priest

Thoughts on the Influence of Old Prejudice

Deacon Douglas McManaman

One day I was driving a fair distance to a York Regional Forest Trail to walk my dog and realized I’d forgotten my phone, so my only other option besides silence was to listen to AM talk radio. I tuned into a talk show about Vache Canadienne (Canadienne Cattle), and their guest was a French scientist from the University of Montreal, where I had studied theology. She spoke of a number of her French colleagues and all that they are involved in regarding the latest research on the Vache Canadienne, and of course she spoke with a strong Quebecoise accent. 

I was raised on the West Island of Montreal and studied Theology at the University of Montreal, an all French university. I love Montreal and Quebecoise culture, not to mention the accent. But as a young boy raised on the Anglophone West Island, I was exposed to a rather pervasive anti-Quebecoise prejudice, and as an ignorant and impressionable  young boy I acquired a good dose of it myself: I saw the French as dumb and somewhat backward. By the time I was an adult, married for only a few years, I like to think I was completely over this, but my priest-friend from Washington D.C., on a few occasions, expressed a certain dismay at my rather cynical remarks about the French. So it took a bit more time for me to fully appreciate the irrationality of the prejudice that took root in my childhood. I like to think I have arrived, and I do believe so. However, during this radio talk show on the Vache Canadienne, I became aware of a layer buried deep within me, like an early layer of soil underneath multiple layers formed centuries later; this was an old layer of prejudice that, when allowed to speak without the censorship of a conscious and enlightened mind, quietly suggested that these people are not really scientists in the true sense of the word, but “pretend” scientists, at best secondary scientists, trying to emulate the English ones. Now, this is a completely irrational thought which has no place in my conscious assemblage of convictions, but I was intrigued to sit back in silence and watch it spontaneously rear its ugly head. I was amazed at how enduring are the childhood prejudices picked up from the adults in one’s young life. 

Perhaps that is why many people believe we are a rather long way away from the ordination of women to the diaconate–and centuries from ordination to the priesthood. In other words, perhaps it has everything to do with ancient prejudice and that the “Roman system” is fundamentally misogynistic. Many women feel they are viewed and treated as second class–after all, they are not permitted to read the gospel at Mass, they cannot preach a homily–but can in certain circumstances give a reflection, which must however be preceded by a short homily by the priest followed by an explanation that what follows is only a reflection. Women do ministry work, but they cannot receive the sacramental graces in order to carry out that ministry as effectively as they would had they received those graces through ordination–otherwise, what does ordination and sacramental grace really mean in the end? And we typically don’t see women on the sanctuary, and all this because those in question are female. 

The best arguments put forth to preserve the status quo can indeed sound more like theological rationalizations than sound theology rooted in Scripture. For example, the Marian vs. Petrine Principles employed to keep women from Holy Orders appear to some as a theological instance of the fallacy of begging the question (the Petrine principle represents the male hierarchical/governmental aspect while the Marian principle represents the Church’s spousal, maternal, and receptive nature). Mary, who is a person, somehow became a principle; so too Peter, a person, but somehow he becomes a principle employed to necessitate a certain conclusion. Is this principle anything other than a “construct”? One woman asked some interesting questions regarding the use of this principle to keep women out of Holy Orders: “If the concept of the Petrine is used to close off authority and governance to women, what does the Marian close off to men? …Is vonBalthasar and, through its use of his theology, the hierarchy, saying that men are excluded from love and receptivity? That they may not be receptive? Is that why the Church (being male/Petrine governed) is struggling with Synodality which seems to require receptivity?”  

This is a very interesting series of questions. I am inclined to wonder that if the Marian principle has a bearing on me (a male) –not to mention every other member of the Church, cleric or otherwise–, could not the Petrine principle have a bearing on women? 

Another puzzling anomaly is that a baby is baptized and anointed with sacred chrism, anointed priest, prophet and king, and gender is entirely irrelevant–we don’t just anoint male babies priest, prophet and king, but female babies as well. A baptized woman exercises a real priesthood (the royal priesthood of the faithful), and gender is clearly not a factor. Certainly Christ is the bridegroom, and the Church is bride and mother, and yet, in the evening prayer for Thursday within the octave of Easter, the Church prays: “Almighty God, ever-living mystery of unity and Trinity, you gave life to the new Israel by birth from water and the Spirit, and made it a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a people set apart as your eternal possession. May all those you have called to walk in the splendor of the new light render you fitting service and adoration.” The entire Church is a “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pt 2, 9). 

