WAITING
FOR ORDERS
Walk with me - watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. Matthew 11:29
The most common industrial injury at one time among the clergy was said to be a hernia caused by moving a heavy object unaided. This reveals a lot about the state of the priesthood - a degree of impatience and a reluctance to enlist lay ministry.
Sometimes priests feel they are ‘pushing’
alone. The boat of holy Church seems beached yet they get to pushing it out to
sea. With the company of others the boat could be launched by human
strength. It is best though to await the
coming of the tide.
Empowering priesthood helps the Church await
God's tide and timing as the best way of moving forwards together.
‘The calling to ordained ministry with which
I began had somehow been lost on the way, or overlaid by activity, or simply
broken in the battle’ writes
One of the consequences of a
more functional approach to the priesthood has been loss of emphasis on
recollection as the clue to empowering. Sometimes the pressures on the ordained
extend them so far outside and beyond their inner life that it can appear that
‘no one is at home’ within them.
How many priests, when apparently listening,
have most of their deep attention in the next task? We have so many
‘plans-to-serve-him’ we have no space for his empowering of ministry in the present
moment. Into this situation, again and again, we need to hear the words of
Jesus.
‘Are you tired? Burned out in religion? Come to me get away
with me and you will recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest.
Walk with me - watch how I do it. Learn
the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting you.
Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly’ (Matthew
Empowerment comes to priests and Churches as
they discover the ‘unforced rhythms of grace’. There is no forcing of the will
of God for individuals or community. Only by patient, prayerful discernment can
real advances occur, as there is a purification and alignment of human
intention with divine providence. ‘All that we do is nothing worth unless God
blesses the deed’ is hard counsel in its challenging of self-determination by
individuals or Churches.
Monsignor Ronald Knox in his book ‘The
Priestly Life’ has a clever definition of idleness. ‘Idleness is not doing
nothing; it means giving priority, always, to the things which interest and
leaving our other duties to queue up.’ (3) In other words the clue to priestly
zeal is developing such an interest in the things of God that our priorities are
sifted accordingly.
We reach the ‘unforced rhythms of grace’ only
by deepening our attention upon the Lord himself, notably by setting apart a
generous period of prayer day by day. In this way something of God's eternal
perspective is obtained for daily living, sifting the important matters for our
attention from the merely urgent matters.
Ironically it is this forced discipline of daily prayer that seems
essential to ‘unforced’ living. Those who adopt such a discipline will readily
confirm the consequences of dropping their prayer from time to time. The people
to be seen, the writing to be done and the services to be conducted weigh
heavily and have no harmony about them. Priests need to give wholehearted
attention to such a variety of people, issues and situations that they need a
special gift of attention. Where can grace to sustain such attention be
obtained if it is not sought in prayer?
THE GIFT OF DISCERNMENT
‘Never before have human beings had as much spare time as today, and never yet have they had as little time… Although the world offers us unlimited possibilities, our own lifespans are short. Hence many people panic because they think they might miss something, and thus accelerate the tempo of their lives… A person who lives ever faster so as not to miss anything always lives superficially and misses the deeper experiences of life. Everything is possible in that person's world but only very little is real.’ (4)
Without discernment human beings get
overstretched by the pressures of life. There can hardly be empowerment in a
life that has no discerned path since all energy is rapidly dispersed. A
similar dynamic applies to the Christian community as a whole. Some Churches
have a rich diversity of activity which seems to lead them nowhere in particular.
In such situations there is a need to discern priorities and to capture
unifying and directing vision from the Lord.
‘Test everything; hold fast to what is good;
abstain from every form of evil.’ (1 Thessalonians 5: 21-22)
An empowering priesthood ministers in such a
way as to help individual Church members discern and loosen unhealthy
attachments. The pressures of modern living make for a profound loss of energy
through regret and anxiety. With so much opportunity people lose inner energy
through their regrets about lost opportunity. They also lose energy to anxiety
about so many fearful possibilities. Where people discern their attachment to
such fears they are in a position to break the bonds and claim new freedom and
energy in Christ.
Empowering priesthood recognises that lack of
empowerment in the Church very often comes back to forms of over-attachment
that need gentle but firm challenge in individuals and congregations. Sometimes
the answer to fresh empowerment is right under our noses if only we can discern
it.
