The Christian Priesthood

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 14, 22 April 1925, Page 27

The Christian Priesthood

(By 0. J. M., for .the N.Z. Tablet.)

[Written for the Silver Jubilee of Holy Cross College, Mosgiel.]

The Eternal God, putting off His glory, came from heaven to earth to seek and to save fallen man, to raise earth to heaven.. When the “Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” the great God of heaven “emptied Himself,” in the words of St. Paul, “taking the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of man and in habit found as a man.” “Though Ho was rich, yet'for our sakes He became poor, that we, through. His poverty, might be rich.” In vain we strive to understand the mystery of divine condescension contained in the ■ Incarnation, to grasp the meaning, of His ' voluntary self-abasement. Yet how satisfying is the Incarnation to the needs of the human heart! Without it, how dim and remote must God seem! How, we feel, could God unless Incarnate care for each of us personally? True, He is our. God, our Creator, the infinite Perfection, and

as such we most love Him. But we should

remain cold; no spark of hope would en- • kindle our hearts; no gratitude melt us; no thrill of emotion, no fervent enthusiasm move 1 / our will.' Our hearts cry aloud for a heart /like unto ours, for one that can feel as we feel, suffer with us, and rejoice with us. How, then, shall we bridge the abyss between God and man? God Himself, in His infinite jpower and mercy, found a way in the inable mystery of the Incarnation. Thus does He answer our complainings, still our troublings, and fill every void of our hearts, God became man; “He loved us and delivered Himself for us.” He that made ns must love us, and the Incarnation is the first great manifestation of His love. Infinitely above us, God bows Himself to the finite. He is Goodness itself, and in His Goodness all His perfections coalesce, all .blend in harmony. And this Goodness “became flesh and dwelt among us.” Becoming ° man, God made it easier for man to approach to Grace, to the very source of Grace •—Himself. This visible presence of the God made man must capture man’s thought and fancy, and bring God nearer to men’s hearts and souls. ; |j ii ' The Creator and the Creature. j|| But in bridging the abyss between Himself and man, how does God come to us? In His glory, thus confounding us? We recall /that Moses cried out, “Show me Thy face!” : and that the Almighty replied, “Thou canst ; not see My face; for man shall not see Me and live.” How, then, does the Creator con- | descend to the Weakness of His creature? The /I weak cry of a helpless Infant, lying on a littjp straw in Bethlehem is our answer. And hewe is the second great manifestation of His , m . ik. He humbles Himself to the dust, that pie may raise our dust unto Himself. He | that is higher than the .highest, takes r our f nature to Himself and in it manifests Him- | selx to men and angels. “He raised the needy | from. the earth and lifted the poor out' of

the mire,” bidding Heaven itself , bow in adoration before the Babe of Bethlehem. Yet ; this grand act of love is but the stepping-stone to further and deeper mysteries of divine love. “The brilliancy of the eternal light, and • the unspotted mirror of God’s majesty, and the Image of His goodness” is made man; but His is no body fashioned in the heavens, no frame of light and glory. 4 , He , comes, not in the majesty of a God, but in the weakness of a Child; wealth He despises, He comes poor and is born in a stable. He chooses hot'happiness, but pain; not honor; . but reproach. Man has always belonged to God: now we can say that God belongs to man. He is now perfectly accessible to man : no longer must He be sought in- the unfathomable abyss.

■* 'Our- Lord’s Life on Earth. .His' earthly life is of thirty-three years. From Bethlehem.He passes to Nazareth, from Nazareth to Calvary, ever stooping to yet deeper mysteries of Love, till with the stripes and the thorns, the nails and the cross, infinite Pity and Love , would seem to know' no more. Yet every Catholic Church and every tabernacle tell us there is still more: we have a third great manifestation of His love in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar. Here His infinite pity is content, His infinite love finds rest, His infinite condescension is supremo in self-abasement. In the Blessed Sacrament He triumphs over every difficulty of space and time and He hides His divinity, oven His humanity, in the tiny compass of the Host. Kneeling before the Sacred Host, how can we seek to comprehend such a mystery of Love, such a supreme humiliation of our God! Yet that He is present, really, truly, and substantially, is the very effect of another fourth great manifestation of His love for man. He is with us, yesterday, to-day, and till the end of time, in the Blessed Sacrament: and still his love has decreed another visible presence, another abiding with •us. He remains, and will ever remain, with us in His Sacred Ministry, His royal Priesthood, with all the fulness of His divine powers and prerogatives. “He will not leave us orphans, He will abide with us till the end,” for “His delight is to be with the children of men.” He is with us yet, to carry out for all time the sublime principles of the Incarnation, to prolong and to perpetuate the Incarnation by means of the Christian priesthood. He was the “Lamb of God, Who came to take away the sins of the world”; He was the Ambassador of God , the Father; the High Priest according to the order of Melchisedech; the Mediator be- • tween God and man;and He wished always so to remain'. Ascending, then, into Heaven, .tie ■ nequeaths His sacred office. His divine ministry, to the Apostles and their successors,

