality itself or to its revelation."[1]
The traditional interpretation has intended "truth" above all in the
sense of revelation and knowledge of truth; in other words, as dogmatic
truth. This is certainly an essential task. The Church, on the whole,
absolves it through the magisterium, the councils, theologians, and the
individual priest by preaching the "holy doctrine" to the people.
Not to be forgotten, however, is John's other meaning of truth: that of
the known reality, more than knowledge of the reality. In this light,
the task of the Church and of the individual priest is not limited to
proclaiming the truth of the faith, but to helping to experience it, to
enter into profound and personal contact with the reality of God,
through the Holy Spirit.
"Faith, St. Thomas Aquinas has written, does not end in the
proclamation, but in the thing" ("Fides non terminatur ad enuntiabile
sed ad rem"). Similarly, the teachers of the faith cannot be satisfied
to teach the so-called truth of faith, they must help persons to get the
"thing," to not only have an idea of God, but to experience Him,
according to the biblical sense of knowing, different, as is noted, from
the Greek and philosophic.
Another programmatic declaration of intentions is the one Jesus
pronounced before Nicodemus: "For God sent the Son into the world, not
to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him"
(John 3:16). This phrase is read in the light of that which precedes it
immediately: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that
whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."
Jesus came to reveal to men the salvific will and merciful love of the
Father. All his preaching is summarized in the word that he addresses to
the disciples in the Last Supper: "For the Father himself loves you!"
(John 16:27).
To be continuators in the world of the work of Christ means to make
one's own this basic attitude in confrontations with others, even the
most distant. Not to judge but to save. The human quality on which the
Letter to the Hebrews most insists in delineating the figure of Christ
as Priest and of every priest should not go unobserved: likeableness,
the sense of solidarity, compassion in confrontations with others.
Of Christ it is said: "For we have not a high priest who is unable to
sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been
tempted as we are, yet without sinning." Affirmed of the human priest is
that he "is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to
offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can deal gently with the
ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. Because
of this he is bound to offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for
those of the people" (Hebrews 4:15-5:3).
It is true that Jesus, in the Gospels, also shows himself severe, judges
and condemns, but with whom does he do it? Not with the simple people
who followed him and came to listen to him, but with hypocrites, the
self-sufficient, the teachers and guides of the people. Jesus was not in
fact, as is said of certain political men: "strong with the weak and
weak with the strong." All to the contrary!
3. Continuators, Not Successors
But in what sense can we speak of priests as continuators of the work of
Christ? In every human institution, as the Roman empire was at that time
and as religious orders and all worldly enterprises are today, the
successors continue the work, but not the person of the founder. This at
times is correct, surmounted and even disavowed. But it is not like this
in the Church. Jesus does not have successors because he is not dead,
but alive; "risen from death, death no longer has power over him."
What, then will the task of his ministers be? That of representing him,
that is, of making him present, of giving visible form to his invisible
presence. In this consists the prophetic dimension of the priesthood.
Before Christ, prophecy consisted essentially in proclaiming a future
salvation, "in the last days," after him, it consists in revealing to
the world the hidden presence of Christ, in crying out like John the
Baptist: "In your midst is one you do not know."
"One day some Greeks came to the apostle Philip with the question: "We
wish to see Jesus!" (John 12:21); the same question, more or less
explicit, is in the heart of one who approaches a priest today.
St. Gregory of Nissa coined a famous expression, which is usually
applied to the experience of mystics: "Feeling of presence." [2] The
feeling of presence is more than simple faith in the presence of Christ;
it is to have the lively feeling, the almost physical perception, of his
presence as risen. If this is proper to mysticism, then it means that
every priest should be a mystic, or at least a "mystagogue," one who
introduces people to the mystery of God and of Christ, as though holding
him by the hand.
The priest's task is no different, even if subordinated, in regard to
that which the Holy Father pointed out as absolute priority of the
Successor of Peter and of the whole Church in the letter of last March
10, addressed to bishops: "In our time in which in a vast area of the
earth faith is in the danger of being extinguished as a flame that no
longer finds nourishment, the priority above all is to render God
present in this world and to open to men access to God. Not to any god,
but to the God who spoke on Sinai: to that God whose face we recognize
in the love spent to the end (cf John 13:1) -- in Jesus Christ crucified
and risen. ... To lead men to God, to the God who speaks in the Bible:
this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the
Successor of Peter in this time."
4. Servants and Friends
However, now we must take a step forward in our reflection. "Servants of
Jesus Christ!": This title must never be alone; alongside it must always
be at least, in the depth of one's heart, another title -- that of
friends!