When God sent a vision to
Bernadette in 1854 it was to have consequences for the whole world. Millions go
on pilgrimage to
There is a parable here of spiritual
discernment and empowerment. Like Bernadette we need guidance to lift the
stones that stem the flow of life-giving streams both within us and also within
the life of the Church as a whole. Sometimes the erosion of our faith has
placed a stone over the fountain. Other times broken relationships in need of
repair are causing spiritual life to dry up inside us or inside the Christian
community. It is then that a seeking of vision from God can have enormous
impact as he shows us just where to dig to release his life.
‘On the last day of the festival, the great
day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty
come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has
said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ Now he
said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were going to receive.’
(John 7: 37-9a)
One of the things that weigh down upon spiritual
vitality is tidy-mindedness. Many priests like things too neat. The Holy Spirit
is not always tidy-minded and is certainly not small-minded! Empowering
priesthood is priesthood that can recognise and ridicule its own
small-mindedness and help others to do the same, whilst capturing the larger
vision of what the Spirit is doing and wants to do in a community.
It is the quality of
attentiveness to God and to one another that helps priest and people discern
what is needed in the parish. Only through such discernment can parish life be
given suitable direction. As previously mentioned in Chapter 4 there is always
creative tension between the ‘cyclical’ and ‘directional’ aspects in the life
of the Church. Whilst the ‘cyclical’ aspects of Church life, her repeated
feasts and social events, remain foundational, they are to be balanced by a
‘directional’ element. The pilgrim people of God are called to seek and follow
the Lord’s leading aided at times by their prophets.
Ann Morisy describes how a nun’s prayer for
the homeless so burdened her she began to investigate ways they might be served
in her town and ended up recruiting a team to serve them. ‘A prayer burden may
ultimately lead to action, as it did for Sister Teresa, but at a minimum it
commits us to a struggle which is wider than self-concern.’ The vision which
started in one woman's prayer and imagination came to bear fruit in a vital
ministry of service and outreach (5).
Empowering priesthood recognises that ‘without vision, the people perish’ (Proverbs 29:18). Waiting together for orders from on high finds its reward in the revelation of way forwards that excite motivation within the Christian community.
In a diocese the diversity of parishes makes the catching and ownership of a central vision a perilous business. One of the difficulties is building sufficient involvement and trust among priests and among parishes to establish a genuine communality. Parish priests share their ministry with the bishop as ‘apostle’ in the diocese. When there is a partnership ‘apostolic’ in both an institutional and missionary sense a powerful spiritual prioritisation emerges within the Christian community.
In the years before the consecration of
Coventry Cathedral in 1963 Bishop Cuthbert Bardsley brought to his diocese the
vision of a consecrated people. Such was the ownership of the vision that some
of the Clergy Chapters began to meet weekly to pray. It was a period in which a high degree of
trust and openness to one another and to God emerged among priests and people
in Coventry Diocese. Even to this day
people recall the extraordinary envisioning of those days and there are many
that can trace the kindling of their vocation back to the apostolic vitality of
that diocesan initiative. (6)
Empowering priesthood is always by its nature
in partnership with the episcopate.
Where this partnership captures ‘the abiding energy of Jesus Christ’
there is a particularly convincing apostolic mandate. ‘As the Father has sent me, even so I send you’
(John
1.
2. Eugene Peterson The
Message 1993
3. Ronald Knox The
Priestly Life 1958
4. Jurgen Moltmann St. Paul’s Cathedral Lecture on Preparing for the Third Christian
Millennium 1998
5. Ann Morisy Beyond the Good Samaritan 1997
6. Stephen Verney Fire in
Coventry 1964
SEEKING TRANSFORMATION
In 1988 the
Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops challenged their dioceses to seek ‘a
shift to a dynamic missionary emphasis, going beyond care and nurture to
proclamation and service’ (1). This became a foundational statement for the
Decade of Evangelism now completed.
Among the more radical contributions to
thinking in the Church of England during the Decade stands an occasional paper
of the Board of Mission, ‘Building Missionary Congregations’ (2).
Where it most falls short is in its lack of
regard for the ordained ministry as servants of the recovery of ‘a dynamic
missionary emphasis’. In particular the definition of the Church in terms of
mission neglects consideration of her first priority. Worship is considered
mainly as servant of spirituality for mission rather than for what it is in
itself – the giving of glory to God. The radical nature of this book is made
clear in its preface by the Chairman of the Board of Mission who stresses that
both ‘revolutionists’ and ‘evolutionists’ must have their say about future
directions.
