Priesthood, Contemplative Prayer and Real Presence

Contemplatives need holy priests and holy priests need contemplatives.  The priest helps the contemplative behold the mystery given by Christ and the contemplative helps the priest humble himself in prayer.  In this mutual relation, we confront beautiful dimensions of the mystery of the Real Presence.

Some contemplatives believe that it is possible to reach a state of consciousness that surpasses the whole sacramental economy.  The corollary is that the ministerial priesthood is superfluous once a certain level of spiritual maturity or degree of prayer is attained.  The Sacrament of Holy Orders, however, is uniquely implicated in the mediation of the Great High Priest.  At the Last Supper, the Lord instituted its mystery as a necessary means of grace in His Mystical Body.  Priests, who act in the person of Christ, serve as the very head of His Body with power and authority to make Christ's presence Real. Contemplation that leaves the Body of Christ behind is no longer really Christian and the spiritual life that rejects the gift of the priesthood has lost its head.

On the other hand, there are also some who believe that priesthood does not need to be rooted in contemplative prayer. It does not need to be lived out so radically they presume. It would seem to be enough to manage through the business of religious and make sure all institutional obligations are efficiently dealt with. Such an attitude believes that contemplatives themselves are of little value for the priestly business of the Church. This is pure folly. Such hubris cuts off those who most need the love of God from the only kind of prayer that will help them find it. When the priesthood is deprived of contemplative prayer, it is cut off from its life's blood and proceeds in its activity with lifeless closed eyes.

Though it is never an easy thing, the priest thrives the more intimate his relation with the Lord, and contemplative prayer is nothing other than that commitment to spend time in still silence before Him, waiting on Him, searching for Him, and allowing oneself to be found by Him. Christian contemplation gazes on pure love -- Divine Love dwelling in humble humanity making all things new -- and it takes diligence and fasting to recognize the delicate, subtle and hidden work that He is about.  For the Body of Christ not only has a Head, but also a Heart. Christ the Head laid down His life that we might have His Heart and behold the undying life that flows from it.  Contemplatives draw close to this Sacred Heart and through them, Eternal Life flows into the rest of the Mystical Body.  A priest who contemplates the merciful love that this Heart contains is vulnerable to this Divine Inflow.  A minister who allows himself to be formed by contemplatives who know this wisdom becomes a source of spiritual refreshment to all those to whom he ministers.

This joining of Head and Heart, of truth and holy desire, of wisdom and joy, of contemplation and action has the quality of music. The interplay of these relations evokes moments of elation and heartache so intense that time and space can no longer limit it.  This music moves us into great silence, an openness, a receptivity. The mysterious harmony of these sacred relations reconstitutes those who will join its strain. Complementary differences in the Body of Christ not only protect us from hubris before the Lord, they implicate us in a beautiful mystery of interpersonal relations that reflect eternal splendors otherwise hidden from this world.  What results is a great hymn, a song of praise and thanksgiving, a canticle of love that reverberates in every Mass and echoes in the silence of Eucharistic adoration -- a Eucharistic canticle.

When a priest holds the Blessed Sacrament in his hands, it is in order that this supreme gift might be seen, recognized, contemplated, treasured, adored and partaken.  His ministry evokes contemplation, adoration, and transformation through the Real Presence his ministry makes manifest. In the Mystical Body, the Head and the Heart are bound to each other, each building up and blessing the other, each depending on the other.  Thus, the priestly ministry and contemplative prayer are bound to one another, in the Eucharistic canticle of heaven.

Theology and Priestly Formation

Some have argued that too much attention is payed to theology in priestly formation. They contend that most priests forsake the ministry for lack of human and spiritual rather than intellectual formation. There is something important to this position and efforts to provide better spiritual and human formation must be engaged in earnest. Yet, I am not fully in agreement with the idea that we need to ease up on theological exploration so that proper attention can be given these other areas. This is too compartmentalized in its approach.

All Christian formation, including priestly formation, needs to have the form of an incarnate discipleship - the learning of a whole manner of life that involves all the excellencies of human existence. A theology that does not purify and intensify one's humanity, contemplation and pastoral charity is a very poor theology indeed.  The theological task must be lead souls into a baptism of wonder until their whole existence is on fire with the love of God. Any other kind of theology is simply a waste of time.

Pure of heart, an existence aflame with Divine Love knows the sanctification of all its bodily and psychological urges, drives and instincts. Completely vulnerable in obedience to the Word made flesh, it is become poor in spirit, an icon of the Father's love for the World. A peacemaker, it yearns for the unity of the Church and stands against discord in the Body of Christ. Hungering and thirsting for justice, such an enflamed soul takes the side of the humble and powerless in society, always ready to offer a word of hope. Most of all, such a disciple rejoices in the face of persecution - for it finds in such rejection, a more perfect identification with Christ.

The Mystery of Faithful Love - living signs needed today now more than ever

John Paul II once told priests not to let their "yes" to God become a "no."   This is true not only for priests but for anyone who is consecrated for love and by love.  Besides the priesthood, marriage is a kind of consecration one makes with another person to reveal the indissoluble and faithful love of Christ.  Because Christ's love for the Church cannot be broken, this bond in the sacrament of matrimony is also indissoluble.   Holy Orders and consecrated life also involve irrevocable commitments.  Yet this is exactly what love wants to do - commit itself irrevocably.   This is because love tends to the likeness of the Lord - and God is love.  Whatever our state in life, our solemn pledges establish us in the unfathomable mystery of this faithful love.  Since He has loved us unto death, such pledges are also unto death. It is on the basis of the irrevocable nature of God's love for us that John Paul II appealed to priests to be faithful and whatever our state in life, we need to apply this appeal to our own situation as well.

There is a very grave spiritual dimension to such a life commitment: if anyone tries to break a marriage or any other consecrated way of life, they do great violence to themselves and everyone around them.    Forsaking marriage or religious life or the priesthood is always gravely harmful on both a personal and societal level.  It robs everyone of a sign of God's faithfulness which is owed them by the pledge that one has made.

Pledging the gift of self in love is completely so like the Lord, so God-like, that it requires Divine help to fulfill such a commitment.  It is our dignity to make such an irrevocable gift of self and God always provides the grace for this if we ask.  We must believe in his love more than we believe in human weakness.  If you get married or are ordained or make any other kind of vows with the thought in the back of your mind that "should things get too rough there is an escape hatch" - well, it does not seem to be a very mature pledge of oneself and it certainly does not seem to be anything "like" the way God has chosen to love us.  One does not need God to be faithful in such circumstances.  But when you freely choose to embrace something with the resolve that "no matter what, by the help of God, I have got to make  this work" -- well this is a whole new game.  God can do something with you because you have placed yourself in a situation in which you must rely on Him.