Hence, the Church as a whole is a priestly people and at the same time bride and mother (female); for it is the entire congregation that offers gifts to be consecrated. The entire congregation is not simply a group of passive observers, but active agents, priests offering their gifts, their labors, their sufferings and toil, their bread and wine, placed at the foot of the altar; the ministerial priest offers it on behalf of the entire congregation, of which he too is a part. Christ receives those gifts and changes them into himself, and returns them to us as our food. The priest can be seen both as our own representative (representing the bride of Christ) and as Christ’s representative (representing the bridegroom). However, the priest may also represent Christ the mother who feeds us–providing food and drink is, in Scripture, woman’s work, and Yahweh takes on that role. As women fetch water for their families, i.e., Gn 21, 19; 24, 11; Ex 2, 16ff, etc., so too the Lord supplies water in the desert for the people, and Jesus offers us the living water (Jn 7, 37-39). Mothers feed their household, as we read in Proverbs 31, 14-15, or Genesis 18, 6; 27, 9; or 2 Sam 13, 7-10, so, Yahweh prepares manna and quail for the children of Israel,[1] and of course Jesus is the Bread of Life who feeds us.

Jesus is the new Moses (see Mt 5, 1ff), and yet Moses addresses a series of questions to the Lord: “Did I conceive all this people? Did I bring them forth, that you should say to me, “Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries the sucking child, to the land which you swore to give their fathers”? (Num 11, 12). The implications here are interesting. Yahweh was certainly a mother and nurse of the wandering children in the desert. Or consider Nehemiah 9, 21: “Forty years you sustained them in the desert, and they lacked nothing; their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell”. The Lord takes on the role of dressmaker, as we see also in Gn 3, 21. As a woman clothes her family (Proverbs 31, 21ff), so too the Lord clothes us.[2] Or consider Isaiah: “Now I will cry out like a woman in labor, I will gasp and pant”, or: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you” (Is 49, 15). Or, “Shall I bring a mother to the point of birth, and yet not let her child be born? says the Lord. Or shall I who bring to birth yet close her womb? says your God” (Is, 66, 9). Or, “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you. (Is, 66, 13). Christ came for the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Mt 15, 24), and in Luke he is compared to a woman searching for her lost coin: “What woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it? And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost’” (Lk 15, 8-9). But for some historical reason, the ministerial priesthood, which is a sign of Christ, is reserved for males. 

Scripture scholar Phyllis Trible writes: 

Although the Old Testament often pictures Yahweh as a man, it also uses gynomorphic language for the Deity. At the same time, Israel repudiated the idea of sexuality in God. Unlike fertility gods, Yahweh is neither male nor female; neither he nor she. Consequently, modern assertions that God is masculine, even when they are qualified, are misleading and detrimental, if not altogether inaccurate. Cultural and grammatical limitations (the use of masculine pronouns for God) need not limit theological understanding. As Creator and Lord, Yahweh embraces and transcends both sexes. To translate for our immediate concern: the nature of the God of Israel defies sexism. [3] 

And so I am compelled to wonder: Could it be that those in the Church who are not misogynists have made a special effort to rise above an ancient layer of prejudice that centuries of misogyny have established? And are they few and far between? 

Concluding Thoughts

I’d certainly be a hypocrite if I were to suddenly encourage others to sow seeds of dissent among the faithful in the congregation or in the classroom, for I continue to point out to my students that teachers who sow seeds of dissent among their students are engaging in a kind of false advertising–insofar as the school advertises itself as Catholic on the one hand, and on the other hand undermines a basic trust in the teaching office of the Church. Furthermore, one reason I began reading Where Peter Is is that I became very tired of writers of Catholic journals bellyaching about Pope Francis and the cognitive dissonance he caused in others who were far too doctrinaire in their approach to Catholicism as it is, as though the Church were not a living organism that continually develops her self-understanding in light of new information, insights, and the lived experiences of the faithful. As we read in Dei Verbum, 8: “This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts through a penetrating understanding of the spiritual realities which they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through Episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her”. 

