The Substance of Things Hoped For: October 2009

Rector’s Conference
September 9, 2009

In my first conference for the opening of this formation year, I indicated that I wanted to focus my talks this semester on the virtues of the priesthood, in particular, on the heroism of priests. This morning, I want to continue that theme by honing on in a particular virtue, the virtue of courage.

Courage, in Latin, fortitudo is a characteristic of the lives of so many priests in the history of our faith. St. Athanasius, for example, was a great example of courage. St. Athanasius fought the Arian heresy, and three times was exiled from his own diocese. He spent years in toil, hardship and imprisonment because he stood up for the Truth. He was reviled and rejected after the example of the Master whom we sought so valiantly to emulate, suffering real deprivation for the sake of Christ and his holy Church. He was certainly a great example of priestly courage and heroism. Likewise, St. Ignatius of Loyola is a great example of priestly courage. He had to overcome a great deal of misunderstanding in order to realize what he considered to be his divine call to found an order of missionaries and priests to support the Church of God in a time of great crisis. In the course of this pursuit he overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles in order to proclaim the message of the Gospel. Closer to our own time we could look at the example of someone like St. Maximilian Kolbe who had the courage to offer his own life as a sacrifice for the life of another man who was a husband and father in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Or we could look at the example of Pope John Paul II, who, even before being called by God for heroic service in the Petrine office, experienced tremendous hardships just to become a priest in the days of occupation in Poland in the early 20th century. And of course, in this Year for Priests, we must mention the example of St. John Vianney, a man whose courage and fierce determination saw him through so many trials and difficulties to become at true pastor of souls, a man committed to the daily reality of the priestly office, an office in which he never wavered, never grew weary.

We could go on and on. We could look at examples of priestly courage throughout history of the Church. But, today in order to focus on this issue, this value, this question of the courage of priests, I would like to turn to an older figure. I would like to spend some time reflecting this morning on the priesthood of Melchizedek. Even before the time of Christ, Melchizedek was an example of a priesthood that has since come to fruition in the Incarnation of the Son of God and a priesthood of which we are, today, the inheritors. We are told that we are priests of the Order of Melchizedek.
We often hear this language of Melchizedek, but do we understand, do we know who Melchizedek was and why he continues to offer us a significant example of courage in the priesthood today. In order to comprehend a little more of this, I would like to turn to the Book of Hebrews and I will spend some time this morning reflecting on Hebrews 7:1-10.

This “King Melchizedek of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met Abraham as he was returning from defeating the kings and blessed him”; 2and to him Abraham apportioned “one-tenth of everything.” His name, in the first place, means “king of righteousness”; next he is also king of Salem, that is, “king of peace.” 3Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever. 4See how great he is! Even Abraham the patriarch gave him a tenth of the spoils. 5And those descendants of Levi who receive the priestly office have a commandment in the law to collect tithes from the people, that is, from their kindred, though these also are descended from Abraham. 6But this man, who does not belong to their ancestry, collected tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had received the promises. 7It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior. 8In the one case, tithes are received by those who are mortal; in the other, by one of whom it is testified that he lives. 9One might even say that Levi himself, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, 10for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek met him. [NRSV]

In the Book of Hebrews, the work and the identity of Christ are set against the backdrop of Old Testament priesthood. It is important to note, however, that the Old Testament cultic priesthood, the Aaronic priesthood, the Levitical priesthood is not the reality on which the author wants to focus as a precursor to Christ Rather, it is Melchizedek a more archaic figure, a more ancient figure, a figure predating the Aaronic and Levitical priesthood, who becomes the foreshadowing of Christ. The author spends a great deal of time considering the nature of the Old Testament priesthood and how it must be understood. He begins with a long dissertation on the cultic priesthood and for the author, writing to his Jewish audience, the cultic priesthood had everything that priesthood ought to have had. It had its hereditary significance; it had its way of transmitting the priesthood from generation to generation. It had a material culture that surrounded it, the sacrifices, the vestments, the use of the implements, and the place of the sacrifice, the Temple of Jerusalem. But, what the cultic priesthood of ancient Israel did not have according to the Book of Hebrews was effectiveness. This becomes the real key to gaining insight as to where the author wants to go with his discussion of priesthood. There was no effectiveness to the priesthood of ancient Judaism. They offered sacrifices day after day, they sprinkled blood on the altar and the people, but nothing happened. There was nothing that came of it. The author wants to point to the fact that the sacrificial elements of ancient Judaism could not solve the larger problem, we might say the metaphysical problem, faced by the people. For effectiveness we must turn to another image of the priesthood and here the author considers the figure of Melchizedek.