If
‘evolutionists’ are to speak out in any sphere that complements the
thinking of ‘Building Missionary Congregations’ it should be concerning the
gift of the priesthood as servant of empowering. ‘You cannot sustain a
missionary congregation’, writes John Finney. ‘It is like a ring doughnut,
there is nothing at the centre.’ Engaging with this observation
If the call for a ‘dynamic missionary
emphasis’ is to gain new momentum it will be as the Church renews her
confidence in the ministerial priesthood as one of his gifts of empowerment.
In developing
the theme of an empowering priesthood, attention has been given extensively to
the centrality of Jesus and how priests act for him in a particular way. It is
the particular function of priests to call down the Holy Spirit and ‘make
present to his people the work of Jesus Christ’ (3). This can and should make
an enormous difference to people's lives.
As traditionally understood, sacraments are
effective signs, rites that change things for people in both senses of that
phrase. As the risen Christ used signs to make himself known after his
resurrection, so the same Lord Jesus, since Pentecost, is seen to be
manifested, and particularly through the sacramental ministries of those called
to represent him in the priesthood.
Sacraments are no empty rituals - or at least
that is meant to be the Christian conviction.
By the power of the Holy Spirit Christ renews his presence and that
presence brings about transformation. Sadly, Christians have divided over the
priority of the subjective and objective aspects of this manifestation. There
have been times when the sacraments have appeared empty of Christ through their
unworthy and mechanical celebration so that people sought a vital relationship
with Christ elsewhere in ministries of prayer and of the word of God.
Empowering priesthood is a priesthood that
brings together what history has sundered so that Christ is recognised in both word
and sacrament. Where Christ is preached, the Eucharist becomes more fully his
sacrifice as people more consciously offer themselves in union with him to the
Father. Where Christ is encountered at a deep level in the sacraments, a hunger
for the scriptures is born.
On the
‘We must not
suppose that even if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved
their souls...mere improvement is not redemption... ‘ warned C.S.Lewis. ‘God
became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the
old kind but to produce a new kind of man.
It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like
turning a horse into a winged creature.’ (4).
An empowering priesthood sees itself as
instrumental to this business of transforming rather than improving people.
Priestly ministry helps effect encounters of disciples with their Lord and
their consequent transformation.
‘All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the
glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into
the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the
Lord, the Spirit’ (2 Corinthians 3:18).
How can priests
be more effective instruments serving such transformation?
The most precious resource in evangelism are
changed lives, people who can speak of the difference Jesus has made to them.
Sometimes the transformations people can speak of are astounding. Other times
they give testimony to a more gentle, gradual transformation. Every Church
should have evidence of how Christ is growing more real to people. One of the
tasks of the priesthood is to help the Christian community grow confident
enough to voice their experience in all its diversity.
Karl Rahner once made this prophecy, which
must be heeded, today in the Church: ‘The religious person of the future will
either be one who has experienced something or he will no longer exist’ (5).
One of the tasks of the sacred ministry is to
give ear to and to affirm and encourage the experience of the sacred that is so
vital to the health and growth of the Church. It is a task that requires
humility in a priest. Sacred ministers are not set apart to be necessarily
holier than the next Christian but to give space to the priority of spiritual
transformation. It is their own sense of inadequacy in this realm that is in
principle their best resource. Too often a lack of readiness to thank God for
other people's blessings stalls this sort of prioritising. There is also a fear
of public statements with weak theology about them.
The great Archbishop Temple spoke powerfully to such reservations: ‘It does very little harm if an eager layman talks heresy, provided he shows and imparts a love for the Lord Jesus. It does great harm if a priest talks orthodoxy so as to make men think the Gospel is dull or irrelevant’ (6).
In the training
of priests there is an inevitable stress upon systematic, balanced theology.
There is a reluctance to economise, to throw out a provocative line to
challenge. Evangelistic preaching is
always a shade unbalanced, going out on a limb deliberately to provoke a
personal response to Christ. It requires courage and imagination to address
people's needs with urgency, requiring a decision for the Lord. Concern for
balance has its place in the overall teaching and preaching scheme but it has
to give way at times to words that shock and challenge by their immediacy and
directness.