the bishops and priests of the Church. The voice of His Sacred Humanity is now silent, yet He speaks in the mouths of His Apostles His priests; His tired feet find rest at last from the weary quest of souls, yet He ever walks with us in His chosen Apostles; His pierced hands that knew only to bless and console are no longer raised above us, yet He remains to bless and console, to bind and to heal, at the hands of His anointed ministers. He ascends, but His priesthood remains, - as a consequence, a development of the Incarnation. * His Public Ministry. During the years of His ministry, we behold Christ personally, visibly, conveying spiritual gifts to man. Thus, for example, in a personal, visible manner He forgave sins, He gave the Holy Spirit, He commissioned His Apostles. Above all, by the very fact of His Incarnation, He stood before men as their Mediator and Advocate with God, and by His Sacred Passion and Death He was both High Priest of the grandest sacrifice that could be and Victim of that same great sacrifice.

True, there is no absolute need of any ministry between God and man; but God has willed that there should be a. visible ministry, an outward dispensation, even as Ho willed the Incarnate Word to draw men nearer td His invisible majesty. “As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you,” He said, giving the same mission to the Apostles as He had received from the Eternal Father. “Ho this for a commemoration of Me”; “whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them” : thus He invests His Apostles and their successors with His own divine powers and prerogatives, “I will not,” He said again, “I will not call you servants, for the servant knownth not what his lord doth but 1 have called you friends, because all things whatsoever I have heard of My Father, I have made known to you. You have not chosen Me; but I have chosen you; and I have appointed you that you should go and should bring forth fruit, and your fruit should remain.” Thus, too’ is His promise fulfilled, “Beheld, I am with you all days, even to the end of the world.” ‘ Not content; then, .with the Incarnation in itself, Christ resolved to do a wonderful thing,—to bring about on earth : a prodigy surpassed only by the Incarnation itself. Ho resolved to be known and felt by every generation and in every region. He therefore took the human race itself, and- setting men apart, Ho ordained” them to. perform for Him a certain office, —His own office and mission. These men He left in all the weakness and temptation of human nature; but Ho gave them, and still gives them, wondrous gifts and powers. The Power to Teach. i. ;. *> ? . True, He, withholds from , them His own sinlessness, His own supreme dominion over nature; but He freely gives them the powers best adapted to win men to know, love, and servo Him. So He gives His ordained' the power to teach; for without this gift of certain teaching there could be *no "divine ministry. He gives them also His ; own gift

of exhortationa gift to move the heart, the very word of God. Again, He gives them Pie power of bringing His sacred personality in contact with those whom He redeemed, — the gift of personating Him, if we may so speak, till the end of time. To the care of His Apostles and their successors, Christ commits His revealed truth; to them He entrusts the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; to them, as' dispensers, He makes over the infinite merits of His Passion and Death; to them, indeed, He resigns even Himself in the Sacrament of love, to be always with them as their Eternal High Priest “always living to make intercession for ns.” Our glorious Christian heritage, then, into which we are born, is the effect, the continuance, of the Incarnation; it is a merciful dispensation of Christ which makes, or might make, redemption secure to every soul. It is, again, the continuance of the Sacramental touch* of Christ’s own hands, whereby a. visible ministry,' with a whole system of rites and observances, not only admonishes and edifies men, but effects supernatural results in their souls. In every Catholic church, then,-Christ still speaks in His .priests, His hand still falls upon the sinner and the innocent, healing and giving life and hope as only His hands can do, in the Sacraments administered by .His priests. In every Church, too, there is the altar and the tabernacle, because Christ is there in His real Presence, through the instrumentality of His priests. How truly, then, could St. Paul say, “God hath made us fit ministers of the New Testament.” Without this human agency of the priesthood, constantly renewed, there could be no system of visible external means and opportunities of grace.

The Divinely Appointed Priesthood.