We do owe a “loyal submission of will and intellect”, even when it comes to common teaching. But common doctrine is not irreversible, unlike statements of faith,[4] and some great theologians have argued rather persuasively that this issue is not at all closed to discussion and debate.[5] Most importantly, students, the vast majority in fact, are less and less persuaded by the standard arguments that exclude women from Holy Orders, and our task as teachers is to welcome their doubts, questions and opposing arguments, to listen to them carefully, and acknowledge their brilliance when they are indeed brilliant–not to mention put forth by women who are clearly smarter than we are, such as Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, and others.[6] Perhaps the theological situation we are in with respect to the issue of the ordination of women is comparable to the basic theological argument found in Humanae Vitae, which was not strong enough to convince the average couple about to be married in the Church that closing the marital act to new life is to be avoided–thank goodness for thinkers like Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and William May, who put forth a far more convincing and persuasive analysis of why doing so is morally problematic.[7] In other words, perhaps a much better series of arguments explaining the reasonableness for the non-ordination of women is just around the corner. Or, perhaps not. Perhaps this is nothing more than a case of rationalizing the tolerance of a practice that is in the end indefensible, as was the Church’s centuries long tolerance of slavery and the death penalty. Regardless, a synodal Church is a listening Church, and listening to challenging objections from our students makes teaching all the more exciting–except for those brought up on an old and outdated pedagogical model that refuses to encourage critical insight, opposition, and push back.

Notes

1. Phyllis Trible. “Depatriarchalizing in Biblical Interpretation”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Mar., 1973, Vol. 41, No. 1, Mar., 1973, pp. 31-35. 

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid., p. 34

4. See “The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised”. International Theological Commission. Section 34. 2007. <https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070419_un-baptised-infants_en.html#*&gt;

5. Richard Gaillardetz writes: “It is my contention that appeals to the infallibility of the ordinary universal magisterium are ill-suited for resolving controversial matters related to the Christian faith precisely because of the inevitable ambiguities involved in verifying the fulfillment of the conditions for the exercise of the ordinary universal magisterium as outlined in Lumen gentium # 25.2. Given these ambiguities, it should not be surprising that even after the publication of the CDF Responsum questions linger regarding both the assertion that this teaching belongs to the deposit of faith (particularly in the light of the study of the Pontifical Biblical Commission) and the assertion that it has been infallibly taught as such in the unanimous teaching of the college of bishops. Given the gravity of the matter (the determination that this teaching is a dogma of faith) theologians would appear to be within their bounds to look for a clear substantiation of these assertions. It may be appropriate at this point to recall the canonical principle cited at the beginning of this article: “no doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless it is clearly established as such.” I infer from this canon that the burden lies with the ecclesiastical magisterium, not only to assert that the church’s teaching on the exclusion of women from the priesthood has been taught infallibly by the ordinary universal magisterium but to “clearly establish” that fact. The questions which I have raised in this article suggest that the claims of the CDF, at this date, have not been “clearly established.” Richard R. Gaillardetz, “Infallibility and the Ordination of Women”. Louvain Studies 21 (1996): 3-24.

6. See Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse. “Patriarchy and the Ordination of Women”. Towards a New Theology of Ordination: Essays on the Ordination of Women, ed. by Marianne H. Micks and Charles P. Price, Virginia Theological Seminary, Greeno, Hadden &Company Ltd. Somerville, Mass., 1976, pp.71-89. <https://womenpriests.org/articles-books/barnhou2-patriarchy-and-the-ordination-of-women/>. See also Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, “Is Patriarchy Obsolete?” in Male and Female: Christian Approaches to Sexuality, New York: Seabury Press, pp. 223-235, and her article entitled, “On the Difference Between Men and Women”, Ibid., pp. 3-13. 

7. See Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, William E. May. “Every Marital Act Ought to be Open to New Life”: Toward a Clearer Understanding. The Thomist: The Catholic University of America Press. Volume 52, Number 3, July 1988, pp. 365-426.

Miscellaneous Thoughts on Receiving Communion

Deacon Douglas McManaman

In the last little while, visiting a number of parishes, I have noticed that some parishioners–not many to be sure–will deliberately cross over onto another communion line in order to receive communion from the priest, as opposed to the extraordinary minister, a layman or laywoman. I inquired about this from one such person, and the reasoning, I found, had almost no coherence whatsoever. It seems to me that the very idea that one ought to receive communion from a priest and not a lay person is nothing more than liturgical snobbery. The entire Church received “holy communion” from a lay woman, namely Mary, Jesus’ own mother. That should settle the matter. But of course it doesn’t. 

Consider the optics if we were to employ Kant’s principle of universalizability to this issue. A parish priest requests help to distribute holy communion from some of the faithful, who then become extraordinary ministers of communion. The rest of the congregation, however, adopts the attitude that communion should only be received from a priest, not a laywoman or layman. The extraordinary ministers would be standing there the whole time, waiting and watching everyone line up and receive from the priest. It is safe to say that this would certainly frustrate the pastor who would like to finish the Mass at a reasonable time. 