Raniero Cantalamessa gives a similar warning:
‘The fides quae (the things to be
believed - catechesis) have carried the day against the fides qua (the act of faith - evangelisation). The miracle of
coming to faith has less stress today than the completeness and orthodoxy of
the content of faith itself’ (7).
Recovering an emphasis on ‘the miracle of
coming to faith’ is a grace to be sought out within the overall catechetical
ministry. The success of the Alpha Course lies in its simple summary of
Christian Faith providing enough of a basis to provoke personal commitment to
Christ and empowering by the Holy Spirit (8). Many have criticised it for its
economy and oversimplification. Those whose lives have been transformed by
attending Alpha tell a different story. They say they have found enough ‘lines’
thrown out at them over the fifteen sessions to facilitate a grasping of
Christian Faith. Naturally they will move on from Alpha and with receptivity to
fuller catechesis, to ‘the whole counsel of God’ (Acts 20:27 RSV).
An empowering
priesthood is one that sees Christian formation going beyond the intellectual
to the volitional, the consecration of the will to God, which is the recipe for
transformation. This is nothing new. Preparation for the sacraments, especially
Confirmation, has always emphasised growth in relationship to Christ as
foundational. The involvement of mature
Christians in this process guarantees a sharing of experience that goes beyond
knowledge of the things of God towards the knowledge of God himself. As in the Alpha Course, effective Christian
teaching makes space for people to raise questions central to their lives. In
this way, aided by the Christian community, they are able to do personal
business with God.
Preparation for infant baptism seems most effective when it both makes space and allowance for the parents, with all the demands young children make upon them, whilst giving them the clear invitation to commit themselves to Christ on behalf of their children. The balance of welcome, challenge and empowerment there is in Jesus needs to be perceived in his priestly body. Where people respond to Jesus through the Church and commit themselves they become vital resource people for subsequent baptism preparation, real catalysts of spiritual transformation.
Long term Church members who restrict their involvement to Sunday worship can fail to find opportunity to connect their perceived needs with the resources of the Faith. The late American evangelist, John Wimber described his experience of the Church in England in a telling sentence: ‘When I worship in English churches I detect in the congregations a remarkably high level of personal need, matched by a correspondingly low level of expectation’.
In many inner
city Churches almost all energy is taken up from the clergy and lay ministers
in serving their evidently needy members. There is much loving care but, as
Wimber expresses it, ‘low level of expectation’ of Jesus making a difference.
Sometimes this situation indicates a pastoral mode of the Church negligent of
the prophetic and empowering emphases.
In some Churches the members have had no
experience of the miracle of people making a transition from agnosticism to
faith although such miracles continue day by day. Rahner by contrast writes
boldly of the importance of such conversions: ‘The possibility of winning new
Christians from a milieu which has become unchristian is the sole living and
convincing evidence that, even today, Christianity still has a real chance for
the future...it means more to win one new Christian from what we may call
neo-paganism, than to keep ten ‘old Christians’’ (9).
Where a congregation is privileged to
encounter such vivid transformations there is a ripple effect renewing faith
expectancy. ‘It is for this reason that I covet for every Christian, whether he
be one of the clergy or of the laity, that from time to time he may have the
privilege of being at hand when God breaks into someone’s soul. It freshens,
deepens and beautifies with an all-pervading warmth the whole of our ministry.’
(10)
Empowering priesthood catalyses ministries
that invite transformation and not just the serving of need. Jesus meets us at
our point of need to lead us on into transformation. There are many instances in the Gospels of
lives touched at a specific point of need that are subsequently transformed
into wholehearted commitment. The loss of expectation that Christianity can
follow the same course today needs to be challenged.
At the same time priests have the balancing
task of challenging oversimple views of transformation. On occasion people have
been led to overplay the role of spiritual experience to the detriment of the
virtues of obedience and perseverance.
There is a cautionary story of St. Seraphim
of Sarov being asked why it is that some people seem to get the Holy Spirit
more than others. ‘Just determination’
was his answer.
Though virtues like determination cannot earn
salvation, they dispose people towards Christ in an ongoing way. It appears that
the Lord is more interested in the firmness of our desire for him than in
anything else about us. The faithfulness and determination of priests does much
to inspire these essential qualities in the membership of their Churches.