The priest, then, is one that is appointed and endowed to carry on the ministry of Christ: he is the continuation of Christ on earth, not indeed in Christ’s personal, human presence, but in Christ’s mission and office. The office of the priest is that of Christ, —to bring home to men the spiritual and the supernatural. The mission of the priest, too, is that of Christ, — teach, to heal, to absolve, “to seek and to save.” The powers of the priest arc those of Christ,“As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you.” In a. Avoid, Jesus lives in the priest, acting on man, working in man, through a weak instrument —the priest, a man himself. Yet Christ’s ambassador can utter words that arc nothing less than the Avoid of God; he can . claim to bo obeyed as Christ; Hi* can lift his hand and forgive sin; he can bow down over the bread and wine on the altar and convert it into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Every rightly ordained priest, proclaims the Church, possesses certain stupendous supernatural powers. Even as Christ, so the f priest, another Christ, working through 'outward words and signs, bestows invisible spiritual graces upon the souls of men. In His priests, therefore, Christ still walks the earth. "We still feel His gentle healing touch, hear His saving Avoids of mercy and love. The priest acts, the priest speaks; yet it is the touch of Christ, the word of Christ.

Things arc done .by sacramental power that none but Christ could do; for none but He can pierce through the flesh- of man and! reach with the finger of grace to the immortal soul. Everywhere now, sinful man, humble and sorrowing, can cry out, “Lord, bemerciful to me a sinner,” “Jesus, Master,. have mercy on me.” ~ And' at once the hand of the pitying Jesus rests on the sinner’s. bowed head and the' word of comfort and; forgiveness is:whispered, in his ear. At the, word of the priest, the demons of hell are routed through his ministry the child of man becomes the child of God; to him is entrusted man’s spiritual birth and regeneration by Baptism. At the hands of the priest sin-laden souls are washed pure .as snow with the precious blood of Jesus; at bis hands, again, souls hungering for God and His justice are fed with the bread of life; at his hands two souls are knit as one in the unity - and indissolubility of-Christian marriage;' by his hands at last wo shall be girt with strength and grace to pass through the gates of death, to the enjoyment of eternal happiness. An Eternal Mediator. Standing thus between God and man, the priest is then an eternal mediator, even as Christ is our Chief Minister of reconciliation." “God,” says St. Paul, “hath reconciled us to Himself by Christ, and hath given us the ministry of reconciliation.” Such, now, are some of the nobler powers of the priest; but his most august act is the consecration of the Sacrament of the altar; for flic priest possesses a divine jurisdiction over the natural body of Christ. In virtue of this wonderful jurisdiction, Jesus Christ

is daily brought down on our altars in the Sacrifice of the Mass. Christ is then lifted up, is carried to and fro, through our streets, to our homes, and to our deathbeds. This power, too, constitutes the priest the faithful guardian of the Blessed Sacrament and of the tabernacle, the steward of the Bread of life, “the Minister of Christ and the dispenser of the Mysteries of God.” Further, this jurisdiction involves an exercise of divine power, for the words of the priest arc not his own, but Christ's words, the priest saying not, “This is .the body of Christ,” but “This is my body.” The voice is the voice of man, but the words and the effects arc of God. Again, this jurisdiction implies, a continual daily fellowship, a close intimate oom- . panionship of the disciple with his Master. , And, lastly, this divine power of the priest entails a true, living contact of the priest with, Jesus Christ. Holding the Blessed Sac- ' rament in his hands, the priest is in as real personal contact with Christ as was St. John , when reclining on the bosom of his Master.

Divine Power of the Priesthood. Having reviewed these divine powers of the priest and having identified his mission with that of Christ, can we marvel at the seeming extravagant titles with which the priest is honored in Holy Scripture? He is “the light of the world,” reflecting ; upon earth the

glorious light of Him who is the Sun of Justice. He is the "servant of' Goer'; but, more, lie is the "Friend of Christ." Still more, tho priest is "the Brother of Jesus." Ho is, again, "the ambassador of Christ." "For Christ, therefore, we are ambassadors, God, as it were, exhorting by us," says St. Paid. In hue, the priest is not only Christ's fellowlaborer, Christ's coadjutor, in a sense he personates Christ, is "another Christ."

Once, in wonder, the Psalmist exclaimed, “What is man that Thou are mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou dost visit him? Thou hast made him a little less than the angels; Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor and hast set him over the works of Thy hands.” What, then, is the dignity and power of the priest! Surely, as St. Ambrose says, “there is nothing more excellent in the world than the power of the priest” ; for, as St. Bernard says, “it transcends all the dignities of kings and emperors and even of the angels themselves.” “0 glorious miracle,” cries St. Ephrem, “0 ineffable power! 0, tremendous mystery of the holy and sublime priesthood, most venerable and without blemish, with which Christ, coming into this world, has vouchsafed to clothe His unworthy creatures!” ——