But more to the point, is communion somehow different when it is received from the hands of a laywoman or layman? Is it less than Christ? Or, does a person receive something more, for example, a greater dignity perhaps, when he or she receives communion from a priest? If so, how does that work precisely? 

Perhaps it is about reverence, as the person I questioned insisted it is. And so, is it the case that if I wish to show greater reverence to Christ, I should receive communion from the hand of a priest as opposed to the hand of a laywoman or layman? Again, if so, how does that work? To show reverence to Christ pleases him; to show greater reverence to Christ pleases him more. And so I approach the communion minister, I bow or make some reverential gesture, receive the host and then move on, but if I were to receive from the hand of an ordained priest, somehow Christ is more pleased with me, because I’ve shown him greater reverence? I have not yet been able to figure this out, even with the help of one who insists on receiving communion only from a priest.

Moreover, “communion” means just that: “union”, not only with Christ, but with the entire worshipping community. Of course, there is diversity within that community and that should not be suppressed (diverse talents, experiences, angles on life, spiritualities, etc.), but liturgically some people insist on doing their own thing, and the result is that some are kneeling, most are standing, some receive on the tongue, and some–thankfully most–receive on the hand, some only from the priest, and some–thankfully most–from either a priest or layman/woman, whoever is available at the moment. Is it the case that some people have a need to separate themselves from the “commoners”? Whatever way we slice it, I can’t help but suspect that this is another instance of Phariseeism (from Aramaic perishayya, “separated ones”).

Christ ate with sinners and tax collectors, shared meals with them, thereby entering into a profound communion with them–given the Jewish understanding of what it means to share a meal–, thereby becoming ritually unclean in the eyes of the religious leaders, which is why they despised him. Jesus was not concerned about ritual purity, as we see from the parable of the Good Samaritan, and he despised the elitist and condescending arrogance of the Pharisees, referring to them as whitewashed tombs full of the bones of the dead and every kind of filth. His attitude appears to me to be the complete opposite of the semi-elitist attitude that insists on receiving communion from an ordained priest only, as though it were “below me” to receive from an ordinary layperson, as it was below the religious leaders to share a meal with those ignorant of the Torah. 

But I’ve been assured that this is not the sentiment. But then I am asked: Are not the priests’ hands anointed at his  Ordination? They are, but so are the hands of those who receive the anointing of the sick, and so too the heads of babies who are baptized. Confirmandi are anointed on the forehead at Confirmation. Anointing represents Christ (Gk: Christos, anointed one), and oil symbolizes strength, wealth and royalty. All of us have been anointed (in Baptism and Confirmation), and all of us share in the Royal Priesthood of the Faithful. The congregation is a congregation of priests, because Israel and the New Israel (the Church) is a “priestly people” (Exodus 19, 6). The laos (people) have been “set apart”. As our first Pope said:  “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (2 Peter 2, 9). That a baby’s head has been anointed with sacred chrism, endowing that child with a new identity, namely that of priest, prophet and king, does not in any way necessitate different behaviour on the part of others towards the baby. Some will zero in on that aspect of the ordination ceremony in which a priest’s hands are anointed and deduce that this somehow suggests that we should behave differently towards him–i.e., choose his communion line–and that doing so is “more reverent towards our Lord”. Somehow his hands add something to the significance of my receiving communion, but what exactly that is, I have no idea at this point.

I cannot help but think that this is another symptom of the disease of clericalism that Francis so often spoke out against. He explicitly warned the laity not to put priests on pedestals, and yet how this decision to receive only from the hand of a priest is not an instance of just such a practice is beyond me.  

Perhaps this practice of receiving communion only from an ordained priest is a subtle but real repudiation of the layperson’s sharing in the royal priesthood of the faithful. After all, the procession begins when the faithful leave their homes to go to the Church to celebrate Mass. The formal procession at the start of the Mass is merely a continuation of the procession that the people began when leaving their houses. The offertory is precisely the offering of this priestly people, an offering of their sufferings, their labor, their treasure, etc., and it takes the form of bread and wine (the parish purchases the bread and wine out of the treasury that comes from the people). The ministerial priest offers the bread and wine on behalf of this priestly people, the congregation. Christ receives that offering and changes it into himself, returning it to us, saying: “take and eat”. The priest is merely an instrument, an unworthy instrument as Pope Benedict XVI would often remind us. It is Christ who consecrates, it is Christ who is the single priest and victim. The ministerial priest is acting in persona Christi, which means that it is really Christ who is the agent who changes the offering (bread and wine) into himself–just as it is Christ, not the priest or deacon, who gives life in baptism and infuses the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity into the soul of the baptized, among other things. 