Here I will begin by bringing to light a few features the author of Hebrews wants to point out about the priesthood of Melchizedek. But I think we should also put these features side-by-side with our own understanding of priesthood and hopefully see if the author can point out for us the values that we ought to be representing in the priesthood as it exists in the new dispensation of Jesus Christ. First the priest, Melchizedek, as we find in Hebrews 7:3, was without father, without mother and without genealogy. Genealogy, as we know, within ancient Judaism was something extremely important. Matthew writing to a Jewish audience begins his gospel with a genealogy. The purpose of the genealogy is to establish the credibility of Jesus by placing him within the context of a great hereditary tradition of Judaism. Melchizedek and therefore Christ and therefore Christian priesthood have no genealogy. He has no father or mother. He is not a priest by way of inheritance or by way of family or by way of rights. The Aaronic priesthood and the Levitical priesthood were the right, the birthright of the priest. What the author wants to point out is that within the new dispensation priests do not have a birthright to the priesthood. No one has a right to the priesthood. The priesthood is not something we have inherited; it is not something that we gain by means of our family or our connections. What is the reason then for holding priesthood in the new dispensation? It is by virtue of a well-lived life. It is by virtue of who the priest is. It is by virtue of his character and not of any inherited title. The priesthood in the new dispensation is not a priesthood that carries on because it has been going on for generations; its perpetuation is by virtue of who the individual is. In other words, it is the individual who becomes a priest. He is not merely molded into a group of priests, a common priesthood, rather it is through the individual’s background and gifts and talents and character that the priesthood emerges. Melchizedek acted as a priest to Abraham not because he was forced to or because of the role that he played and not because it was his duty, that is to say, he was not fulfilling one of the courses of priesthood that would later be a quality of the Levitical/Aaronic priesthood, but because of his internal spiritual qualities, his goodness and his charity. This raises a significant image for us in the contemporary Christian priesthood. We are priests because of an internal disposition and an external call. We are not priests by virtue of what we do or how we act, we are priests by virtue of who we are and by the relationship we have with the author of priesthood, God the Father in Jesus Christ.

The treatment of Melchizedek in Hebrews also invites us to look back to his first appearance in the Book of Genesis. According to Genesis 14, Melchizedek was a priest of Salem. Salem was the Canaanite city that is now known as Jerusalem before it became the capital of the southern kingdom. Melchizedek was also a priest of El. El is one of the archaic names for God given in the Book of Genesis. He offers bread and wine to Abraham. In the context of Genesis, Melchizedek, the king of Salem and the priest, offers bread and wine as opposed to what the Sodomites failed to offer Abraham, that is, hospitality. Melchizedek offers hospitality where the people of Sodom did not; and, he blessed Abraham. He was king of Salem and a priest; here we begin to see the first clue according to Hebrews as to how Melchizedek was a foreshadowing of Christ. He was both the king and the priest. He had dominion over both the temporal world, the affairs of the world, and over the spiritual world. Melchizedek brings together in one individual both that which is temporal, we might say that which is human, and that which is spiritual, that is to say divine—humanity and divinity together in his dual role of king and priest, the temporal and the spiritual, the incarnational nature of Melchizedek. He appears from nowhere and he disappears. The only encounter we have is this short chapter in Genesis. But, he is a priest forever as we hear in Psalm 110 and as we hear repeatedly throughout the various passages from the New Testament where his name in invoked. His priesthood has no beginning and no end in the same way that the second person of the Holy Trinity has no beginning and no end. The divine reality has no beginning and no end. He is a priest forever. He has, therefore, an ability to stand in for humanity, not by virtue of law but by an act of charity. Here again we see that formulation of the Christological image which is going to be so significant for the author of Hebrews. Jesus Christ comes to us not by virtue of law, he is not compelled to do so by the Father, but by an act of love, an act of charity, the ultimate act of charity. “A greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15,13). He wants to save humanity. Melchizedek, like Christ, did not have to offer the sacrifice like the Aaronic and Levitical priests, but his charity is welcomed by Abraham and for his charity he receives the spoils of war. War here in Hebrews and perhaps also in Genesis is not so much to be understood as temporal warfare but a kind of eschatological or spiritual warfare. The message here is that spiritual warfare is to be resolved not by an act of war but rather by an act of love, charity. The “goods” of this world are conquered by love. The priesthood of Melchizedek and Christ is superior to the priesthood of the Levites because it is chosen in love and it does not proceed from obligation.

