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Jesus is the Good Shepherd, but not ordinarily good. “Why do you
call me good?” he asked. He is good with the goodness of God. So must
be his priests: “Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Jesus designates the people to be shepherded as “the flock”, a word
that is not as quaint as it is unflattering, if not downright
denigrating. A flock or a herd is driven and therefore unfree, a
quality that unhappily characterized essential condition of humankind
today. So the outstanding quality of the Shepherd, the priest, must be
freedom. If he is not free, the blind leads the blind, driven man
drives the driven herd. The priest must be so disciplined, detached and
holistically developed that like the Mediator himself, he is free, or a
least is becoming free, of everything except love. To this Love he is
absolutely committed and recklessly abandoned.
Christ
Shifted the axis of the whole world from buildings, cities, and even
the home as the center that held people together and replaced that
center with himself.
That is why the priest must
always be a passionate man. Passion literally means to be abandoned.
That is the central, final human stance; positive, creative abandonment
to God. Human glory will not be achieved by answering topical questions
such as “What does modern man need?” What needs to be answered first is
the dominical question: “What does God require of you?” And this can
only be answered existentially by passionate surrender. By his
annealing passion, the priest becomes a Christ-man.
Based on the
requirements of God conveyed to us through Scripture and tradition and
the needs of contemporary society, requirements obvious to anyone awake
enough to perceive them, there are seven qualities or virtues that
ought to be unmistakable marks of good priest who has won his freedom
and who ( unless he sleeps a few hours a night) is always engaged in
contemplative action.
(
In a balanced society I would have underscored both words,
contemplative and action, but since our society is convulsed by
feverish and uninspired activities, I need to emphasize the one
ingredient that validates and enriches action and makes its results
enduringly effective, and that is contemplation.) Through no
alliterative contrivance on my part, these seven hard-won virtues all
begin with the same letter – “s”. How felicitous. It will help you
remember and thus remind you or your soul-friend, your spiritual
director or pastor of the seven marks of a holy priest.
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