What about those times when we are betrayed and abandoned, when all our deepest aspirations are crushed, when we are misunderstood and taken advantage of, when we stand before the antithesis of all we hoped to achieve by our pledge of love, when disappointment, bitterness and resentment knock at the door of our hearts and when there seems to  be no love left at all?  And, what about those times when we cause such things or do them to those who are entrusted to us?     What about our weaknesses and our dignity?  There is no nice cliche to offer those who find themselves at the foot of the Cross, except to point to the One whom we have pierced and to bring such questions to Him in prayer.  When we trust in Him especially in these circumstances, He is able to reveal his glory.  He will whisper the secret of faithful love when such love seems most impossible to find.

God needs living signs of His faithful love in the world.  Whether we are married or religious, priests or deacons; we who have consecrated ourselves or been consecrated by love and for love must not allow our "yes" to God to become a "no."  Although there are tragic and impossible situations, whenever by ardent prayer we choose to be faithful to one another and to God, it allows God to signify, to show forth his unfailing faithfulness to the world.

Priesthood Needed: even in a world that deems it irrelevant

At the beginning of an address to seminarians, Pope Benedict observes that the world will always need the priesthood because, no matter how advanced the culture, people always need God:

"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 globalisation: 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".

Year for Priests Lecture: Rupture vs. Continuity: Cardinal Newman, Vatican II and the Church today

7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Bonfils Hall, John Paul II Center campus

1300 S. Steele St., Denver

Free and open to the public

Father Ian Ker, a Catholic priest, Oxford scholar and prominent biographer of Cardinal John Henry Newman, will offer a "Newman-esque" interpretation of the Second Vatican Council. Rev. Ker will discuss, from the perspective of Newman’s theological outlook, competing interpretations of the Council, comparing those who see it as a rupture with the Church’s past, against those who see it in continuity with the Church’s 2000+year history.

Biography: Rev. Ian Ker is senior research fellow in theology at St. Benet's Hall, Oxford and has taught both English literature and theology at universities in Britain and the United States. He has authored and edited more than 20 books on Cardinal Newman, including the Oxford Critical Edition of “The Idea of a University.”

His two most recent books are “The Catholic Revival in English literature 1845-1961” and “Mere Catholicism.” His biography of Newman, originally published in 1988, was reissued by Oxford University Press in 2009. He has also recently completed the first full-length intellectual and literary biography of G. K. Chesterton.

The Curé d'Ars and Graham Greene: The Priesthood and Divine Mercy

Mercy is love that suffers the weakness of the beloved.  It bears an offense to affirm the dignity of the offender.  Divine mercy is God's loving presence, dwelling in the abyss of our own misery.  He reveals how much He suffers with us whenever we behold the Christ crucified.  This is a mystery every Christian must experience.  It is especially attached to the priesthood in the tension between the greatness of the ministry and the unworthiness of the minister.  This post is the fourth and final part of a lecture given on the priesthood.  It attempts to highlight the importance of praying for priests in this Year For the Priest.

Graham Greene's work the Power and the Glory presents a priest who helps us understand a dimension of the priestly witness of St. John Vianney. Graham Greene's whiskey priest is a very different man than St. John Vianney, and not just on the level of sobriety. The whiskey priest is fleeing for his life during the Mexican persecution of the Church in the 1920s. He is an unlikely martyr struggling with insobriety and self-absorption with a record of infidelity to his priestly promises. His ministry seems completely futile. Yet, he cannot help himself from being a priest.

He knows that he is a weak and petty man. In fact, he is too weak to flee for his life. He wants to escape. He could apostatize like one of his friends - but he sees his friend's tormented existence and he knows he is not strong enough to bear it. So he is driven to put his life on the line so that people can have the mass and confession: not by courage or piety, but by a certain sense of duty he cannot refuse.

It is concerning this combination of a sense of duty and feeling of unworthiness that we can draw a connection with the Curé d'Ars. John Vianney had no more of a sense of progressing in holiness than does the character created by Graham Greene. In fact, he felt that something about the priesthood was endangering him. The priestly ministry thrust him into a place where he was so concentrated on the salvation of others, he felt as if he were neglecting his own.

This anxiety over death -- death in this life or death in the life to come -- is a common experience for all those who follow Christ. We have an instinct for self-preservation which constantly balks at carrying the Cross. It is the love of God in us that helps us order this instinct for his glory. It is possible to follow Christ crucified in this way, not because of personal greatness or worthiness, but because of God's grace alone, the gift of his life that flows from the cross.

In the case of the priesthood, fidelity to serving Christ in his people, even when he is barely recognizable, is the Cup of the Covenant, the pathway to the place of crucifixion. The priest can follow this pathway because of a gift he received in Holy Orders. It is the grace of Christ, the very life of the Risen Lord, given in this sacrament that drives the priest - even if he does not know it. If he tries to deny it, it will not leave him in peace. This is because grace, in particular the grace of Holy Orders, comes in the form of love, and only by surrendering in love do we ever find the rest for which our hearts long.

This sheds some light on why the Year for the Priest is also a time to pray for priests who struggle with the priesthood. The Lord desires them to rest in his love. And yet some of them are tormented like Graham Greene's characters or like the Curé d'Ars on those occasions when he left his parish. On the one side there is the call to love God's people that lives in the hearts of the ordained. On the other, there is anxiety, some form of fear that makes a man want to runaway. It is in the cross section of these two movements that the Lord chooses to dwell with us, where he discloses the power of his mercy. As the brothers and sisters of those the Lord allows to dwell in this holy place, we must pray for them, that they might discover the embrace of the mercy of the Father.

The Priest is not his Own - Part III

In this post, we will try to bring into relief important aspects of Mystery of the Priesthood as witnessed by St. John Vianney through comparing his experience with a priest depicted by Miguel de Unamuno.  We hope to show the essential connection between the truth of the faith and the nature of the priesthood, and the fruitful tension between the truth about the man who is a priest and the truth about the priesthood given to the man.