Empowerment
involves the release of potential energy in the Church. It is a locating and
releasing of gifts and strengths. The consecration of human strength to God’s
praise and service is at the heart of evangelisation.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a particular emphasis
in his writings upon the consecration of strength. He once wrote, for example,
that Napoleon's sin lay probably more in his misuse of strength than in his
sexual misdemeanours. As Bonhoeffer’s own martyrdom by the Nazi’s itself
witnesses, the worst damage done to the world is done through the misuse of
strength rather than through human frailty.
Some priests are given a vital charism. They
accomplish the consecration of the strong. Sometimes at a word or by a glance,
people find themselves caught into service with a new direction for their
lives. It is said of St. Ignatius Loyola that as a young man he visited a good
number of priests to discuss the existence of God. One day he met his match in
a priest who would not enter discussion but rather insisted that he made his
Confession. This priest apparently provided an important stage in the
harnessing of Ignatius’ great energies for the Church.
Dom Helder Camera died in 1999 having spent his life in the service of the Brazilian poor. He abandoned his bishop’s palace to live among the poor, took his meals at the taxi-drivers stall across the road and hitched lifts instead of riding in his official car. He became a great pioneer of the social gospel. Yet when he tells the tale of his life it is more the mystical than the practical that takes precedence. He said the biggest change in his life came not from the poor but from an encounter with a Cardinal he served in organising the big Eucharistic Congress of 1955 in Rio de Janeiro. Cardinal Gerlier of France, moved by what he saw of Rio’s shanty towns, put it to Dom Helder that he would better put his organising talents to the service of the poor. Camera writes: ‘And so the grace of the Lord came to me through the presence of Cardinal Gerlier. Not just through the words he spoke: behind his words was the presence of a whole life, a whole conviction. And I was moved by the grace of the Lord. I was thrown to the ground like Saul on the road to Damascus.’ Through this powerful encounter with a great priest Camera’s gifts became more fully consecrated to the service of God’s kingdom. (11)
Such encounters with holy people are at the
heart of all effective evangelisation. ‘When a person awakens to the awareness
of God around them, the light of this belonging suffuses their presence and
radiates outwards from them. This is natural, wholesome and authentic. In the
end the most effective and trustable witness is the integrity of individual
presence.’ (12)
1. Lambeth Conference Recommendation
44 1988
2.
3. General Synod Report Priesthood
of the Ordained Ministry 1986
4. C.S.Lewis Mere
Christianity 1952
5. Quoted in G. Guiver et al The Fire and the Clay 1993
6. Archbishop William Temple in Towards the Conversion of England 1945
7. Raniero Cantalamessa The
Holy Spirit in the Life of Jesus 1994
8. Holy Trinity, Brompton The
Alpha Course 1993
9. Karl Rahner The Shape
of the Church to Come 1972
10.
Bryan Green The
Practice of Evangelism 1951
11.
Jose de Brouker Dom
Helder Camera: the conversions of a bishop 1979
12.
John O’Donohue Article
in The Way, Vol. 34, No. 4 1994
CHAPTER
8
LOOKING TO JESUS
Look, Father, look on His anointed
face, and only look on us as found in Him.
W. Bright
Churches
Together in England expressed the challenge of the Third Christian Millennium
as one inviting the Churches ‘to forge a link in people’s minds between the
year 2000, the name of Jesus Christ, and the possibility of personal meaning
and public hope’ (1).
In many ways the recovery of an empowering
priesthood is linked to the recovering of the centrality of Jesus in the Church
today. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to draw the Christian community again
and again to proclaim ‘Jesus is Lord’ (1 Corinthians 12:3). The recovery of the lordship of Jesus is at
the heart of the experience of revival in the Church all through her history.
Renewal of vision is a challenging of attitudes that ‘make God smaller than the
God who has revealed himself to us in Jesus’ (2).
Michael Ramsey speaks of the inspiration to
be drawn by priests from dwelling on the person of Jesus who blends ‘authority
and self-effacement, severity and tenderness, loneliness and involvement in
humanity, ceaseless energy and rest and calm in the midst of it’. ‘Teach them
not only the Real Presence in the Eucharist but about Christ whose presence it
is...Your own ministration will need again and again to be made alive by your
own realisation of Christ’. ‘When you promise to minister the doctrine of
Christ’, he says in an ordination address, ‘it will mean showing the people
Christ himself’.