In Hebrews, there are three images that are presented concerning the function and the nature of Jesus’ work and following from that the function and nature of our own being and work. The three images are the Temple, the bridegroom, and the sacrifice. These three images form the context of understanding what Jesus did and who he was and also a context for forming an image of what we do and who we are. If we look at the ministry of Christ, his salvific ministry, his ministry of redemption, we learn that Christ is the temple. The cultic action of Israel was highly localized in the temple in Jerusalem. Its priests were part time. They served two weeks a year and spent the rest of their time at home pursuing whatever livelihood they had. Hebrews 8:1-2 turns the tables on this reality and gives us a very powerful image. “We have such a high priest, who has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle that the Lord, not man, set up” Christ is the priest and the temple. Not made by human hands. Not subject to change. Not subject to destruction. This is the same image found in St. John’s Gospel, “Destroy this temple and I will raise it in three days”(John 2,19). He is the temple. Within our context those conformed in the person of Christ, priests, likewise, are the temple. With this image the author is presenting us with the possibility that those who serve in the Christian priesthood are serving within the context of their own person. The cultic zone, the religious space of Israel has been blown apart and Christ roaming about the earth in his omnipresent reality brings the temple to every place, to homes, to parking lots, to shopping centers, to the most exalted palace, to the lowest ghetto. Priesthood in our setting is not something that is set apart from the world but rather it is lived concretely within the context of the world. We are not like those who dwell imperiously in the temple on top of the hill and then every once in awhile in a cloud of incense and unknowing descend and ascend. Jesus was not one who set himself apart from his world, with the temple representing the concrete reality of the world; Jesus was one who went into the world. Jesus was part of the world. He took the temple with him. There was no division between him and the work he performed. What we get here is a powerful image of how we are to be. One of the great delineations of our contemporary culture is the idea that we live in two spheres, the sacred and the secular. The author of Hebrews drives home this message: In Christ there is no place set apart for the worship of God; ultimately the World is the Temple. As Fr. Von Balthasar mentions in his book on prayer: “The Son comes down and in him heaven becomes tangible on earth.”(Prayer, 278). The world is made sacred by Christ’s presence in it. The common things of the world, bread and wine are made holy, even divine. This insight calls us to a level of conversion in our understanding of how we interact with the people here in the seminary or later in our parishes. Do we see ourselves as professional service providers or are we people who have thrown in their lot with the people we are serving? If we are to follow the line of thinking that we receive in Hebrews, then we, like Christ must throw in our lot, pitch our tent with those whom we are serving. The priest does not go to Church and then leave his priesthood behind in the Church. The priest takes the Church with him wherever he goes, in his very person.

