My summary of this inspiring book on the priesthood will consist of my favourite quotes from each chapter with a brief commentary for each quote, hoping that it will inspire you for further reflection, prayer, and a desire to read the book yourself 🙂
Introduction: The Purpose of this Book
In the Introduction, Cardinal Sarah gives the image of the priest as an icon of Christ to emphasize his reason for writing this book:
“Christ Jesus gave us a very beautiful, luminous, and clear icon of His priestly being: the Sacrament of Holy Orders is this icon of Jesus, the High Priest. But our compromises with the world have added layers of mediocre-quality paint on the divine work of art. The work has lost its brilliance. It is, therefore, advisable to restore it, and to do that, we must strip away these additions so as to rediscover the original…. How is this restoration to be carried out? How can the accumulated layers of paint and varnish be stripped off? In this book, I propose to you a simple method: Let the Church speak! Let Her saints and Her Doctors speak. Let us espouse their way of looking at things so as to renew our perspectives… Their purity of soul will enable us to find again the essence of the priesthood… I will let the Church speak in Her Magisterium because, through Her, the voice of Christ comes to us” (9-10).
Chapter 1: Toward a Reform of the Clergy
In Chapter 1, Cardinal Sarah reminds us of St. Catherine of Siena’s strong words to priests and bishops, declaring to them “that the misfortunes of the Church are caused by the lukewarmness and sins of the clergy” (15). At the same time, her call for a reform of the clergy was simply a call for priests to live a life consistent with their sacramental state. To emphasize this point, Cardinal Sarah contrasts Martin Luther’s false reform versus St. Francis of Assisi’s true reform, summarized brilliantly by Georges Bernanos:
“Martin Luther’s misfortune was the claim to reform. . . . [Now,] whoever pretends to reform the Church . . . with the same means used to reform temporal society not only will fail in his undertaking but will inevitably end up finding himself outside the Church. . . . The only way to reform the Church is to suffer for her. The only way to reform the visible Church is to suffer for the invisible Church. The only way to reform the vices of the Church is to lavish on her the example of one’s own most heroic virtues. It is quite possible that Saint Francis of Assisi found the debauchery and simony of the prelates no less revolting than Luther did. Indeed, he certainly suffered more cruelly because of it, since his nature was quite different from that of the monk from Wittenberg. Yet Francis did not challenge iniquity; he was not tempted to confront it. He threw himself into poverty, immersing himself in it as deeply as possible along with his followers. For them it was the source of all absolution and all purity. Instead of attempting to snatch from the Church her ill-gotten goods, he lavished invisible treasures on her, and under this beggar’s gentle hand the heap of gold and lust began to blossom like a hedge in April. . . . The Church does not need reformers but saints” (Georges Bernanos, “Frère Martin”).
Chapter 2: A Remedy for Hypocrisy
In Chapter 2, Cardinal Sarah reminds us of St. Gregory the Great’s threefold remedy for “priestly hypocrisy”, that is, the attitude of acting in a way that contradicts his being: (1) to scorn adversity and to fear prosperity, (2) to open our hearts to compassion, (3) to go incessantly back-and-forth between prayer & action. Here is Cardinal Sarah’s commentary on St. Gregory’s first remedy,
“I would translate this: to refuse to conform our judgment to the world’s criteria. Since the priest is shielded from worldly ties and devoted completely to God, he must resolutely leave the world while remaining in the world. A great British poet of the last century, T. S. Eliot, wrote three verses that say more about this than entire books: In a world of fugitives, / the person taking the opposite direction / will appear to run away. Dear young priests, and you older members of the priesthood… Be one of those who take the opposite direction. Dare to go against the current of our decadent societies. For us Christians, the opposite direction is not a place. It is a Person: it is Jesus Christ, Our Lord, our God, and our Redeemer — the one and only Redeemer of the world. Follow Him; He is the one way that leads you to the Father and the full realization of your priesthood. This demands that you agree to carry the Cross and that you calmly come to terms with failure and the world’s scorn. This demands that you reject all worldly success and all media popularity” (42).
“For worldly people, success and media popularity are the proof of success. For the priest, trials and the Cross are the guarantee that you are on the right path: Christ’s” (43).
Nowadays when, on the social networks, we incessantly count the number of persons who follow our pages or like our posts, there is a great danger of seeking success more than the Cross” (43).
“Worldly success shuts the soul away in secular glory. The heart becomes bogged down in it. It becomes a prisoner. It loses all its prophetic courage. One fears being critiqued in the media… We know, however, that we are here not just to be loved but in order to love. We are here not to be approved but in order to proclaim the truth. We are here not to be popular but to serve. If we want approval, if we seek to be popular, we will drift until we no longer see clearly and are no longer able say what it is our duty to say. In season and out of season, we must proclaim the truth that Jesus and His gospel are, whether it pleases people or provokes rejection and brings down on us hatred, persecution, and martyrdom” (43).
On Good Friday, Jesus was very unpopular. Everyone was shouting, “This man deserves death. Crucify Him, crucify Him!” They crucified Him at the place called Golgotha. At Golgotha, He was fully a priest. Jesus, the Supreme Priest, reaches the height of His priesthood covered with spittle, humiliation, and insults; His face swollen; alone, abandoned on the Cross, and not amid the hosannas of Palm Sunday. Let us remember this when we judge our lives as priests! Let us remember, Saint Gregory insists, that Jesus “fled from the offered glory of pre-eminence, but desired the pain of an ignominious death; that so His members might learn to fly from the favours of the world, to be afraid of no terrors, to love adversity for the truth’s sake, and to shrink in fear from prosperity; because this often defiles the heart through vain glory, while suffering purges it through sorrow” (44).