The function of a ministerial priest is different from the function of those who belong to the common priesthood of the faithful, but it is a function that is entirely at the service of the priestly people that is the congregation. One can certainly say that the priest is “set apart” for a specific work, and that is true, but he is set apart to serve the entire people who have been set apart from the world, who have become a holy nation, a kingdom of priests. The significance of his vocation cannot be understood apart from this community. In other words, his priestly function cannot be understood except within the larger context of the priestly nature of the community. I’m reminded of Pius X, when people were kissing his papal ring, his mother said to him: “Keep in mind that you wouldn’t be wearing that ring if it were not for this ring here” (pointing to her wedding ring). The ministerial priest is “set apart” to act on behalf of the priestly congregation, which is “a people set apart”. 

Peter himself gives us a clue to the resolution of this issue: “As Peter was about to enter, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet to worship him. But Peter helped him up. “Stand up,” he said, “I am only a man myself” (Acts 10, 26).

Some people look upon the clergy not as lowly common servants (feet washers), but as members of the British Royal Family, as it were, and within such a mindset, one will only hear the gospel within the framework of an old monarchical ecclesiology, which keeps a person from understanding the gospel’s radical nature.  

I’ve tried to understand this issue from various angles, but the reasoning continues to make as much sense to me as a person who believes, deep within his heart, that eating potato chips is an offence to koala bears, so instead he chooses to eat corn chips. 

Our Priestly, Prophetic, and Royal Identity

Reflection on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_432feastholycrosshomily.html

Deacon Douglas McManaman

After 400 years of slavery, the Hebrew people were finally delivered, and what a miraculous delivery it was, which Jews to this day remember at Passover. And yet, many of them became impatient on their way to the land of Canaan. They “spoke against God and against Moses”, and they detested the miserable food they were given to eat (Num 21, 4-9). 

Now I’ve never spent any time in the desert, and I have never felt hunger pangs or desert induced thirst, so I’m not going to pronounce judgment on these people, but it is rather clear that they have lost a sense of the importance of their own history, for they began to long for a return to life under Egyptian slavery, because they had better food: melons and other fruits, fish and meat, and as much bread as they could eat. It was this that they valued more than their very own identity as the covenant people of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They were willing to surrender that identity and remain in slavery, if it meant better quality food.

The God of the Old Testament took the initiative and revealed himself to Abraham and made a covenant with him, promising to make him the father of a great nation. Count the stars; that’s how numerous your descendents will be (Gn 15, 5). And this did not happen on account of anything Abraham did. It was an act of pure generosity. Furthermore, this gift was not merely for Abraham and his descendants, but was ordered to the whole of humanity: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; …All the families of the earth will find blessing in you” (Gn 12, 3). And God revealed to Abraham in a dream that his descendents will be slaves in a foreign land: “Know for certain that your descendants will reside as aliens in a land not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation they must serve, and after this they will go out with great wealth” (Gn 15, 13).

These people under Moses are the very fulfillment of that promise; for they were on their way to the land promised to Abraham and his descendants, and it is from this land that blessing will go forth to all of humanity, ultimately through Jesus, whose covenant will extend to the whole of humanity. The dignity of that Jewish identity has immeasurable value, but many of them, in the circumstances of the desert, forgot about it or became indifferent to it when they began to compare the quality of food they enjoyed in Egypt with the food they have now. 

We too have an identity, and it is linked to the identity of the Hebrew people who have been set free. We are the people who share in the blessing that was promised to Abraham, that all nations will be blessed through him. The saviour of humanity was born of a Jewish woman, and Christ came into this world in view of Good Friday, in order to enter into our death so as to destroy it, to inject it with his divine life so that death would no longer have the final word over your life and my life. Just as the blood of the Passover lamb delivered the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery, so too the blood of the lamb of God delivers us from the slavery of sin and death. We are sons and daughters of Abraham in the Person of Christ, and when we were baptized, we were anointed with sacred chrism and given a share in the three-fold identity of Christ, namely that of “priest, prophet, and king”; for Christ is the eschatological priest who offered himself on the altar of the cross for the deliverance of humanity; he is the prophet that Moses spoke of in Deuteronomy, 18: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kindred, and will put my words into the mouth of the prophet and he shall tell them all that I command” (v. 18); and of course, Christ is the king of kings, a king who does not compel, but who defeats the one enemy that man could not defeat, namely death, by allowing himself to be swallowed up by death. 