The second image is the nuptial image of the bridegroom. The nuptial image of Christ is found frequently in the New Testament. In order to fully grasp the significance of the nuptial image of Christ, it is important that we understand the reality of marriage in the Old Testament, in Jewish religion. In Judaism there were three ways to contract a marriage. The first one was by way of a covenant or an agreement, a written document, a signed piece of paper. The bride, the groom and the families signed a piece of paper and once the paper was signed, the marriage had taken place; it was contracted. When the paper was signed the marriage was a reality. It did not require a ceremony. Second, money, you could buy a bride. In ancient Judaism the bride could be purchased for something like three goats. In later times it became a cash transaction, gold was necessary. If the groom gave the father of the bride some gold, the marriage had taken place; if he accepts the money it had taken place. This is the origin of the wedding ring. The wedding ring originates from the monetary price that was paid for brides in the ancient world. This not only within Judaism, but within other cultures as well. Third, sexual intercourse. In ancient Judaism, if sexual intercourse took place between two persons who were free to marry then they were married by virtue of the act. Of these three ways, any one could bring about a marriage. The most complete expression of marriage was found in the fulfillment of all three requirements. Christ presented in the nuptial imagery of the bridegroom calls to mind a sense of what all of these means of marriage are trying to convey. Christ the bridegroom is the fullness of the marital covenant, the fullness in the sense that the price has been paid. “You were ransomed from your futile conduct, handed on by your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless unblemished lamb” (1 Peter 1:17-19). Christ has paid the price for his bride with his own blood. The covenant has been signed and ratified and the physical congress, communion, has been effected by Christ offering his own body to the bride, the Church. He offers it in the Eucharist, so we receive the Body of Christ in that very palpable way, in a very physical way in the Eucharist. Pope Benedict in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, has highlighted this physical nature of our relationship with Christ in the Eucharist quite powerfully. “The imagery of marriage between God and Israel is now realized in a way previously inconceivable: it had meant standing in God's presence, but now it becomes union with God through sharing in Jesus' self-gift, sharing in his body and blood. The sacramental “mysticism”, grounded in God's condescension towards us, operates at a radically different level and lifts us to far greater heights than anything that any human mystical elevation could ever accomplish.” (Deus Caritas Est, 13). So the bridegroom imagery is complete and profound. The nuptial image of Christ raises a question as to how we understand our own priestly identity in light of Christ. What is the price that we pay by virtue of our being bridegrooms for the ransom of the bride. What sacrifice are we willing to make? The answer to this question becomes the key to what I want to discuss a bit later. It calls us to not only sign the papers to be a priest, but also to offer our own bodies as a living sacrifice to the bride, the Church. This imagery can be very fruitful. There is a startling passage in the writings of Archbishop Fulton Sheen. In The Priest is not His Own, Fulton Sheen considers the image of the priest standing at the altar offering mass and repeating the words of institution. What is interesting is that the priest changes grammatical voices at the words of institution. He changes voices from speaking in the second person to speaking in the first person. He speaks as Jesus Christ. “This is my body. This is my blood.” He speaks as Jesus Christ. That speaking cannot merely be understood as some kind of an act of spiritual ventriloquism but really has to be understood as the priest speaking on behalf of Christ and speaking on behalf of himself. This becomes a powerful image of the priesthood. When I offer the body and blood, do I do that merely as a stand in for Christ. It is a very good thing for Jesus to offer his body and his blood for the good of these people, but can I speak also in my own voice and say to the people, “This is my body given for you. This is my blood which is given up for you.” It becomes a radically different understanding of what the priest is doing and who the priest is when he speaks in the person of Christ.

Finally, the Book of Hebrews presents the image of Christ as the sacrifice. We see this in Hebrews 9:12. “He entered once for all into the sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.” (Hebrews 9:12). Christ is the sacrifice. St. John Chrysostom comments on this passage saying: “He brought words from God to us, conveying what came from the Father and adding his own death. We had offended; we ought to have died. He died for us and made us worthy of the covenant.” (Commentary on Hebrews, 16,2). He is not only the priest, and not only the temple, but also the sacrifice. He offers the sacrifice with his own blood. This follows very directly upon this image of the nuptial nature of the relationship between Christ and the Church and by extension between the priest and the Church. Christ is the sacrifice. The blood of Christ, however, is not something poured upon the ground or immolated in clouds of smoke, it is effective. The blood of Christ is generative and thus the sacrifice of those configured in Christ, the sacrifice of the priest is generative, it is life-giving. Celibacy in this context must be seen not primarily as a negation and not as a practical means to an end, but the very generativity, the fatherhood of the priest. Celibacy that is frigid and reserved is not celibacy, it is a futile sacrifice that offers nothing for the life of the world. Cold hearted celibacy is like the slaughter of so many useless animals. It may look dramatic but the people walk away from it stunned by the arctic blast of its complete and utter aridity.

In tying together these three images spread out over the Book of Hebrews, the important thing to note is that if Christ is the priest and Christ is the temple and Christ is the altar and Christ is the bridegroom and Christ is the sacrifice, what does that mean? It means that Christ is everything. That everything finds its meaning, its center in Christ. All of the symbolism and all of the actions of the Old Testament priesthood have now been completely rethought, reinvigorated, enlivened in the reality of Christ. What does that say about our own priesthood.? How do we understand ourselves as the priest, the temple, that is to say the context, but also the sacrifice that we offer, that we offer not only as a stand-in but also offer as ourselves? It means that our lives of faith, the work of formation is a continual building up, tearing down, honing away, augmenting, dissecting, perfecting so that Christ becomes all in all. Christ must become all in all.