Before we can begin this comparison, we need to make some initial observations.  First of all, the priestly ministry is often viewed as a cultural convention imposed from the outside to which a man must submit if he is to be a good priest.   The Catholic Church however asserts that the priesthood is not the product of human culture, but something given by God.  Now these two ways of seeing the priesthood play themselves out historically and culturally.   For those who do not believe in God or that God can give a gift like the priesthood, it is completely baffling that the priesthood or religion should demand so much.  For those who begin to understand what the Lord has given us in the priesthood, they can not believe that God would be so generous.

Another point to bear in mind is the intrinsic nature of divine gift of the priesthood.  The Catholic priesthood is not extrinsic to humanity, but takes up and perfects something God has already planted in our nature.  God created men and women with a priestly character - that is as his image and likeness the highest form of human activity is to enter into the rest of the Lord through worshipping Him.   Much more could be said on this point, but for our purposes it is enough to assert that the priesthood of Christ takes up this priestly quality of our humanity, restores it to is full dignity and perfects it.

Another preliminary point to be made concerns the relationship of Christians to those ordained into the priesthood by the sacrament of Holy Orders.  Christ's priesthood is something every Christian recieves at baptism.  In a certain sense, every Christian is a priest - part of a nation of priests.  By baptism, we offer acceptable worship to the Father through Christ Jesus for the salvation of the world.   But the way Christ established his Church, the baptized cannot do this by themselves.  They need to be lead by someone with the special authority of Christ which comes through the apostles.  It is from among the members of Christ priesthood that some are selected by the bishops or successors of the apostles to lead, teach and sanctify the rest of Christ's body.  To say that they are ordained means that they are given the Sacrament of Holy Orders - a sacrament of service that gives these men special grace to serve all those who are joined to the royal priesthood of Christ.  When we speak of the Catholic priesthood, it is these ordained ministers of Christ's body to whom we are referring.

One final point that is essential for our conversation is what happens to someone who is ordained in Holy Orders for the priesthood.   The ministerial priesthood is conferred through Holy Orders.  When the bishop imposes his hands and consecrates a man to the servcie of God, the very heart of the man is changed.  A new intrinsic power now flows from the Cross of Christ through him in a manner the Christ power has never flowed  through his person before.  Traditionally, we call this divine change of heart sacramental "character". The priestly character conferred in Holy Orders configures a man to Christ in such a way that he is able to signify the sanctifying power of Christ every time he is faithful to his ministry, even in the midst of weakness and failure.   For this power to be revealed, all it takes is faith.

But now we get to the point of our refection, an existential question that many struggle with - is the power of faith really rooted in reality or is it merely psychological, the power of suggestion that moves emotions and imagination?  The personal answer to the question has grave consequences for the way we approach our faith and our salvation.  For many people today, faith is something sentimental, a nice idea we return to when life gets too hard.

When I worked in a parish some parishioners would get so upset with the Church whenever an appeal was made to an absolute value - like the sanctity of life or the indissolubility of marriage.  They expected their faith to make them feel better about certain bad decisions, but the truth of the faith they had to deal with was not very consoling.  But the truth rarely consoles at first.  It challenges us.  It makes us rethink what we have done.  Time and again in my own life I have had the  painful discovery that what I want is not the measure of truth, the truth is the measure of what I want. And, only after we have dealt with the truth do we begin to find a consolation that nothing else in the world can give.

The truth about the priesthood is part of this. And the odd thing about reality is that it refuses to limit itself to what we expect it to be. What is real never really fits into the categories we construct for it. In the end, we accept it for what it is - or live in a delusion. Similarly, only those who accept the priestly ministry for what it actually is discover the truth about it, and this truth can make all the difference in life.

To shed light on the essential connection between the truth of the faith and the nature of the priesthood, we will consider Unamuno's priest in his short story Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr.  He depicts a preist driven by compassion for his village community in 19th Century Spain.   His heart aches because of the looming reality of death and the lake of despair it occasions. Out of this compassion, Unamuno's priest promotes the Catholic faith. The problem is that for this priest, on a personal level, the faith is no more than a pious myth, a kind of sacred story for regular people to believe so they can face death with some kind of hope.  In Unamuno's world, the truth is something so dreadful that "simple people could not live with it."

The priest's charade is not malicious, but well intentioned. Father Emmanuel, despite his lack of faith, sacrifices himself continuing to proclaim the pious myth entrusted to him so that his parishioners in Valverde de Lucerana might live life to the fullest. Unamuno's priest eventually becomes part of the myth himself. After his death, his parishioners come to “believe in Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr, who, with no hope of immortality for himself, preserved their hope in it.”

For me, this depiction is especially sad because it captures something many people, and maybe some priests themselves, actually believe.  Namely, the truth about life really is too hard and terrifying, and we need to avoid it if we are going get through it at all.  For such people, religion or religious myth is a way to cope with pain so bitter that it simply can not be dealt with straight up.  Now if all religion were only myth, than life really would be a sad affair.  

But not all religion claims to be myth.  In fact, the Christian faith as it has been preserved in the Catholic Church, claims to be the fullness of the truth.  When the Church claims that Christ Jesus saves us from sin and death, it is declaring that real salvation exists, that life does not have to be a sad affair, that everything that is good, noble and true about humanity does not need to perish.   If the Church invites men and woman to believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God risen from the dead, it is because it is really true that those who believe in Him will not perish, but live forever.

The biggest difference between my own experiences and those Unamuno presents is most people who live a religious charade usually do not get much of a happy ending, even the romantic ending he provides.  The despair behind the myth they peddle consumes them and always hurts those closest to them. 

To understand the priesthood and experiences like St. John Vianney had, the starting place is to accept the proposition that Christianity is not a myth, but the stark and surprising truth.  If we look at all the evil in the world, it truly is surprising that God really did create us and really does yearn for friendship with us.   His desire is so great that the Father sent his only begotten Son to become one of us so that we might be able to join in the very love life of the Trinity, leading all creation into worship and praise.  This truth is also stark.  To make it possible for us to choose this friendship we needed to be freed from sin and death - and for this reason Jesus, the Son of God, died on the Cross. 

Most people would agree that death is stark - but it sometimes is difficult to take sin seriously.  Almost, every Christian has the tendency to think - "Gee God, does this behavior really need to change?  After all, I am a pretty good guy."  Yet, there really is something quite broken inside us, something that really needs to change, and by ourselves we do not have the strength to change it.   We need God, not as an escape or distraction, but as the only One who can help us deal with who we really are.  And this is where Unamuno's priest, as compassionate as he is, is really unable to help people.   Unlike the Unamuno's Christianity which preserves a social order and a pleasant country existence, true Christianity seeks to transform the heart and save the whole world.    The ministry of the priest must constantly deal with the relentlessy real - it does not have the luxury of sustaining pious myths.

