One of the most striking things about the priesthood, especially to non-Catholics, is the priestly witness of celibacy. Celibacy is sometimes misunderstood as a spiritual practice in the Church. Since the earliest days of Christianity, followers of Jesus have given up marriage and family to more fully imitate Jesus and his state in life. In Judaism, celibacy was not a common practice. Jesus is the one who brought full meaning to both marriage and celibacy as signs of the kingdom of God. The primary reason that priests are celibate is in imitation of Jesus, who is espoused to the Church. Some mistakenly think that priests are not married because they are too busy to have a family. While it is true that it does make sense for priests to give their time to their parishioners, this is only a good which is allowed for by the primary reason of dedicating our whole selves to Christ and his Church. Since priests are “married” to the Church, priests give their lives in service to her. 

It is true that there are married priests in the Church, especially in the Eastern (non-Latin) Churches. We even have a married priest in our own diocese here in Springfield. However, even in the Eastern Churches, their monks and their bishops are celibate, and they clearly esteem this practice also. Having some married priests in the Church does not take away the symbolic and spiritual value of celibacy among many of the clergy and men and women religious. 

It is beautiful that in our culture, we call priests by the title “Father.” As priests, we give up physical marriage and children for the sake of bearing spiritual fruit. It is not always common to think of Jesus as a spiritual father because we often hear in the Gospels that he is the Son of the Father. However, in his ministry, Jesus exercised a spiritual fatherhood with his disciples by showing them the love of his own Father. One of the funny and interesting things about being a young priest is being called “father” by parishioners who are (much) older than me. In many ways, these parishioners are my spiritual fathers and mothers, as they are helping me to grow in holiness by their guidance and encouragement. However, when I minister as a priest, especially during the Mass and Reconciliation, I am acting as a spiritual father to those who are present. 

As I grow older as a priest, I hope to always grow into my identity as a spiritual father. The best way to do this is to continue to grow in my identity as a son of God. Jesus could be a father to his disciples because he received his identity from his heavenly Father. By our baptism, we are also sons and daughters of God, like Jesus. The Church is immensely blessed by the witness and ministry of older priests in our parishes. There is a certain joy which comes with being a new, young priest. However, there is also a certain joy which comes with being an old, experienced, and wise priest. There are many older priests who exercise a very clear spiritual fatherhood (or spiritual grandfatherhood) with their parishioners. This is made much more clear by their witness of celibacy and their sacrifice of kids and grandkids for the sake of their spiritual children. 

Celibacy is a gift from God. Jesus said that not everyone can accept this practice (Matthew 19:12), nor does he ask us all to do so. He obviously wants us to be fruitful and multiply! However, for those who are called to imitate Jesus by remaining celibate, it is a joy! 

Feast Day: April 21^st

These past weeks, as we have continued to celebrate Easter, we have also begun to examine the sacrament of Holy Orders.  As it turned out, we started with the young man who fled Jesus’ agony in the garden in shame, but astonishingly reappears at the tomb, now splendid, and bearing a message of hope.  Priests are not much different: somewhere deep in the heart of the priesthood is that spectacular truth that God calls men, sinners still so much in need of His mercy, yet then He literally clothes them in white for the celebration of the Mass, a sign of the Lord’s grace at work in the priest’s hands, and words, and love.

Last week we found ourselves watching the drama unfold around Pope Martin I, as he struggled to stay faithful to His Lord and Savior as errors, emperors, assassins, and intrigue pummeled him from all sides.  In his life we have another facet of priesthood: not the sinner-supernaturalized but the shepherd-suffering, scorned, and surrounded.  How did that grace of ordination cascade through his life?  I see it in Martin’s divine doggedness in the face of horrific attacks upon him, his papacy, and his Divine Master.

First Poverty.  Then Perseverance.  This week: Prayer.  (Next week: Preaching)

And for this third pillar of what it means to be a priest, to be someone immersed in prayer, a pray-er, a mediator, an intercessor – someone who stands before God and communicates to Him the weaknesses and worship of His people, and communicates to the people the Word and wealth of God – we turn to St. Anselm of Canterbury.  Of course, I choose him because his feast day will occur on April 21^st, the day he died in 1109 in Canterbury England.  He was a philosopher, an abbot, and a bishop, and found himself immersed in the chaos and challenges of his day in all those roles (all of which, at first, he was forced into, and yet from all of them he learned the characteristics of prudence, patience, and prayerfulness that would make up his sanctity)… but we catch a glimpse of him as a priest … simply a priest … in his most famous writing, the Proslogium.  Most people read it because there he is the first one to describe an ontological argument for God’s existence, but the work is truly at its heart a prayer.  Here is how Anselm begins:

Come on now little man, get away from your worldly occupations for a while, escape from your tumultuous thoughts. Lay aside your burdensome cares and put off your laborious exertions. Give yourself over to God for a little while, and rest for a while in Him. Enter into the cell of your mind, shut out everything except God and whatever helps you to seek Him once the door is shut. Speak now, my heart, and say to God, “I seek your face; your face, Lord, I seek.” – St. Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, Chapter 1.