What the author of Hebrews is really calling us as priests to understand are three things. First, the realization of who we are and what we do. Sometimes we can lose sight of the reality that as we who stand in persona Christi are the custodians of that Reality which is Christ’s way of presenting this eternal redemption. In our lives as priests we handle eternity. We are entrusted with the salvation of souls. We are not merely ersatz social workers, or institutional agents, or maintence men who have little or no contribution to make to the eschataological and soteriological ends of the human condition. We hold in our hands the human condition. We are responsible. And this realization calls for courage. Why are we in formation? What do we seek in this house of formation? Why are we ordained? What are we here to do? What is our purpose in life? A hazard of living here and a hazard of priestly existence is that it has the potential to become very bogged down, a kind of mundane kind of reality and to see the mundane as the end of our priesthood. At times priests can become very cynical and think that the priesthood is only about these kinds of mundane tasks. The sense of the heroic is lost. Courage flees. The eschaton conflates, Chronos trumps kiaros.

The call of Hebrews is a call to realize who we are as Christians and as priests. We must realize what our place in the world is. Sometimes in the face of some of the scandals that we have experienced in the Church in recent years we can begin to have a poor self image of our priestly existence. And yet, the work that we do by virtue of who we are, what we do at the altar, our labor and our very persons is what keeps the world from flying apart, what keeps souls from the eternity of hell, what perpetuates the Divine Reality in our midst. If we have that vision, we have a very different perspective on personal self worth and self understanding. We have different vision of what is significant and what is not. We also have a better sense of authentic clericalism, the clericalism of awesome responsibility rather than the clericalism of privilege and entitlement.

The second point for the author of Hebrews is the tangibility of the presence of the divine reality among us. This summer I gave a workshop to a group of priests on secularization. They wanted a workshop on the way in which secularization plays into the pastoral situation in priestly identity and ministry today. One of the challenges we face today as priests in preaching, in evangelization, in conveying the truth of the gospel is that we have lost the sense of the omnipresence of the divine reality. In our so-called secular lives, the so-called world, we have become very compartmentalized: Here is the Church’s realm over here and here is where God resides and God has a great deal of influence in this particular sphere, but we also have this other sphere in which we operate which is the large sphere of the secular world or sometimes people say “The real world.” We are very comfortable segmenting our lives. We do not take the temple with us. It is not only true of our present or future parishioners, it is also true of us. I am very comfortable dealing with God here, but, for goodness sake, I don’t want to have to deal with God over there. And yet we yearn for the supernatural. We long for a vision of reality that transcends the overweening hubris of sensuality and concreteness. A life lived only in the concrete reality of flesh is a pornographic life, a life of objectification and as our late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II observed people strive not to be objectified but loved. Loving the people we serve means calling them to a greater vision, a more profound reality. We must offer them depth perception. We must offer them the opportunity for an oblation rationabilis, an entering into the very life of God.

Third, for the author of Hebrews, there is the presence of the community. The biggest challenge that most of us face in the priesthood is that we have to be community builders. Otherwise the Church becomes what so many of the mega churches are; religious supermarkets. As Catholics, we build community. Parochialism is one of the greatest challenges we face in the Church today. How does parochialism go? “You’re not fast enough, I have to over to the other parish.” or “I don’t like the music over here.” or “I don’t like the way Father combs his hair.” or “I don’t like X, Y, and Z.” Sometimes there is very little loyalty to the parish community. The question becomes how well am I being served; how well are my personal needs being met by this parish and if they are not well met then I will just go somewhere else. It has nothing to do with the objective values of what is going on in the parish. For Catholics community building is extremely important. You know what I say to all of you when they come to the seminary. “You’re here. Be here. Try and build community here because that is a skill you are really going to need as a priest. You are going to need to learn to build the Body of Christ. To build community under adverse conditions with people you didn’t choose to be with and many of whom are almost impossible to live with.” In other words I have to build community with this group of very strange, odd, troubling people. But that is what I have to do. It is not as though I can say, “Oh, I won’t build community” or “I’ll just offer services for these people, and they can accept them or reject them going on their merry way as consumerist individuals.” Building community also entails building up the community, calling them to consider the higher way of thinking, the more exalted road of spiritual insight. This moves us beyond what Pope Benedict calls community as “self affirmation” and moves us toward “being found by the Lord who opens us out and leads us beyond frontiers.” (Feast of Faith, 149).