The purpose of this reflection was to shed some light on the curious tension in the priestly ministry of St. John Vianney and his own feelings of unworthiness.  Unamuno's character really captures something of the priestly heart when it comes to the compassion that the priesthood demands.  A priest is asked to bear all the sorrows of the people entrusted to him, and a huge part of his ministry to console those who feel overwhelmed.  Unlike St. Emmanuel the Good, however, the Curé d’Ars really did believe the Gospel.  The love of God was not a story he promoted so that people could endure their meaningless lives. 

St. John Vianney understood that each and every life has a deep and eternal meaning, even if he was anxious about what this meant for himself.  In the face of his own feelings of unworthiness, the priesthood enabled him to help those entrusted to him find this meaning for their lives.  They discovered through his ministry that they were truly loved in the most unimaginable way.   And once they found that meaning, they could not possibly go back to the way they lived before: everything changed.  Many of his parishioners devoted their lives in wonderful ways to living for the glory of God.

The Priest is not his Own - Part II

In our last post, we considered a particular problem which the witness of the Cure d'Ars suggests. The priest signifies something for us - and not just for us Catholics, but for the whole world. But what he signifies is disproportionate to his person. His existence points to Christ, under a specific aspect. While all the baptized participate in the mystery of Christ, the priest, in fact, participates in a unique way. But what distinguishes the priest's participation in the mystery of Christ from every other form of participation? In this post, we will try to identify what is unique to the priesthood. In particular, we will see that the priest shares not only in the priesthood of Christ in a unique way, but also in the mystery of Christ as victim. In Christ, and in the vocation of the priesthood, the work of sanctification (i.e. the ministry of making the Church holy) involves a special kind of self-offering.
Whatever it is, it is difficult to be faithful to. Even the Cure d'Ars struggled with this. In our last post, we considered how almost all his peers and superiors viewed him as incompetent. Some held him as too incompetent to be a priest. This was not for lack of intelligence. But it did have a lot to do with his own insecurities over his very late and very poor education. Yet if we stop here, we do not really fully see why the John Vianney struggled with a lack of confidence and why this lack of confidence was so great that he actually attempted to forsake his parish ministry on occasion. Here, we are going to consider a mystery that is at the heart of the priesthood for every man who tries to live it out to the full -- this feeling of unworthiness.
John Vianney was very concerned about his own salvation. Even as his efforts as a pastor met with great success, he had to fight back thoughts that perhaps he was decieving himself concerning where he really stood with God. Some of this self-doubt may have been brought on by his peers and teachers. Some of it also seems to have come from God. In fact, after he was made pastor of Ars, he asked the Lord to allow him to see the truth about himself. And even great saints can find the truth overwhelming.
The reason for this is that our hearts are filled with every kind of misery and weakness. This does not mean we are completely evil. But it means that what is good, noble and true about each of us needs to be saved – and only God can save it if we let Him. He never imposes Himself, but patiently deals with the darkness we suffer as we are ready and willing. This is why there are deep wounds that the Lord, in his mercy, does not allow us to see all at once. Otherwise, the magnitude of our brokenness can overwhelm us, and we despair.
So normally God allows us just a tiny peak of what he is suffering with us and in us. When He gives us this glimpse, it is only to move us to trust Him and cling to Him all the more. For the fact is, we are powerless to deal with the pain we carry within. And, God never intended that we should try to deal with it by ourselves. He yearns to deal with it - but to do this, as we have already mentioned, we must surrender to Him. In the case of the Curé of Ars, God wanted John Vianney to rely on Him alone - so the Lord showed him something about himself to completely humble him. And it did.
The unfortunate side-effect of this vision was that John Vianney struggled off and on with the desire to run off to a more austere form of religious life, and there in hidden anonymity to work out his salvation. He was afraid, in the effort to help others find salvation, he was taking the time he needed to fully surrender himself to the Lord.
It is here that we find a great mystery of the spiritual life that applies to everyone. When the Lord gives us a great work, He also gives a great grace - not only for the edification of others, but also for our own salvation. God is always more generous with those who are generous to Him.
Although John Vianney would run away on occasion, God always brought him back. The Curé was almost oblivious to the grace of God at work in him because he could only see his brokenness. The Lord however sent his parishioners and friends to intercept him before he got too far. It was through others, through those he ministered to, that the priest of Ars slowly accepted that God was sanctifying him, not despite his priestly ministry, but because of it. John Vianney learned to accept his unworthiness as an integral part of the mystery his vocation signified.
So, what is it the priest signifies? What is the reality to which his very person now points because he has been joined to the office of the priesthood? Fulton Sheen suggests a secondary meaning of Christ’s word’s “This is my Body” sheds light on this question. When the priest says the words of consecration, not only is bread and wine changed into the Body and Blood of Christ, the priest is also identifying himself with Christ in a sacramental way: He is a visible sign of an invisible reality, and that reality is Christ crucified. He is, after all, saying, “This is my Body.” Bishop Sheen suggests that we see at every mass what the person of the priest is become through Holy Orders a “priest-victim” who signifies Christ himself.
But now we get to what is perhaps the oddest part of this exploration. The priest is supposed to signify Christ, the Priest-Victim, whose perfect sacrifice has saved us from sin and death.  In most cases, however, there seems to be very little of Christ’s perfection in the priest’s own personality.  Not only do others see this - but the priest himself suffers it.  Most priests experience something like John Vianney: they feel unworthy to point to Christ and at the same time, feel compelled to offer themselves as a sign of Christ for others. So what is it in the grace of Holy Orders that allows us to find Christ crucified in the priest?  In order to answer this question, we will consider literary examples of the priesthood provided by Miguel de Unamuno and Graham Greene in our next post.

“The Priest is not his Own" Part I Based on a lecture given Wed., Jan. 27, 2010

Introduction:

This lecture, presented in the blog under several parts, considers the tension in the priest between the limits of his humanity and the responsibilities of his office, his lack of belief and the demands of his vocation, the appeal of the religious imagination and the rigorous realism of our faith, and, finally, the agony of laying down one’s life and the joy of encountering the Lord. As we consider this tension and the possibility of its resolution, we will see that the pathway to the Cross is through the person of the priest.