True empowerment relies on the power of
Christ. ‘who has became a priest, not through a legal requirement concerning
physical descent but through the power of an indestructible life’ (Hebrews
7:16).
‘All Christian ministry finds its source, its model and its authority in the ministry of Jesus’, writes Gordon Kuhrt, who goes on to identify five aspects of the ministry of Jesus that should challenge Christian ministry today. There is a modelling of Jesus who is ‘sent by God; witness to God's Kingdom by preaching, teaching and signs; ministering to human need through care and healing; servant-like in attitude and filled by God's Spirit’ (3).
MAKIN
Kuhrt affirms that ‘in spite
of all the frailties and failures of the Church's life (Jesus) is its source - for he calls his people to
ministry; its model for he is the
example of ministry; and its authority
- for he commissions and empowers through his Spirit. There is discontinuity
because of the ultra uniqueness of Christ, but we must, nevertheless, keep
looking to Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep (Hebrews 12:2, 13:20).
He is himself critical of the idea of a ministerial priesthood representing Jesus out of deference to the Reformed tradition within the Church of England. At the same time he well represents the traditional view through extensive quotation from the Report ‘Priesthood of the Ordained Ministry’ which affirms the Christocentric understanding of Ordination.
‘(Ordained)
ministry is not simply delegated by or derived from the community. It is argued
that theirs is a distinctively different form of priestly ministry in that (to
quote the Report) it ‘is an appointed means through which Christ makes his
priesthood present and effective to his people...Their (episcopal and
presbyteral) ministry may be called priestly in that it is their vocation to
help the whole people to realise their priestly character... It is in the
particular relationship of the Eucharist and the ministry of reconciliation to
the sacrifice of Christ that the priestly character of the ordained ministry is
most evident. This ministry is priestly
because through it God makes present to his people the work of Jesus Christ,
the mediator who brings humanity to God’ (3, 4)
MATTERS OF
PRINCIPLE
Sadly the
empowering of the priesthood within Anglicanism at least is hampered by the
Reformation divisions. As Kuhrt notes, for many ‘the concept of a ministerial
sacrificial priesthood is unscriptural.’ As an Anglican writer seeking to do
justice to both Catholic and Reformed traditions he seeks no ‘careless
compromise, but rather a principled agenda to take what is right and best of
those traditions and weave them together. That is not an easy task… we do
nobody any favours either by judging the issues or by unnecessarily polarising
them.’
If clarity about the nature of the
ministerial priesthood has no consensus as yet in Anglicanism hope for
convergence must lie somehow in ‘looking to Jesus’ (Hebrews 12:2) with the
whole Church to catch afresh both
vision and empowerment.
The polemical statement ‘no man between
myself and God’ must be honoured in as much as it seeks to look to Jesus. Those
who see Christ as ‘coming between our souls and God’ and hold to his
representation by earthly priests must be aware of the real danger of idolatry.
It was said of Fr. Raymond Raynes of the Community of the Resurrection that he
had the gift of engaging people through his representative priesthood so as to
pass them straight on to the Jesus he represented. His transparency to Christ
was exceptional. Most priests are less adequate vehicles of Christ.
‘For there is one God; there is also one
mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human.’ (1 Timothy
2:5) Is the unique mediation of Christ
undermined by the ministry of intercession and of priesthood? If all prayer and
sacramental ministry is perceived as ‘through him, with him and in him’ there
is in principle no subtraction from the mediation of Christ. His prayer and
sacrifice rise up from his body, which has imparted to it all ‘the benefits of
his passion’.
Someone who sees a prayer answered ‘in the
name of Jesus’ could not arrogate to themselves the cause of such a supernatural
intervention. No more can the Church’s liturgical prayer, which brings about
the sacramental presence of her Lord, be so arrogated to her apart from Christ.
‘For man hath no oblation more worthy nor any satisfaction greater for putting
away of sins, than to offer himself to God purely and wholly, together with the oblation of the Body of
Christ in the Mass and in receiving the communion’ (5).
Both Catholic
and Reformed traditions ‘look to Jesus’ in the sense of deeply appreciating
that access to God and intimacy with him is fully established in him alone.