What, then, does the image of Melchizedek hold out for us in a priesthood modeled on Christ? I want to mention about several items here and then I want to go back to the question of courage.

First, a priesthood modeled on Christ in the order of Melchizedek, like Melchizedek, looses sight of origins and conclusions. In other words, the priest must not be too concerned about where everything has been, nor about where everything is going; but, must build community and must make Christ present in this situation now, in the present, in this moment, in this particular opportunity. Thus, the priest is caught up in what I might call the momentous now. He is caught up in this monumental understanding of the situation in which he finds himself. In other words, he is thoroughly engaging people. Have you ever noticed the priest who shakes everybody’s hand while looking over their shoulder? They come up to see him and he is waiting to see what’s next, and what’s coming down the line, and who is going who is going to be accosting him in a minute, and whether the weird one is going out the side door or not. He is constantly looking ahead to see what’s going to happen. Sometimes that is a very symbolic impression of the priesthood. I don’t have the ability to talk to this person in front of me and to focus on this person, so I am constantly engaging with the other who is coming down the line. Once they have arrived they are also going to be pushed aside for the future.

Second, the priesthood proclaims the efficacy of the sacrifice. The priesthood has to show why the sacrifice is important, why it is meaningful. Sometimes we can send mixed messages about the centrality of the Eucharist in our lives. Sometimes that is because we do not perceive the Eucharist as central to our lives. The only authentic priestly spirituality is the spirituality built upon the Eucharist. That is the only authentic priestly spirituality. If the Eucharist is not there as the center, the heart of our existence, if our lives are not dependent upon the Eucharist, then we can hardly expect to be able to communicate what others should be experiencing, If we do not see the Eucharist as the source and summit of our reality, then why should they see the importance of it. Why should they go to mass every Sunday? Therefore the priest must replicate in his body the sacrifice of Christ. We are not merely symbolic interpreters. We are living icons of the significance of the Eucharist.

Third, the priest does not spurn victimhood, which is not to say that the priest is a victim or should be a victim or should seek suffering. There is no value in suffering for the sake of suffering.. We have enough of that in the Church. But, suffering is real and some priests think that their entire life is predicated upon fleeing from the possibility of any kind of suffering. And, so, we coat ourselves with a kind of a Teflon skin so that no suffering can touch us. Sometimes that has different looks to it. Sometimes it is the way we live, our way of life. If our life style prohibits us from ever engaging any kind of suffering or sacrifice, then it is not a healthy life style. We are tied to the suffering of the people that we serve. The priest has lots of options to make his life very comfortable and sometimes those are great, we should take some of those options, but sometimes they can be ways of avoiding the realities of the world. The priesthood has to be generous with authentic hospitality. We are again, pitching our tent, throwing our lot in with those whom we serve. This is true evangelization. How excited are we about our evangelization? How excited are we to spread the good news of Jesus Christ? If we are very excited about it, if we are committed to it, we can overcome all kinds of hardships and discomfort, but if the relationship with Jesus Christ is dead, we are going to spend a lot of time with the remote control or the mouse in our hand. If that relationship is alive and vibrant, we can say “yes” to a lot of things that we might not be able to have the energy for in another context.

Finally, the priest builds the Body of Christ by perfecting the Body of Christ and by being the Body of Christ. We are a Mode of Presence and sometimes we do not like to accept that responsibility. Prepare now for that responsibility. It is a fulltime reality. We don’t like to accept the responsibility for being a Mode of Presence because that requires significant courage on our part. And now we are back full circle.