The Problem St. Jean Vianney Presents

Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney was considered very incompetent by almost all his peers and even most of those who had responsibility for his vocation. A bishop, desperately in need of priests after years of suppression following the French Revolution, thought he saw something more, and arranged for the rather late vocation to be examined under special circumstances. So although he was not able to master Latin well enough to take the ordinary exams required of those to be ordained, examiners did discover someone with exceptional skills in the discernment of moral issues as well as firm grasp of the catechetical truths of the faith. Based on this, the bishop ordained him. John Vianney however would struggle for years with a basic insecurity regarding his intellectual and administrative gifts. None of his peers could believe it when he was appointed pastor of the small parish in Ars, a little farm village miles outside of Lyons in the middle of nowhere. No one could have anticipated that through his faith in the Lord, this uncultured, small, simple man, (with a somewhat annoying high pitched voice) would turn this sleepy parish into a center of spiritual renewal for all of France.

Preliminary Reflections of the Catholic Priesthood and the Person of the Priest

To unlock part of the mystery that unfolds in the witness of this country priest, we must pause for a minute to consider the abyss that yawns between the ministry of the priesthood and the worthiness of the person to whom it is entrusted. In a few, but rare cases, this abyss is spanned – and the person grows into the ministry, becomes completely one with his most high calling. This is certainly the case with the Curé d’Ars. But no one begins the priestly vocation with a personality and character commensurate to the calling they have received.

Fulton Sheen, in his book, The Priest is not his Own, explains this phenomena in terms suggested by the Bible and the Roman Canon. After the words of institution, the Roman Canon recounts the sacrifices offered by Able, Abraham and Melchizedek. He says that Able offers God a blood sacrifice and that this is analogous to the many priests, especially in our century, who have laid down their life for the faith. Maximillian Kolbe, the subject of a future lecture, is an example of this kind of priest.   In Auschwitz, he volunteered to be executed in substitution for another man who was the father of a family.  He did this out of love and compassion, bringing hope to a hopeless place.  There are many priests today all over the world who continue to offer this sacrifice of blood on behalf of others. 

Bishop Sheen goes on to explain that not all priests are called to shed their blood for the faith, but that many priests spend their whole priestly ministry ready to do so. These priests offer with their lives a sacrifice like Abraham, a voluntary sacrifice. To understand what Bishop Sheen is trying to get at with “voluntary,” consider specifically Abraham’s willingness to offer even his own son, an image of God the Father.  A couple of examples of just such a priest might be Francis Xavier Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan or Jean Bernard, both of whom we will also consider in future lectures.  They were fully willing to die for the faith, and almost did.  But God used them in other ways.   There are many such priests today who quietly do their ministry, rejected, despised, and at the same time joyful, their all too voluntary sacrifices completely hidden, except to the Lord.

Finally, Bishop Sheen explains that priests, whether they shed their blood or live their ministry ready to or not, all priests are a kind of sacramental sacrifice like that offered by Melchizedek.  Melchizedek offered a sacrifice of bread and wine when he blessed Abraham. These gifts were a signs of something beyond themselves. The foreshadowed a greater reality that no one could have anticipated.  In fact, their full meaning was not revealed until the night before Jesus died, “This is my Body ...my Blood."

The point is, like the bread and wine at mass, that the priest signifies something more than he appears to be. Today at mass, the bread and wine continue to look like bread and wine after they are consecrated with Jesus’ own words, but we know by faith that they are not just bread and wine. They are the body and blood of Jesus. The point of the doctrine of transubstantiation and the real presence is that when we share in these gifts we enter into communion with the Lord himself, and our encounter with Him is transformative, giving us real power to live a new life. Similarly the priest appears to be a man, sometimes even a pathetic man. But he signifies something far beyond himself, and as he faithfully offers his ministry, what he signifies leads to a real and life changing encounter with the Lord himself.

Discussion continued in the next post -

Year for the Priest

I am offering a series of lectures at the John Paul II Center for the New Evangelization.  If you are interested, please follow the link below.

http://www.sjvdenver.edu/about-the-seminary/catechetical-school/the-virgin-mary-in-the-wisdom-of-the-saints

St. John Vianney Continued

I would like to continue some thoughts on this feast of the Priest of Ars. There was a particular kind of prayer he tried to promote among his people, a kind of prayer which must have been very important to him in his own struggles. He advocated contemplation, a loving awareness of God's presence, especially in the Eucharist. There is this great story about an old man that John Vianney found in the Church just staring at the tabernacle. The priest asked him what he was doing and the man explained, "I look at him and he looks at me."

Contemplation is gazing on God with the eyes of the heart. Part of this gazing is to believe He is present even when the heart seems overwhelmed with other things. This gaze of love searches for Him and this search takes time. For those who take up silent prayer, who obey the voice which calls out, "Be still, and know that I am God", such contemplative souls understand why the Priest of Ars was moved by the witness of that old farmer.

The question is if St. John Vianney so valued this kind of prayer, why did he also insist on conversion of life and the ongoing struggle against sin? This kind of prayer is so peaceful - why should we disturb it with the hard discipline of the Christian life, the ongoing struggle that seems to never cease? The answer is that this prayer and the peace it brings is not really an end in itself. Contemplative prayer and the peace God gives through it are only part of a way of life in which God teaches us how to be free and true in our friendship with Him.

Contemplative prayer does provide a beautiful wisdom that disposes the heart intensely to God so that one is actually freed from those troubled anxieties that too much attachment to the things of this world can cause. In this, there is a very satisfying peace that one discovers. Anxieties and worries do not have the same disturbing effect because worldly affairs no longer seem as important. If persevered with, this contemplative prayer also frees us from false notions - like the idea that religious practices somehow appease the wrath of God, or that the Christian life is all about storing up merits for oneself.

But while a certain kind of indifference and equanimity can be characteristics of spiritual maturity, these virtues are only so to the degree that they are informed by charity -- which is friendship love of God. Without charity, these qualities become what Augustine considers splendid vices. It is simply cold indifference to remain detached in the face of a neighbor's plight. It is a slothful equanimity that does not resist such sin. Rather than strengthening our relationship with the Lord, this kind of peace becomes a barrier to the friendship the Lord has invited us into.

The temptation to seek the peacefulness contemplation produces rather than God who is the source of all true peace found its theological expression in Quietism two hundred years before the Cure d'Ars. Thinkers like Fr. Maravel, Fr. Molinos, and Mme. Guyon, similar to St. John Vianney, promoted the practice of the awareness of God. They, like the Cure d'Ars, rejected the notion that the spiritual life was about appeasing an angry God. They also upheld, however, the conviction that spiritual maturity requires attaining indifference to sin and one's own salvation. Enchanted by a certain passivity that they mistook for supernatural virtue, they and their followers were often proported to be the source of scandal. Especially dangerous was their notion that one ought not to resist sin - because resistance and struggle disturbs one's inner peace. Check out http://tiny.cc/bvRvJ.

