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PRIESTLY ROLE & IDENTITY
BY THE MOST REV TIMOTHY DOLAN ARCHBISHOP OF MILWAUKEE USA
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We are priests; yes, the doing, the ministry, is mighty important, but it flows from the being; we can act as priests, minister as priests, function as priests, serve as priests, preach as priests, because first and foremost we are priests! Being before act! Agere sequitur esse, as the Scholastics expressed it. Father William Byron, the former president of The Catholic University of America, is fond of saying that “we are human beings, not human doings, and our basic dignity and identity comes from who we are, not what we do.” This is true as well of the priesthood.
On the day before I was ordained a priest, I went to confession to a Paraclete Father in St. Louis. He asked me what I looked forward to in the priesthood. Of course I answered, predictably, “Offering Mass, hearing confessions, serving people in a parish,” and so on.
“Excellent,” my confessor responded, “but enjoy as well being a priest. You know, if you were in an automobile accident the day after your First Mass and were paralyzed completely, meaning you could not ever do any of things ordinarily associated with priestly ministry, you would still be a priest.” And then words I’ll never forget, he said. “Spend time every day acknowledging that priestly identity, rejoicing in it, nourishing it, thanking God for it – and then what you do as a priest will be all the more effective and rewarding, because it flows from who you are.” Now that’s what I mean by priestly identity.
Listen to what Archbishop Rembert Weakland said to the National Conference of Priests in England and Wales in September of 1996:
I am with regard to the priesthood itself and its sacramental character, an “ontologist.” I believe that something happens when ordained that assures the validity of the acts when that person functions in the name of Christ and his Church. Such a difference does not make the person any better than anyone else, but it does assure the validity of the sacraments that a priest performs … In this we differ from so many Protestant denominations …. I have slowly come to see the wisdom of “orders” to assure order among God’s people.
Or, as Cardinal Joseph Bernardin spoke in May of the same year: “We priests are not dispensable functionaries; we are bridges to the very mystery of God and healers of the soul. When we claim this priestly identity unapologetically, we not only find ourselves, we also provide the Church and our culture with the sustenance they require.”
You
get my point. In our Catholic understanding, priestly ordination is a
radical, total reordering of a man in the eyes of God and his Church,
bringing about an identity of ontological
“recon-figurement” with
Christ. This priestly identity is at the very core, the essence, of a
man, affecting his being and, subsequently, his actions.
Enough of theory. How about some consequences of that priestly identity?
Well, because as priests we are configured to Christ at the very core of our being, our priesthood will have the same characteristics as that of the Eternal High Priest. Two especially are worthy of our consideration: our priesthood is forever, our priesthood is faithful.
“When a man says ‘yes’ to the priesthood,” says John Paul II, “that ‘yes’ is forever.”
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