They also hold that it is ‘the abiding energy of Jesus Christ’ that empowers
the Church’s mission.
At its best the emphasis on the Eucharist as
sacrifice is faithful to the unique mediation of Christ given to allow the
consecration and empowering of Christians as they unite their lives to his.
‘Look,
Father, look on His anointed face, and only look on us as found in Him;
Look
not on our misusings of Thy grace, our prayer so languid, and our faith so dim:
For
lo! Between our sins and their reward we set the passion of Thy Son our Lord’
(W. Bright, Hymns Ancient and Modern).
Before his ascension Jesus promised the
disciples ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’
(John 20:17b). By looking to Jesus they
will be drawn into the intimacy of the Son for the Father and the Father for
the Son at the heart of the redemption. The ascended Christ is also the one who
will empower for mission by his Spirit (Acts 1:8, Ephesians 4:8-12).
Empowering priesthood helps effect the
continuation of Christ’s ministry, which draws people to intimacy with the
Father and reaches out from the Father into the world. In a phrase of Austin
Farrer, priests are ‘walking sacraments’. They exist to point with Christ to
his twofold intention of ‘the glory of God and the salvation of the world’.
The choice of sinful human beings to be his
representatives is ultimately his choice. Some may argue whether an individual can act
‘alter Christus’, as an ‘other Christ’, but when the argument against is
pressed it ultimately conflicts with the dignity given to every Christian.
‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me’ (Matthew 10:40a). All Christians are
inadequate representatives of their Lord. The fact that some are called as
reminders to the whole body of the centrality of Christ is servant and not
rival of that essential centrality.
It is reasonable to see empowerment in the
Church as achievable through a dispersal of authority from priest to
congregation. Yet in this ‘reasonable’ process it is very easy to lose the
essential Christocentric focus and impetus, to which the apostolic ministry
bears witness. ‘All authority in heaven
and on earth has been given to me’ (Matthew 28:18). ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you’
(John 20:21).
Empowering priesthood is priesthood pointing
people to Jesus and to the intimacy he brings with God. The priest’s
traditional role in eucharistic worship is to be a ‘walking sacrament’ of
Jesus. His role, as was said of Fr. Raynes, is to draw people through his
office as priest to Jesus Christ himself.
Unfortunately division over the nature of the
Eucharist and the priesthood has led to something of a downplaying of the role
of Christ with new emphasis upon the Trinity as a whole in contemporary
reflections in these realms. Although Christian worship is addressed to the
Trinity, the miracle of access to the Father is always the work of Jesus Christ
in the power of the Holy Spirit. Ministerial priesthood serves to guarantee
this centrality of Christ which establishes ‘a spiritual temple for God’s
worship’ (Box.).
‘By ordination,
a Christian becomes a sign of the ministry of Jesus Christ in his Church.’ (Max
Thurian) If this is so, the question is one of renewing the sign and all that
would obscure it. ‘We wish to see Jesus’
(John 12:21).
In his influential writings Hans Von
Balthasar presents precisely such a call, affirmative of the priest as sign of
Christ, yet insistent on radical imitation of the Lord. Dermot Power interprets
Balthasar's writing on the priesthood as inviting ‘an utter dependence on faith
that allows the priest to live out of a sense of dependence on the power and
presence of Christ, and not something less’. This ‘something less’ includes for
Balthasar ‘dependence on intra-ecclesial status, power and an over-reliance on
ministerial skills and professional competence… it is the criterion of where
the ultimate security of the priesthood lies that is the crucial test of its
authenticity. To be truly authentic, the priesthood must make itself
defenceless to the nakedness of faith and to the absolute demand of the Gospel’
(6).
Looking to Jesus in this way takes the
ordained ministry right back to its New Testament rooting it in the imitation
and bearing of Christ. ‘For whenever I am weak, then I am strong’ (2
Corinthians 12:10), words that resonate with the earlier teaching of St Paul in
that letter. Here it is made clear that because the apostle's commission or
office is of God, it is to be carried in all humility. ‘We have this treasure
in clay jars’ (4:7) is teaching that can apply to any Christian but holds
special force for those in the apostolic ministry.