Unlike the promoters of Quietism, the Cure d'Ars understood that peace is the fruit of our friendship with the Lord. This friendship requires vigilance and struggle against anything that might harm it. When we struggle against sin, we are really struggling against the tendency in us to act against love, to act without love. Only when we act in love does God create the space in our hearts that peace requires. His secret was to allow himself to be pierced by the plight of the people Christ entrusted to his care. Once pierced by their need for God and at the same time drawn to enter into God more deeply, he found the ability to surrender what he thought was best for what the Lord thought was best.

This trap of Quietism is at least partially rooted in a need for control and a lack of trust in the Lord. Becoming passively indifferent about one's own life is so much easier than actively pursuing friendship with God with all our strength and determination. This is because indifference towards one's self does not require trusting God or surrendering to Him who yearns for us. Indifference does not require vulnerability. Like Adam and Eve, such indifference offers a fig leaf, a place to hide from the One who searches for us, something that appeals to our imagination more than the unimaginable thing God has called us to.

In his own journey, John Vianney realized Christ's saving hand over this spiritual trap. God's friendship was necessary for real peace. He instinctively understood that this friendship with God, like all friendship, demands daily discipline of opening one's heart and the willingness to go into His heart. Such discipline would be impossible without grace - but by the grace of Christ, this struggle yields peace. In this way, Contemplative prayer and asceticism went hand in hand for him.

St. John Vianney and True Peace

St. John Vianney is a great example of a man of prayer. There are some who want to paint him in tones that are too sentimental and sweet. The strength of his character and intensity of presence is lost in such depictions. He may have been peaceful but he was not passive. For a great snapshot of his character, see http://bit.ly/3whRJ.

The way he lived his life showed that true peace is always bought at the price of a great struggle. Part of the struggle for him was to be faithful to the mystery of the priesthood in the midst of personal doubts. Even if he was haunted by a lack of confidence in his ability to be a good priest even to the point of running away from his parish, the Lord made him faithful and protected him in his weakness. With John Vianney, the Cure d'Ars, because of the inexhaustible grace of God, we have a man of true grit who was not afraid to fight the battle of prayer.

A small hard working man with a piercing gaze, he defied secular tyranny to become a priest. His dedication to long hours of study remains firm even as his classmates and professors consider him stupid. He is ordained to the dismay of some of his professors and classmates. He is considered incompetent by most the rest of his presbyterate. Assigned a sleepy little country town more interested in bars and dancing than in the Church and praying, the determination and courage that got him into and out of seminary, he takes with him into this ministry. Come what come may he sets himself to do everything he can to help the people entrusted to him realize how much Jesus loves them.

They are not a happy lot. Alcoholism, atheism and adulterous affairs have robbed them of the ability to live life to the full. They are for the most part completely ignorant of the joy and peace that Christ has to offer them. Religion, prayer, going to mass, going to confession - these practices are even mocked as old fashioned silliness. In fact, the priest himself is considered old and silly - out of touch with the real world. And in the face of this rejection, this priest must overcome his own impatience and constantly renew his dedication to them for the Lord. He knows a great secret, a secret shared by everyone who tries to enter deeply into prayer to embrace the will of God. Real prayer involves taking up a fierce struggle against the power of sin and death still lingering in our hearts, and only by engaging this struggle can the Lord make us instruments of his peace.

Because of Christ has conquered death, as long as we turn to him for help, victory is assured. But this victory comes at the price of many trials and tribulations. True peace is rooted in the struggle to love God and one another. This is why the great witnesses of the 20th Century point to the paradoxical relationship of peace and struggle. As F. X. Nguyen van Thuan explains: if you want peace, you must fight continuously.

Behind the doubts that constantly afflicted him lurked a discouraging kind of scrupulosity. Ironically, this affliction became more fierce as his ministry became more successful. As people flocked from all over France to hear him preach and have him hear their confessions, he became more and more suspicious that he was not really being faithful to the Lord. He struggled against the thought that he was self-deceived. He actually doubted that God called him to the priesthood. He suspected that his desire to become a priest was really just his own pride. He was afraid that this same pride was a source of scandal for others. With these doubts about his character and intentions, he was also haunted by the desire to dedicate himself to a hidden solitary life of penance. Sometimes he would even try to run away from his parish. What is remarkable is not that he struggled to be faithful to his vocation, but rather than in the end, he was faithful at all. This was a thorn in his side, the monster that the Lord allowed him to contend with so that he might be purified.

The weaknesses of pride and a fearful scrupulosity can involve the temptation to reject of God's plan for us because we think we know a safer way. It is a combination of fear and pride which causes us to limit our spiritual journey to that which appeals to our imagination. But following the Lord is not a matter of the imagination. Acting out of the fantasy that fear, scrupulosity or pride produces does not bring us closer to God. Friendship with God is a matter of faith - of believing in his love in the circumstances we have before us in the here and now.

(That he should struggle with pride is interesting only because everyone extolled his humility. This points to a great truth about our struggles in the spiritual life - whatever weakness he permits us to endure, he does so to show forth his glory. His strength is made perfect in our weakness.)

The feelings of inadequacy, powerlessness, that one's life has been a mistake, doubting the goodness of God - no one is really spared these in life. Prayer does not make these things go away magically, even the prayer of a great saint like John Vianney. Following our Crucified God, we must face them on our own path to Calvary - it is only by learning to love in the face of such things that our faith and our prayer becomes real. A real peace and true joy lives in our hearts not because we are without problems, but because in our struggles we find God.

The Mystery of the Priesthood

Because I work at a seminary, I have gotten to know quite a few priests over the years. Many of them have become good friends. Some have left the ministry for one reason or another. All of them have grappled with the meaning of their unique vocation.

Simone Weil explained that we do not know anything without suffering. Suffering is the price of true knowledge. I think this is true to the extent that one suffers in love, for love. Good priests understand this. They have come to realize who they are because they have discovered the secret of giving themselves away. But what they have discovered is true for all of us. We only truly discover who we really are by giving the gift of ourselves in love. Giving the gift of self - this involves suffering - because one cannot love another except at one's own expense. Because the priest must live out this gift of self in a very public way -- the priest is a great sign, a witness, for the rest of us about what our humanity is all about. He reveal this to us through a suffering love for Christ, for the Church and for those entrusted to his care.

