Dear St. Rita Families,
Fishers of Men is a video produced for the USCCB perhaps 20 years ago promoting priestly vocations among men, reminding us of the dignity and grandeur of this particular call. The video, while a little older now, is quite good and useful, I think, for all Catholics to understand more deeply what the priest is to be for the People of God. I myself am approaching 12 years since my priestly ordination, and I can honestly say that there is absolutely nothing like the priesthood. While a priest always expects to be celebrating Sacraments and preaching the Gospel, it is impossible to predict what sort of path the Lord has planned for us. Mine has been filled with ups and downs, twists and turns, joys and sorrows that were entirely unexpected, but which have become loci of the Lord’s Presence and portals of Grace in my own life, and therefore the pathways through which God shows His Love to you through the ministry which He has entrusted to me.
I do not mean (or want) to talk much about myself here, but I mention the above only to indicate that God’s call to the priesthood is not a call into isolation, loneliness, despair, or emptiness. It is a call into deep Communion with the Divine. It is a call not only to impart but even to be God’s Presence for His people. “This is my Body.” “I absolve you.” It is not only that it is Christ’s Body and Christ absolving you, etc. It is that, by the Sacrament of Holy Orders, He brings the priest into such union with Him that the ordained minister carries God’s People in his heart to the Cross. The words he speaks when celebrating the Sacraments are a reflection of his sacramental identification with Christ, one which, (super?)naturally, demands a conformity of the priest’s entire life to that of the Savior.
In other words, it is not so much about what the priest does for you. It is about what the priest is for you. And, this is how the Lord calls other men to participate in His salvific mission. He does not tell Peter and Andrew, “I will give you a new job – catching men.” He says, “I will make you fishers of men” (Mt 4:19). He means, among other things, “You will be transformed. Something within you – your very being – will change.” Every baptized Christian becomes a member of the Body of Christ, which is also His Bride. The priest, however, shares in Christ’s identity as Bridegroom and Head of the Body. We hear often enough that the priest, when he celebrates the Sacraments acts “in persona Christi”, “in the Person of Christ.” We can say it more fully too: he acts “in persona Christi capitis et sponsi”, “in the Person of Christ the Head and Spouse.”
If you have not read or spent time with St. John Vianney’s short Catechism on the Priesthood, I highly recommend it. It is not rocket science, but the fruit of deep prayer and holiness of life, which is more difficult but also more attainable than rocket science. Not everyone has the intellectual capacity for rocket science, but everyone has, by God’s Grace, the capacity for holiness. But for those who have the intellectual capacity for rocket science – which can seem so difficult for those who do not – it will be easier to master rocket science than to master holiness! The essence of priesthood is not so much theological learning, though the modern, diocesan instantiation of it rightly requires theological study. The essence of the priesthood is conformity to Christ’s sacrificial gift of Himself to His Bride.
The Bride of Christ – the Church – NEEDS the priesthood, not just to give Her the Sacraments when She wants them; that would be like the wife who only cares for her husband’s money and the material provisions (house, car, etc.) he enables her to obtain. What a poverty! The Church needs the priest as She needs Christ Himself. She needs the presence of the priest, since his very presence is the total gift of oneself for the sake of the Bride, lived out over time. It is that presence which is prior to any other gift given. The Sacraments, the spiritual guidance, the teaching, the love, and the care all come after – and because of – the presence.
Therefore, whether God calls you to the priesthood (you know who you are) or whether God is calling your son(s) to the priesthood, know just how important, meaningful, effective, and necessary is this vocation. She – the Bride of Christ – needs good men to be Her priests. Without them, She falters. Without them, She forgets. Without them, She starves and all but dies. Do not delay, then. Do not abandon the Bride. The time is now. “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come!’” (Rev 22:17).
In Christ,
Fr. Christensen