So although you are not clergy, you are indeed priests. You exercise a genuine priesthood as a result of that baptismal anointing. Everything you do in life, such as ordinary parenting, or driving a truck, teaching children, nursing the sick, mopping floors, prosecuting the guilty or defending your clients, medical research, etc., is now made holy, for our life and labor is an offering lived out in the Person of Christ, for the bringing forth of God’s kingdom and the christification of the cosmos. The ministerial priesthood is ordered to serve this larger royal priesthood of the faithful, to help the faithful to become aware of that priestly identity, to maintain it, and not obscure it, as was done in the past. 

And you are prophets, for your new life is a genuine sharing in Christ’s prophetic office. That is precisely why Pope Francis taught that the Church is fundamentally Synodal, that is, a listening Church; for the Church is fundamentally a communio fidelium (a communion of the faithful), and the faithful have a genuine sensus fidelium (a sense of the faith) that arises from this communion, and according to Francis, the communio hierarchica (the hierarchical communion) must carefully listen to the unique and intuitive insights of the faithful, because as sharers in Christ’s prophetic office, the Lord speaks to the Church today through them. Francis writes: “Let us trust in our People, in their memory and in their ‘sense of smell,’ let us trust that the Holy Spirit acts in and with our People and that this Spirit is not merely the ‘property’ of the ecclesial hierarchy.”[1] Two years earlier he wrote: “To find what the Lord asks of his Church today, we must lend an ear to the debates of our time and perceive the “fragrance” of the men of this age, so as to be permeated with their joys and hopes, with their griefs and anxieties. At that moment we will know how to propose the good news on the family with credibility.”[2]

And your new life is a share in Christ’s kingship. Whatever authority you have been given in this life, that is, in the family, or at school, at work, in government, etc., it is not to be exercised with a sense of self-importance, as a “lording over” others. All authority must become a genuine service and thus involve a kenotic lowering of self (Mt 20, 25-26; Phil 2, 1-8); for only in this way will the exercise of authority not spawn resistance and rebellion.

Priest, prophet, and king is our identity, and it is easy to forget that identity by becoming so caught up in the pleasures of this world that we begin to believe that this life is fundamentally about enjoyment and the pleasures of the present moment. The kingdom of God, says St. Paul, is not a matter of eating and drinking; rather, it is a matter of justice, harmony within humanity, and the joy of the Holy Spirit (Romans 14, 17), and our new life in Christ is to be directed to that universal brotherhood, which can only be established through the relentless pursuit of justice. 

The bronze serpent in the desert is a foreshadowing of Christ, the crucified and risen one. It is when we look upon him, our priest, prophet, and king that our lives are made whole. Of course, to “look upon” does not mean “a glance”. Rather, it means that this cross is the focal point of our existence, for the cross alone brings healing and power to our lives. And this is the paradox of Good Friday: our king is so powerful that he defeats his enemy by allowing himself to be defeated, and our source of strength and healing is precisely the weakness of God and the death of God. 

Notes

1. “Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis to cardinal Marc Ouellet President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America”, 19 March 2016, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2016/documents/papa-francesco_20160319_pont-comm-america-latina.html. See also Ormond Rush. “Inverting the Pyramid: The Sensus Fidelium in a Synodal Church”. Theological Studies. 2017, Vol. 78(2) 299­ –325. 

2. Pope Francis, “Address of His Holiness Pope Francis during the Meeting on the Family” (Vatican City, October 4, 2014), http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2014/october/documents/papa-francesco_20141004_incontro-per-la-famiglia.html. The call to listen has been very difficult for a good number of clerics who were raised within a certain theological paradigm in which clergy see themselves as an elite class with “all the answers”, while the laity are little more than passive receptacles of clerical wisdom from on high. In 1906, Pope Pius X wrote: “The Church is essentially an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of persons, the Pastors and the flock, those who occupy a rank in the different degrees of the hierarchy and the multitude of the faithful. So distinct are these categories that with the pastoral body only rests the necessary right and authority for promoting the end of the society and directing all its members towards that end; the one duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led, and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors.” Pope Pius X, Vehementer Nos (February 11, 1906), 8, http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_11021906_vehementer-nos.html.