There is another important thing about priests who are willing to suffer this kind of knowledge - they are always men of great prayer. By this, I do not mean that they are always great contemplatives - at least in the popular sense. Some of the priest's I know complain that their prayer seems shallow. But whether one feels one's prayer is deep or shallow is not important. What is important is that one is faithful to the gift of prayer entrusted to him. When we are faithful to the gift of prayer - even if it seems shallow -- it makes our prayer great. That is in part why I can say that these are men of great prayer. Their life of prayer is an expression of a constant mature love, a humble cry of the heart. Sometimes this may be joyful and consoling. Often it is dry and offered in the midst of the severest struggles. It is like a lamp of hope - and what such priests very seldom realize is that this small still light not only helps them find their own way - but for some of the rest of us, that humble light is just what we need to go on.

A lamp in the darkness. It was a great privilege to go on pilgrimage to the Grande Chartruese (forgive the spelling) and pray with them. In the main chapel at midnight I sat in darkness, shivering in the cold, covered with a blanket. It was pitch black -- except for the far wall of the sanctaury. There a vigil candle flickered - The only source of light in the silent darkness. Then, out of this silent darkness, a voice called out and a whole choir of monks, there hidden in the dark, broke out. They chanted psalm after psalm, in the silent darkness, by heart, with nothing but that candle lit to give light (expect for an occasional flash of an electric lamp when a younger monk needed to see the text).

It struck me that that lamp in the darkness is not only a sign of Christ's presence but a symbol of the prayer of the Church -- the prayer taken up by priests and the prayer to which we are all invited. It is a prayer of vigilant love, waiting on the Lord in hope. The silent cold darkness was a symbol of this world where God seems so absent at times - but that He has never abandonned. Only by suffering the cold and the darkness with vigilant love would one ever come to know how the Lord is present in such a place. But for those who are willing, like the priests I know, such prayer warms the heart. It is a true encounter with Christ which teaches us to love like him - to suffer in love, to give ourselves in love, to become our true self.

Year for the Priest - contemplating the priesthood

This Year for the Priest offers a unique opportunity to reflect on the gift of the priesthood for the Church. In recent years, the Roman Catholic priest has been an object of derision, especially in the mainstream media. Yes, there were and always have been some priests who were criminals - but the vast majority of priests are dedicated men who want to serve God and humanity. They feel called to something humanly impossible. Yet with great trust in God, they have ventured to say "yes" to the Lord's divine proposal. Risking everything and sacrificing the dearest things in life, they have ventured a life of the Gospel in which they help people encounter the Risen Lord.

In return for their dedication, they suffer trials and persecutions and rejection of every kind. Good men who have devoted themselves to the Lord have been robbed of their reputations. Others who have struggled with faithfulness have been scandalized. All of them must deal with rejection and at least an undercurrent of constant abuse. There are even some who do not know what they believe anymore.

Our culture has rejected the priesthood - that is why there are very few news stories, movies or shows made today that depict the priest as morally upright, good and strong. In fact, it is hard to find movies, books or shows that depict any man that way, but this is true of priests in particular. It is as if truly and fairly dealing with the priest is loathing to our cultural elite. In a future post, I would like to show that this is a pattern played out over and over again in history. Today, I would only like to spend a moment reflecting on the special witness to Christ that these men offer the world.

It is precisely because of this rejection that the role of the priest comes into relief for us today. Only someone rejected and persecuted and hated can witness to Christ the Suffering Servant. For those of you who are deacons, you too share in this mystery. But today, considering the priesthood as such, we must take a moment and reflect on what this means.

There is only one priesthood - the priesthood of Christ - but there are different ways of participating in it. Most of us participate in this by faith and baptism. This is what allows us to worship and interceded for one another in a singular way. There is also a special way of participating in the priesthood through what St. Paul described to Timothy as the laying on of hands. We do not have time to develop the theology of Holy Orders. For now, I will just say that this way of participating in Christ priesthood is ordered to building up the Church in a particular way. In particular, those who recieve this sacrament lead the Church in offering the Eucharist - the prayer Christ commanded us to offer the night before he died. To lead this prayer requires that someone be touched by Christ in a special way, transformed so as to be able to act as Christ in a special way. This is what Christ confers through priestly ordination.

The priest then is a special sign of Christ. In good times this sign is difficult to understand. Without persecution, it is easy to think of the priest as a "dispenser of the sacraments", to reduce his role to mere functionality. But the special configuration of the priest to Christ does not admit of such reductionism. In times of persecution, when the priest is rejected like Christ was, his person more fully reveals the mystery of the Lord. Even when he is in the midst of the busiest of cultures -- he is in solitude set apart by God for the things of God. Because the world has rejected the One true God - it must reject the priest.

Here we see one small aspect of the special trial a priest must suffer. His special configuration to Christ does not take away human weakness, or fear, or the desire to be thought of highly by others - to be accepted. Priests struggle in particular with loneliness. At his best, he offers everything he has to those whom he serves, whom he believes God has entrusted to him. Sometimes, when there is nothing else left to give - he still comes to serve with empty hands. It is precisely in this struggle to love when there seems nothing left to give, a struggle revealed forcifully in persecution, that the priest realizes his special identity before the Lord and the world. The priest in this struggle becomes an icon of the Suffering Servant, an icon that reveals the love of God the Father, who gave everything, even his own Son for our sakes. When the priest has given all until there is only Jesus to give, and then he gives us the Lord, he remains empty handed like God the Father. In times of persecution, the priest love like this to be faithful to his identity - or he loses it.

There are many priests who are struggling to love in this way. There are so many other aspects to this struggle - we will consider these in future posts. But this great struggle is why we need this year to encourage them, to build them up, to be with them in their suffering. In the midst of persecution, God sends messengers of love who provide a little consolation, a little hope in the darkness. We begin to do this today by praying for our priests and ministers - all those dedicated to serving the Lord.

Prayer and The Year of the Priest

Today the Catholic Church started a year long celebration of the priesthood when Pope Benedict opened up the Year of the Priest. Priests participate in the priesthood of their bishop through an ancient rite called, "the laying on of hands." This sacrament of ordination gives the priest a share in the apostolic authority and power needed to preach, celebrate the sacraments, and help lead the Church. Because they share in an apostolic ministry, priests have a special role for those dedicated to living a life of prayer.