An empowering priesthood helps people ‘(look)
to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith’ (Hebrews 12:2) to gain energy
from him. It is a ministry of prayer, word and sacrament, teaching and pastoral
care that recalls the promise of the Lord himself. ‘I, when I am lifted up from
the earth, will draw all people to myself’ (John 12:32).
‘I sometimes put this question to myself’,
wrote Ramsey. ‘Looking back to all the sermons I have preached in the past, say
six months, what have they told the people about Christ or done to make Christ
visible to them? Do they know more about Christ at the end of them?’ (2).
When lay people complained that they could
not see the consecrated bread at Mass in the Middle Ages, they made the
following entreaty: ‘Heave it higher, Sir Priest’. This is said to be the
origin of the traditional elevation of the host and chalice still practised in
the Church at the Eucharist. The practice has been debated, particularly with
respect to the almost magical approach to the sacramental consecration it can
cultivate. The instinct of the medieval laity however may not have been so far
from that of St Philip's Greek companions who ‘wished to see Jesus’ (John
12:21).
Empowering
priesthood makes the most of that empowering promise, ‘this is my body’, since
it resonates with the very centre of Christian Faith in the self-giving of
Jesus. ‘At the heart of our lives is the celebration of that moment of utter
vulnerability and generosity, when Jesus took bread and broke it and gave it to
his disciples saying ‘Take and eat, this is my body, given to you.’ At the
centre of the gospel is a moment of pure gift. This is where the caritas which is the life of God becomes
most tangible. It is a generosity that our society finds hard to grasp, for our
society is a market in which everything is bought and sold. What sense can it
make of the God who shouts out ‘Come to me all who are thirsty and I will give
you food without price’ (7).
The priest who blesses bread and wine in the
name of the Lord continually draws the Church back to this mystery of God’s
self-giving in Jesus Christ. ‘This is my body’.
Here is the Gospel in four words, in presence and in power. Here is the
faithfulness of God disclosed ‘unto death’. Christians are here recalled to the
central truth of the Faith, the gift of Jesus Christ himself. It is a
generosity that plants itself in all who see and welcome Jesus continuously
present to his people particularly through the Eucharist.
The honouring of the sacramental presence of
Jesus has its place, but that honouring should extend to the other ways in
which he is made present through prayer, scripture and through the gathering of
the congregation. ‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there
among them.’ (Matthew 18:20) The late Ian
Petit, a Benedictine Monk, talked of his own experience of lifting up the host
at Mass facing the people. Originally
taught to keep his eyes upon the consecrated bread, he explained how his own
devotion came to have eyes for both the host and the people on the other side
of it. For both it was true to say ‘this
is my body’.
This study of the priesthood began with the
call for renewed ‘horizons and visions of its meaning and truth’. It concludes
by underlining the words of Jesus which interpret the ultimate horizon, words
put on the lips of priests in particular. It is the self-giving of Jesus that
both establishes and authenticates an empowering priesthood. By calling the
Church back day by day to this mystery the ordained become a renewal gift of the
ascended Christ. Where their own lives reflect this ‘downward mobility of God’
(Henri Nouwen), their priesthood is one that uplifts the Church.
‘Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus...’ (Hebrews 12:1-2a).
1. Churches Together in
2. Michael Ramsey The
Christian Priest Today 1972
3. Gordon Kuhrt An
Introduction to Christian Ministry 2000
4. General Synod Report 694 Priesthood
of the Ordained Ministry 1986
5. Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471) The Imitation of Christ
6. Dermot Power A Spiritual Theology of the Priesthood 1998
7. Timothy Radcliffe Sing
a New Song 1999
A PRAYER FOR PRIESTS
Lord Jesus,
you have chosen your priests from among us
and sent them out to proclaim your word
and to act in your name.
For so great a gift to your Church,
we give you praise and thanksgiving.
We ask you to fill them
with the fire of your love,
that their ministry may reveal
your presence in the Church.
Since they are earthen vessels,
we pray that your power
shine out through their weakness.
In their afflictions let them never be crushed;
in their doubts never despair;
in temptation never be destroyed;
in persecution never abandoned.
Inspire them through prayer to live each day
the mystery of your dying and rising.
In times of weakness send them your Spirit,
and help them to praise your heavenly Father
and pray for poor sinners.
By the same Holy Spirit
put your words on their lips
and your love in their hearts,
to bring good news to the poor
and healing to the brokenhearted.