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By Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB
As you know, this Year has been designated by Pope Benedict XVI as the “Year for Priests,” one which he hopes will be “useful for making the importance of the priest’s role and mission in the Church and in contemporary society ever more clearly perceived.” Moreover, the Pope has expressed the heartfelt desire that for every priest the Year will be “an opportunity for inner renewal and, consequently, that it will firmly strengthen him in his commitment to his mission” ... “It can never be said often enough that the priesthood is indispensable to the Church, for it is at the service of the laity. Priests are a gift from God for the Church.”
While this Year is clearly one directed to priests, “for them,” it is also, I believe, an opportunity for the lay faithful to grow in appreciation of the gift that the priesthood is for the Church and how it serves the laity, the overwhelming majority of Christ’s faithful, in fulfilling their vocation and mission to the world. Priests live in the midst of the lay faithful, that they may lead them to a life of founded on the inseparability between love of God and love of neighbour. Here I would like to recall the Vatican II’s hearty encouragement to priests “to be sincere in their appreciation and promotion of the dignity of the laity and of the special role they have to play in the Church’s mission.... They should be willing to listen to lay people, give brotherly consideration to their wishes, and acknowledge their experience and competence in the different fields of human activity. In this way they will be able together with them to discern the signs of the times.”
What prompted Benedict to proclaim this Year for Priests? He told us that it coincides with the 150th anniversary of the death of the Curé of Ars, St. John Vianney, “a wonderful model here on earth of a true Pastor at the service of Christ’s flock.”
The Year for Priests began just as the Jubilee commemorating the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of St. Paul was drawing to a close. There is something instructive in juxtaposing the two figures. Paul was a brilliant theologian and an indefatigable evangelizer who made his way around the Mediterranean world in order to spread the Gospel that had so radically changed his life. On the other hand, John Vianney was a poor peasant who struggled with his studies, almost not getting ordained. He became a humble parish priest who carried out his pastoral service in a small and remote French village. The two saints differ widely in their temperaments and the way they lived their call to serve the Lord as his ministers of the Gospel. One went from one region to the next to proclaim the Gospel; the other welcomed thousands and thousands of the faithful while remaining in his own tiny parish.
Nonetheless, the two saints are bound together, because both of them totally identified with their ministry and their communion with Christ. The Apostle to the Gentiles exclaimed to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2: 20). For his part, the Curé of Arts used to like to repeat: “if we had faith, we would see God hidden in the priest like a light behind glass or like wine mixed with water.” Through their ministry, each one, in a way adapted to the times in which he lived, issued a great evangelical challenge that bore astonishing fruits of conversion, fruits which in both cases resulted from a life of exhausting dedication. God chose as models for pastors two men who appeared poor, weak, defenceless and contemptible in the eyes of men (cf. 1 Cor 1:28-29), to bring about a remarkable growth in his Church.
Taken from a Nov. 7 address to the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre. Read full text here.
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