Many people to not pay enough attention to the apostolic dimension of prayer. But no Christian ever prays alone. He is always united to Jesus. To be united to Jesus is to be a member of his Body. That is why Christians are called members of the Body of Christ. Whether we pray or serve or teach or lead or suffer persecution or any other kind of trial; we always do so as members of Christ Body.

Now this body is no more egalitarian than any other body. It has a head - Jesus himself - and it has members organized together, each with unique and unrepeatable gifts. Most of us are members of this Body that allow us to use our gifts for serving our family and bringing the Gospel to the world. This would include Moms and Dads and Sons and Daughters and many others whose lives of love must become the salt, leaven and light of the world.

Others dedicate themselves to the Lord so to bear special witness to the life in the world to come - whose vocation it is to be love at the heart of the Church. This would include not only those men and women who become monks, nuns, brothers, and sisters - but most of all those great witnesses to our faith who lay down our lives for what we believe, the martyrs.

There is one more very important group: those members who exercise their gifts with Holy Orders - an apostolic ministry which shares in a special power of Christ to build up the Church. Priests are members of this final group. The truth is - we are all members of one body. Thus, when any of us pray in the name of Christ, we pray as members of this Body in the unity with all the other members of this Body. Here, our prayers are also offered together through the special ministry entrusted to priests - an apostolic ministry which serves to help make the whole Church holy.

The prayer of the Church is prayer in the Spirit who prays in us. This is true even when we are all alone, up in the Mountains or in the silence of our rooms - because the Holy Spirit who prays in us unites us to the Body of the Christ - our prayers come from God and go to Him. Our spirit-filled prayer because it goes to Jesus, always goes through his spirit-filled Body, even when no one else knows my prayer. The priest has a special role in offering to God these sorts of prayers - the prayers the Spirit stirs in the Church.

Priests realize this part of their ministry in a special way when they pray liturgical prayer. They do not know what everyone is praying in the secret of their hearts, but they have the authority to offer these spirit inspired prayers to the Lord. This includes not only the Mass but also an offering of the psalms that is made throughout the day. This is called the Liturgy of the Hours. When a priest prays, he prays to offer the prayers of the whole Church to God the Father through Jesus to whom they are bound for this purpose.

Great mystics and saints understood this special mission of the priest. They would humbly ask priests to remember them in their prayers, to intercede for them. They did this not only because it was a nice thing to do. They did this most of all because they knew the power of the apostolic ministry that the priest has been entrusted with. These holy men and women knew that the ministry of the priest helped them fulfill the special tasks God entrusted to them.

The great saints also understood how important it was to pray for priests. Just as the Body of Christ needs priests -- priests need the Body of Christ. Each one needs prayers if they are to fulfill the great ministry entrusted to them. This is the way Jesus willed that we live in Him - each of us looking out for one another, never ceasing to pray for each other, each with a different kind of gift of prayer, as irreplaceable and as necessary, but all in different ways. This year, the Lord calls us to pray for priests - such prayers are part of what it means to begin to pray.

Viva Cristo Rey!

The seminarians of St. John Vianney in Denver, Colorado provided a compelling performance of a very poignant story. It is the story of a thirty six year old Jesuit priest who loved his people more than his own life and the story of political authorities who hated God and godfearing people. It is the story of the family that loyally supported their courageous son and brother come what come may, and the story of a government which tried to destroy him. It is the story of the power of prayer over the power of violence. It is the story of the inhumanity of men when they turn away from God and how one man's zeal for the Lord was able to help some of them find salvation and rediscover what it means to be human.

"Long live Christ the King" are the last words of a modern martyr. Padre Miguel Pro SJ's witness shows the greatness of our religion and the irrational pettiness of a society that sets itself against God and religion. At the time, the Mexican leader Plutarco Calles enforced laws against the Catholic Church. Mass, confession and even praying the rosary were all punishable offenses. To protect the clergy as far as possible, bishops and religious communities developed plans to remove clergy, but some priests chose to stay and minister to the people. From 1926 - 1929, 160 priests were executed along with hundreds more lay men, women and children.

On the heels of the Russian revolution, there was a wide spread belief that religion was holding up progess. If only people could be liberated from God, the would be more devoted to improving their lot in this life. Even today, there is a popular belief that the real cause of war and misery is religion. Belief in God and practice of one's own faith is presumed to be irrational by many. But such prejudice proved prosaic when throughout the 20th century godless regimes showed impious men were the most inhumane men of all. The persecution of the Church in Mexico and the martyrdom of Padre Pro is part of this larger political story.

Part of the reason things got so out of hand was the story of persecution was not really known. Only journalists sympathetic to the cause of Mexican socialism were permitted to report on positive achievements, and even these journalists highly monitored by the government. Irrationality often leads to rashness - and the rash decision of the Mexican authorities to publically execute a popular 36 year old priest to bring the populace in line would draw the attention of the world and encourage believers to stand up. The anti-clerical laws of Calles would come to an end.

There was a wonderful contrast of the playfulness and joy of Christian family life against the sober malicious emnity of godless officials. Padre Pro himself is shown to be an adventurous man who loves life - against fearful men who seem rather lifeless. Although he is the one who is martyred - he and his brothers are the ones who really live.

This is the historical backdrop for the play performed at St. John Vianny Theological Seminary last night and to be performed again this evening. Deacon Mauricio Bermudez (soon to be ordained priest) played Pro - shoot, he looked almost just like the saint! But there was something fitting, something proportionate, something beautiful in seeing seminarians play out this story. It was as if they were revealing to us why they have the courage to enter the priesthood today. True, priests and seminarians are not being shot - but their reputations often get murdered - especially by the very people they have given their lives to serve. So, they identify with Pro - a man despised by his own nation, but who was completely devoted to serving those who most needed the Lord.

For more on his life, I found a couple good websites :
http://puffin.creighton.edu/jesuit/pro/pro_links.html
http://catholicism.org/padre-pro.html

The play spoke to me about prayer - and its importance not only for the person who prays, but for the whole society in which he lives. Today, for many, prayer is a sort of therapeutic escapism. It is not really connected with apostolic fruitfulness. Programs, even religious programs, are more fruitful than wasting time with God - or so it is thought. But this play which our men performed so well tells a different story. If we really want to change the world and make it a more human place -- prayer is the most important and most human means of all. Men who pray find courage to go where others would run. They see the human and find ways to speak directly to it, even when it is disguised in the inhumane. Such men are never oppressed - they are the one's who are able to cry out, "Viva Christo Rey!