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PRIESTLY ROLE & IDENTITY
BY THE MOST REV TIMOTHY DOLAN ARCHBISHOP OF MILWAUKEE USA
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“When a man says ‘yes’ to the priesthood, that ‘yes’ is forever.” A second characteristic of our priestly identity is fidelity. You know by heart Mother Teresa’s famous dictum. “The Lord doesn’t ask us to be successful; he asks us to be faithful.”
I will always recall the words that Paul VI spoke to my class after diaconate ordination: “Be faithful, always be faithful.”
We are faithfully to our priestly identity no matter what the circumstances. This may sound Pollyannaish, but the value of our priesthood does not depend on where we are assigned, who our pastor is, or what type of ministry we are engaged in. Pastor Ignotus, the famous anonymous columnist for the London Tablet, meditates: “The priest is blamed for many failings. He visits rarely, preaches badly. He is anti-intellectual. The sociologists details his defects. ‘Men, not angels, ministers of the gospel,’ Newman heads a sermon. This consoles. For the priest there is no such thing as success, no gold, silver, or bronze. He just plods on and, when the going gets rough, there is very little he can do. Except, possibly, have a good cry.”
Fidelity will be easy when our priestly lives are happy, interesting, invigorating. Ah, but the sorrow, loneliness, frustration will come, and then can we be faithful? Yes, if we know that our fidelity is not a job, a career, a function, an assignment, but to a call, an identity, a Person, namely Jesus and his Church! It is not based on achievement, reward, or fulfilment.
In one of the parishes to which I was assigned, there was a couple I recall vividly. When I knew them they were already in their late forties, but twenty years before that, only about five years into their marriage, she had developed crippling rheumatoid arthritis, which left her twisted, physically useless, gradually confined to bed or a wheelchair.
He was a handsome, vigorous man, very successful as a stockbroker. For over twenty-five years he was faithful to her constantly. Every morning he got her out of bed, bathed and dressed her, helped her with breakfast; every lunch break he was home for a visit and to take her for a walk in the wheelchair. Every evening he helped her with supper, read to her, dressed her for bed. He could have left her; he could have had numerous affairs; on his business trips out of town how he must have been tempted to seek the sexual satisfaction she could not provide. Never! Always faithful! Not to what she could give him or do for him, but faithful to her, to his vocation, to his identity as a husband and father!
At times in our priesthood we will experience a dryness, a confusion, a doubt, a fatigue, a frustration, a loneliness, an anger – and that’s when fidelity is proved. Our Spouse, the Church, may at times seem crippled and useless, a drain; our Master, Jesus, may occasionally seem distant, aloof, absent. We are still faithful. As St. Thomas Aquinas prayed:
Give me, a steadfast heart which no unworthy affection may drag downwards.
Give me an unconquered heart which no tribulation can wear out.
Give me an upright heart which no unworthy purpose may tempt aside.
Bestow on me, O Lord my God, a faithfulness that may finally embrace you!”
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