The common root of all ordained ministries that were delineated later is
the choice that Jesus made one day of the Twelve; this is what, from the
priestly institution, goes back to the historical Jesus. It is true that
the liturgy places the institution of the priesthood on Holy Thursday,
because of the word Jesus pronounced after the institution of the
Eucharist: "Do this in memory of me." But even this word implies the
choice of the Twelve, without saying that, taken alone, it would justify
the role of sacrificer and liturgist of the priest, but not that, just
as essential, of herald of the Gospel.
Now, what does Jesus say in this circumstance? Why does he choose the
Twelve, after having prayed the whole night? "And he appointed twelve,
to be with him, and to be sent out to preach (Mark 3:14-15). To be with
Jesus and to go and preach: To stay and to go, to receive and to give:
It is in a few words what is essential in the task of the collaborators
of Christ.
To be "with" Jesus does not mean obviously only a physical closeness; it
already contains all the richness that Paul will enclose in the
meaningful formula "in Christ" or "with Christ." It means to share
everything of Jesus: his itinerant life, certainly, but also his
thoughts, purposes, spirit. The word companion comes from the Medieval
Latin and means he who has in common (cum, with-) the bread (panis), who
eats the same bread.
In his farewell address, Jesus takes a step forward, completing the
title of companions with that of friends: "No longer do I call you
servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I
have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have
made known to you" (John 15:15).
There is something moving in this declaration of love of Jesus. I will
always remember the moment when it was given to me, for an instant, to
know something of this emotion. In a prayer meeting, someone had opened
the Bible and read that passage of John. The word "friends" struck me to
a depth I have never experienced; it moved something in the depth of my
being, so much so that for the rest of the day I kept repeating to
myself, full of wonder and incredulity: He has called me friend! Jesus
of Nazareth, the Lord, my God! He has called me friend! I am his friend.
And it seemed to me that I could fly over the roofs of the city and even
go through fire with that certainty.
When St. Paul speaks of the love of Jesus Christ he always seems
"moved.": "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" (Romans
8:35), "he loved me and gave himself for me!" (Galatians 2:20). We are
led to mistrust the emotion and finally to be ashamed. We do not know of
what wealth we deprive ourselves. Jesus "is profoundly moved" and weeps
before the widow of Nain (cf. Luke 7:13) and Lazarus' sisters (cf. John
11:33.35). A priest capable of being moved when he speaks of the love of
God and of the suffering of Christ or picks up the confidence of a great
sorrow, convinces better than with infinite reasonings. To be moved does
not mean necessarily to start weeping; it is something that is perceived
in the eyes, in the voice. The Bible is full of God's pathos.
5. The soul of every priesthood
A personal relationship, full of trust and friendship with the person of
Jesus is the soul of every priesthood. In view of the Year of Priests I
read again the book of Jean-Baptiste Chautard "The soul of the
apostolate" that did so much good and shook so many consciences in the
years preceding the Council.
In a moment in which there was great enthusiasm for "parish works":
cinema, recreation, social initiatives, cultural circles, the author
brought back the discourse brusquely to the heart of the problem,
criticizing the danger of an empty activism. "God, he wrote, wants Jesus
to be the life of works."
He did not diminish the importance of pastoral activity, on the
contrary, he affirmed however that without a life of union with Christ,
they were no more than "crutches." Jesus says to Peter: "Simon, do you
love me? Feed my sheep." (cf. John 21: 15 f.) The pastoral action of
every minister of the Church, from the Pope to the last priest, is but
the concrete expression of the love for Christ. Do you love me? Then
feed! Love for Jesus is that which makes the difference between the
priest manager and the priest servant of Christ and dispenser of the
mysteries of God.
Dom Chautard's book could very well have been entitled "The soul of the
priesthood," because it is of him that one speaks, in practice, in the
whole work, as agent and responsible in the front line of the pastoral
care of the Church. At that time, the danger to which it was intended to
react was so-called "Americanism." The Abbot refers often, in fact, to
the letter of Leo XIII "Testem benevolentiae" which condemned such a
"heresy."
Today this heresy, if one can speak of heresy, is no longer "American,"
but a threat that, also because of the diminished number of priests,
affects the clergy of the whole Church: it is called frenetic activism.
(Many of the instances, after all, that came in that time from
Christians of the United States -- and in particular from the movement
created by the Servant of God Isaac Hecker, founder of the Paulist
Fathers, stamped with the term "Americanism," for example, liberty of
conscience and the need for dialogue with the modern world --, were not
heresies but prophetic instances that Vatican Council II, in part, made
its own!).
