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PRIESTLY ROLE & IDENTITY
BY THE MOST REV TIMOTHY DOLAN ARCHBISHOP OF MILWAUKEE USA
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So, we are faithful; we are priests at the core of our being; there is no “day off” or vacation from priestly identity, no sabbatical or retirement, no “office hours,” because our priesthood is not some external imposition but an internal identity that has captivated us from head to toe.
As rector, I am always getting suggestions regarding what I should tell the students at the seminary as future priests. One priest-friend at home, a very fine, savvy priest, advised me to exhort them to be duro (you know from that word that he is obviously an alumnus). Now, by duro, he explained, he does not mean strict, rough, mean. No he means tough, determined, dogged, persevering. He is on his diocesan personnel board and he says he is flabbergasted at the number of guys who come complaining about assignments, feeling they are not being used properly, wanting a change, needing time off, requiring a special assignment, tired of the demands. Whining,” as he calls it. Now I know him well enough to realize that he recognizes priests need compassion and understanding, and he provides it in abundance, by the way. But I think he may have had a point in calling us to be more duro. That could be another word for faithful: we keep at it, day in and day out, not allowing the setbacks and frustrations to get us down. Our pastor may be a crab, our people unresponsive, our assignment less than ideal. That’s when fidelity is the key.
“Faithful! Always be faithful.”
Now this is a lofty call. To embrace our priestly identity, to live it with confidence, humility, conviction, and gratitude, to acknowledge that it is forever and that it is faithful – that is a plateful and inspires awe and maybe even trepidation. Thus we need to be cognizant of the helps that we have in our priesthood, the supports to nurturing our priestly identity.
The first, no surprise here, is prayer. Prayer of course is predicated on the belief that by ourselves nothing is possible, while, with him, nothing is impossible. Prayer is built upon the trust that God never calls us to something without supplying the grace to do it. Listen to what the archbishop of Cincinnati, Daniel Pilarcyzk, recently said to the priests of the diocese of Pittsburgh at their convocation:
If the priest is to lead his people into contact with the presence of the mystery of God, which is what holiness is, then the priest himself has to be in touch with the presence and mystery of God. He has to be familiar with God in the deepest part of his being. This is what we call prayer. Put most bluntly, a priest without a deep prayer life is condemning himself to a career of superficiality in that aspect of his ministry which is, at the same time, the most demanding and the most satisfying.
Let’s get a little more practical about this prayer that is so essential to bolstering our priestly identity.
The
divine office is a prayer particularly priestly. What a spirit of
solidarity comes from realizing that every day we are united with our
brother priests of the Church universal in this anthem of praise and
petition! On the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of Presbyterorum
Ordinis, Pope John Paul II said, “Prayer, in a certain sense, creates
the priest. At the same time every priest creates himself constantly
through prayer. I am thinking of the marvelous prayer of the breviary,
the divine office, in which the whole Church, through the lips of her
ministers, prays together with Christ …”
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