Might I invite you into that place of silence and prayer as well?  Can you and I say those same words: “I seek Your face.”  Anselm tends through philosophy, theology, scripture, and much more in the course of his great philosophical work, but at the end, he reminds us that it is really a great prayerful work:

God, I pray, let me know and love You, so that I may rejoice in You. And if I cannot in this life [know, love, and rejoice in You] fully, at least let me advance day by day until the point of fullness comes. Let knowledge of You progress in me here and be made full [in me] there. Let love for You grow [in me here] and be [made] full [in me] there, so that here my joy may be great with expectancy and there may be full in realization. O Lord, You command—or, rather, You counsel—[us] to ask through Your Son; and You promise [that we shall] receive, so that our joy may be full. O Lord, I ask for what You counsel through our marvelous Counselor; may I receive what You promise through Your Truth, so that my joy may be full. O God of Truth, I ask; may I receive, so that my joy may be full. Until then, may my mind meditate upon [what You have promised]; may my tongue speak of it. May my heart love it; may my mouth proclaim it. May my soul hunger for it; may my flesh thirst for [it]; may my whole substance desire [it] until such time as I enter into the joy. St. Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, Chapter 26.

Anselm’s writing, and life, and ministry, began and ended in prayer, can ours do so as well?  Can our thirst for joy, peace, love, and meaning finds its answer in the Lord?

Fr. Dominic Rankin begins every day with an hour of prayer.  It is not usually filled with mystical moments or felt phenomenon, more than anything it is a conversation that often begins and ends with “I seek you face”, and that challenging yet thrilling continued yearning for God’s love, for myself and all those entrusted to my care.  This is Christ’s priesthood too.

On this Octave Day (8^th day) of Easter, the Church celebrates Divine Mercy Sunday.  This feast was instituted for the Universal Church by Pope St. John Paul II in 2000 at the Canonization Mass for St. Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun who received a series of revelations from Jesus about the great gift of Divine Mercy He offers to His children.  In her famous Diary, she recorded the following words from our Lord Himself about the feast day He intended to be celebrated on the Second Sunday of Easter:

My daughter, tell the whole world about My inconceivable mercy. I desire that the Feast of Mercy be a refuge and shelter for all souls, and especially for poor sinners. On that day the very depths of My tender mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the fount of My mercy. The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment. On that day all the divine floodgates through which graces flow are opened. Let no soul fear to draw near to Me, even though its sins be as scarlet. My mercy is so great that no mind, be it of man or of angel, will be able to fathom it throughout all eternity. Everything that exists has come forth from the very depths of My most tender mercy. Every soul in its relation to Me will contemplate My love and mercy throughout eternity. The Feast of Mercy emerged from My very depths of tenderness. It is My desire that it be solemnly celebrated on the first Sunday after Easter. Mankind will not have peace until it turns to the Fount of My Mercy. (Diary, #699)

Those final words stand out to me, for we hear the promise of peace that comes from turning to the Divine Mercy.  In nearly 10 years as a priest, I count my time in the confessional as some of the most fruitful ministry I have done.  I am constantly moved by the peace a penitent experiences as they encounter the gift of Divine Mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Our sins deprive us of peace, but God’s mercy restores it in a powerful way that encourages us to not give up, but to begin again in our following the Lord, renewing our experience of the newness of life given on the day of our Baptism, and restored each time we encounter the Divine Mercy.

It is fitting that our topic for Family of Faith this month is the Sacrament of Holy Orders.  Ordination incorporates men into the ministry of Jesus Christ Himself.  Each degree of Holy Orders (Bishop, Priest, Deacon) participates in this ministry of Christ in different ways, but all of them share the common trait of being directed toward the salvation of others.  And since we cannot be saved apart from the Divine Mercy, all those called to serve the Church in Holy Orders have the special task of being instruments of Divine Mercy in various ways through service (primary role of deacons) and the celebration of the sacraments, especially Reconciliation and the Eucharist (primary role of bishops and priests).

Please pray for the clergy of our Cathedral Parish, that we may be ever mindful of the duty entrusted to us to share the message of Divine Mercy in word and in deed, so that many may approach the Divine Mercy, especially in the Sacrament of Mercy, and experience the peace His Mercy bestows in this life as a preparation for the fullness of peace that awaits us in Heaven.

Father Alford