Courage? Courage in the priesthood, what does it mean? Looking at all of this, what are the ways in which we can understand courage? What do we need to be courageous about? What are the ways courage can be expressed in our lives as seminarians and as priests? In the ancient world, courage had three aspects: Physical, mental, and spiritual. Let me now consider each of these in turn.
Physical courage, in our context might be understood as offering our bodies on the altar of heroism, or it might be understood in quite a different context. For example, the courage to be a immolated on the altar of the mundane. What does that mean? It means to live within the context of the daily life. There are some seminarians I call thrill seekers. They are only happy if there is some kind of drama being stirred up. So if there isn’t any drama going on, they will stir up some drama. They can’t be in a seminary that doesn’t have a huge controversy or that doesn’t have a gross injustice or that doesn’t have a great tragedy unfolding. There can’t be a priestly ministry that is not tied to great campaigns or daily incidents of demonic possession. St. Augustine mentions just such tactics in the actions of the bridesmaids in the Gospel of St. Matthew: “They sought for what they were most prone to seek for, to shine with others’ oil, to walk after others’ praises.” (Sermon, 93,8). In these seminarians and priests there is a lack of ability to live in the mundane or that which is not personally momentous. In the priesthood it can look like this: I’m not satisfied with just doing my Communion rounds, going to the nursing home, listening to Bertha complain. doing my marriage prep—I want something thrilling and exciting so you have to conjure up some real disaster or something to keep your life interesting. The reality of seminary life, the reality of the priesthood is repetition, and ritual, and the reinforcement of the “over and over”. Find God here in the ticking of the clock and the beating of every heart. Find God here in the joy of doing small things with great love as Mother Teresa once said. Find holiness in the fulfillment of one’s obligations and you will be courageous enough to face the dramatic when it inevitably comes. Those who cannot become victims of the mundane are like those bridesmaids, not content to sit around and wait and had no oil when the Bridegroom appeared. Our preparation for the advent of Christ’s glory is in the advent of his appearance as an insignificant child in an obscure town to nobody parents. The Glory of God, the humiliation of the Son of God was that He was a victim of the mundane in the harsh reality of the Incarnation. Incarnational priesthood implies a knot tying us to the usual

We might understand mental courage as the courage to recognize the sacramental reality. What is sacramental reality? This should be the motto of all priests. If we could all have mottos, we all should have the same motto. This is the ideal that should govern our lives as priests. Things are not as they appear to be. Is this not the basis of the sacramental reality? When we hold up the cup, hold up the paten and we say “This is the Lamb of God” we are asking people to accept the reality that things are not what they appear to be. That is the sacramental reality. We are comfortable with that in the Blessed Sacrament, but are we comfortable in transferring that sacramental reality to every aspect of our priestly life? We encounter everyday the tiresome seminarian, the bum, the complainer, the addict, the fornicator. We are happy compartmentalizing and judging by appearances. Courage calls us to invest enough in the life of the people that we are serving to see in all of them the reality that things are not what they seem to be. What about our brother seminarians who sometimes drive us crazy. Why do they sometimes drive us crazy? Because we reduce them to stereotypes, this is the one who won’t work and this is the one who does goofy things. But, if we keep that motto before our eyes, things are not what they seem to be, we are constantly having to look for the deeper, broader, more profound reality behind the appearances which is the instinct of the Catholic imagination and must be the daily practice of the seminarian and the priest. This applies to the faculty and staff as well. Of course it does.

Another example of mental courage is the courage to remain anonymous. We need to be able to do what we do and not expect that we are always going to be congratulated for it. To do what we do and realize that we don’t do it for thanks, though it is good to get thanks, we don’t do it for recognition, we don’t do it so we can become a bishop, we don’t do so we can become a monsignor. We don’t do it to get praise from our peers. We don’t do it so everyone will think we are holier than we are. We do it for Christ. And just as Melchizedek led a hidden life, so much of the ministry of the priest must be done in secret. The courage to remain anonymous becomes our last stronghold against ego.

Finally the virtue of courage is spiritual insofar as it tends us toward the raucousness of sanctity. We become saints when we have the courage to see that in the circumference of a glass vial rest the cosmological menace that is the Incarnate Word, that Word who powers the stars and planets and leaps great chasms of the mind to ravish us with His all consuming possibility

In the priesthood there is the courage to be fully transliterated in the idiom of the Body of Christ, to express in our flesh the bite of the God who is Holy, Mighty and Immortal, the tangibility of pure essence

The courage to be in his likeness, present ourselves in his likeness, overwrought in his likeness overtaken, like Melchizedek on the journey of mendacity to shimmer into the depth and height and breadth and width of excellence purely realized in the blood stained face of the Savior

The courage to live the Gospel like addicts shooting into the veins, the very marrow of our beings the distilled liqueur of human and divine compassion

The courage to unite ourselves with those thousand, thousands treading into the beatific vision and see in that throng our beloved dead, and saints known and unknown leaping the forecourts of that city hewn of adamant alight with jasper,

And joining our voices in that endless hymn Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God of Hosts, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac the God of Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ, a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.
Let us pray

The Substance of Things Hoped For

Reclaiming the Catholic Imagination

The Virtue of Courage

Getting What they Deserve