The first step, to make Jesus the soul of one's priesthood, is to go
from the Jesus personage to the Jesus person. A personage is one of whom
one can speak as much as one pleases, but to whom and with whom no one
dreams to speak. One can speak of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar,
Napoleon as much as one wishes, but if someone said he speaks with one
of them they would send him immediately to a psychiatrist. The person,
on the contrary, is one with whom and to whom one can speak. As long as
Jesus remains an ensemble of opinions, of dogmas or of heresies, someone
who is placed instinctively in the past, a memory, not a presence, he is
a personage. It is necessary to convince oneself that he is alive and
present, and more important than speaking about him is to speak with
him.
One of the most beautiful traits of Don Camillo of Guareschi, naturally
taking into account the literary genre adopted, is his speaking in a
loud voice with the Crucified of all the things that happen in the
parish. If we made it a habit to do so, spontaneously, with our own
words, how many things would change in our priestly life! We would
realize that we never speak to a void, but to someone who is present,
who listens and who responds, perhaps not in a loud voice like to Don
Camillo.
6. To make "the large stones" safe
As in God the whole external work of creation, flows from his intimate
life, "from the incessant flow of his love," and as all the activity of
Christ flows from his uninterrupted dialogue with the father, so all the
works of a priest must be the prolongation of his union with Christ. "As
the Father sent me, even so I send you," also means this: "I came into
the world without separating myself from the Father, you go into the
world without separating yourselves from me."
When this contact is interrupted, it is as when the electric current is
cut off in a house and everything stops and is in darkness or, if it is
a question of the water supply, the faucets no longer give water. One
hears said sometimes: how can one be tranquil and pray when so many
needs claim our presence? How can one not run when the house is burning?
It is true, but imagine what would happen to a squadron of fire fighters
that ran, to the sound of a siren, to extinguish a fire and then,
arriving at the site, remembers that they have not even a drop of water
in the tanks. This is how we are, when we run to preach or to another
ministry empty of prayer and of the Holy Spirit.
I read somewhere a story that it seems to me applies in an exemplary way
to priests. One day, an old professor was called as expert to speak on
the more efficient planning of their time to the higher cadres of some
large North American companies.
He decided then to attempt an experiment. Standing up, he took from
under the table a large empty glass. At the same time he also took a
dozen large stones like tennis balls that he deposited delicately one by
one in the glass until it was full. When no more stones could be added,
he asked his pupils: "Do you think the glass is full?" and they all
answered "Yes!"
He bent down again and took out from under the table a box full of
crushed stones which he poured over the large stones, moving the glass
so that the crushed stones could infiltrate between the large stones to
the bottom. "Is the glass full this time?", he asked. Becoming more
prudent, the pupils began to understand and answered: "Perhaps not yet."
The old professor bent down again and took out this time a small bag of
sand that he poured into the glass. The sand filled the spaces between
the stones and the crushed stones. Then he asked again: "Is the glass
full now?" And all without hesitation answered: "No!" In fact, the old
man took the decanter that was on the table and poured the water into
the glass to the brim.
At this point he asked: "What great truth does this experiment show us?
The most audacious replied: "This demonstrates that even when our agenda
is completely full, with a bit of good will, we can always add some new
endeavor, something else to do." "No," answered the professor. "What the
experiment demonstrates is that if one does not put the large stones
first in the glass, one will never succeed in making them go in
afterward." "What are the large stones, the priorities, in our life? The
important thing is to put these large stones first in your agenda."
Saint Peter pointed out, once and for all, which are the large stones,
the absolute priority, of the apostles and of their successors, bishops
and priests: "But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry
of the word" (Acts 6:4).
We priests, more than anyone else, are exposed to the danger of
sacrificing what is important for the urgent. Prayer, the preparation of
the homily or for Mass, study and formation, are all important things,
but not urgent; if they are postponed, apparently, the world does not
collapse, while there are so many little things -- a meeting, a phone
call, a material task -- which are urgent. Thus one ends up by
postponing systematically the important things to a "later" that never
arrives.
For a priest, to put the large stones first in the glass, can mean very
concretely, to begin the day with time for prayer and dialogue with God,
so that the activities and different commitments do not end up by taking
up all the space.
I end with a prayer of abbot Chautard: "O God, give the Church so many
apostles, but revive in their heart an ardent thirst for intimacy with
You and at the same time a desire to work for the good of their
neighbor. Give all a contemplative activity and an active
contemplation." So be it!
--- --- ---
[1] H. Dodd, "L'interpretazione del Quarto Vangelo" ["The Interpretation
of the Fourth Gospel"], Paideia, Brescia, 1974, p. 227
[2] Gregory of Nissa, "Sul Cantico" ["On the canticle"], XI, 5, 2, (PG
44, 1001) (aisthesis parousias).
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