Chapter 3: The Priest: Nothing and Everything
In Chapter 3, Cardinal Sarah’s meditation is based on St. John Chrysostom’s strong words about the priesthood. My two favourite parts are his simple commentaries on quotes from St. Norbert & St. John Vianney:
“The following saying is attributed to Saint Norbert: “O priest, who are you? You are not from yourself, since you are nothing. You are not for yourself, since you are the spouse of the Church. You are not your own, since you are the servant of all. You are not yourself, since you are God. Who are you, then? Nothing and everything.” These words correctly state the mystery of the priesthood” (47).
“How frightening it is to be a priest! . . . A priest is a man who takes God’s place, a man who is vested with all the power of God,” the Curé of Ars used to say. Fear is certainly something necessary for a priest. Not servile fear, being afraid of God, the fear of what others may think: this immature feeling makes someone a slave. It shows a secret pride, as if we refused to let truth reveal our true weakness. The fear necessary for a priest is filial, joyous fear — the kind that is based on calm realism about our limits and makes us tremble with amazement and gratitude at the gift that God gives. A priest must marvel every day: “Christ wants to continue His work today through me, although I am poor, unworthy, and so inadequate.” Unless we tremble in gratitude and adoration before the greatness of the gift, we run the risk of claiming our vocation as our own. Nothing could be worse. It would open the door to all sorts of abuses. But in order to remain in this salutary fear, it is advisable to consider unceasingly the greatness of the gift” (51-2).
Chapter 4: Priest, Who Are You?
Cardinal Sarah’s 4th Chapter is based on a meditation by St. John Paul II. Cardinal Sarah says that we must understand who the priest essentially is today, deep down in his being, his essence. If we do not, the priest and the faithful can expect the priest to engage in work that is not essential and evaluate his priesthood based on false measures. To get an answer, St. John Paul II states the teaching of the Church as such,
“In the Church and on behalf of the Church, priests are a sacramental representation of Jesus Christ — the head and shepherd — authoritatively proclaiming his word, repeating his acts of forgiveness and his offer of salvation — particularly in Baptism, Penance and the Eucharist, showing his loving concern to the point of a total gift of self for the flock, which they gather into unity and lead to the Father through Christ and in the Spirit. In a word, priests exist and act in order to proclaim the Gospel to the world and to build up the Church in the name and person of Christ the Head and Shepherd” (St. John Paul II, PDV 15).
Due to a priest’s ontological configurement to Christ Himself by the sacred character imprinted by the Sacrament of Ordination, a priest is a sacrament of Christ Himself and thus embodies a “sacramental presence” of Christ, present and active in his ministry (see Apostolorum successores §12).
Chapter 5: Putting an End to Clericalism
In the 5th Chapter, Cardinal Sarah denounces a worldly spirit that has infiltrated the Church, based on the false idea “that every responsibility, every state of life, is above all else a power or a right” (72). To combat this diabolical spirit, Cardinal Sarah puts forward a meditation from Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, a Jewish convert and Archbishop of Paris from 1981 to 2005, whose ministry was known to embody a great servant. Sarah states: “His conversion to Christ confirmed in him a deep sense of the unity and the dignity of the people of God. In his mission as a bishop, he had the genius and the talent to put the competencies belonging to each person, whether cleric or layman, at the service of the proclamation of the gospel. He was able to apply all the insights of Vatican Council II” (77).
What is clericalism? “Clericalism is an attitude that transforms a state of life, a ministry, or a responsibility into private property and a stepping-stone for someone with an ego complex. Pope Francis calls this self-referentiality. Whereas each state of life is a specific form of referring to the mystery of Christ and of identifying with one aspect of this mystery, clericalism appropriates the missions that they confer and makes them an instrument of power” (75).
The Church is not a place of power but of service: “Therefore, it is time to stop interpreting authority in the Church as a power or a form of oppression. It is, through and through, ministerial, because it is always a service rendered by the clerics to the entire Body. Consequently, it is accepted in a spirit of service, as Jesus taught the first twelve priests when He washed their feet. It is also accepted by priests who know their vocation and want to be instruments of the Good Shepherd and not tyrants” (76-77).
“Do we really think about this? To be a priest: what an extraordinary gift given to humanity! Do we appreciate the immense privilege and the extraordinary gift that has thus been given to us? In reality, the vocation to the priesthood is a sign of predilection on the part of Him Who, by choosing us from among so many brothers who are more intelligent, more worthy, and holier than we are, called us to share in a very special way in His friendship and in His priesthood. And so our priestly being is therefore nothing less than a new and radical way of being configured to Christ and more intimately united to Him. “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn 15:15). Our call to the priesthood, by marking the most exalted moment in the use of our free will, caused the great, irreversible choice in our lives, and therefore the happiest, noblest, most beautiful page in the story of our human experience. The complete fulfillment of our life and our happiness lie in never disappointing God by despising or negligently and thoughtlessly receiving the priceless treasure of priestly grace” (90-91).
Chapter 6: Vocation to Prayer
In his 6th chapter, Cardinal Sarah reflects upon St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s key to liberating “priests from the chains of worldly culture [through] prayer” (93),
“As Saint Bernard superbly puts it: “Since you are all things to all men, be that for yourselves too.” A priest who does not pray is living in an illusion of generosity and self-giving. The time that a priest dedicates to prayer is not time taken from others. On the contrary, by dedicating time to God, the priest makes himself even more available so as to give himself more generously. Certainly, it is sometimes difficult to find the time in the midst of so many demands. But we have to believe that, without prayer, all our agitation is in vain. It runs the risk of turning into social action rather than priestly ministry. The faithful need to see us praying at great length. They intuitively know that a priest who prays is a priest who loves them. On the contrary, a priest who stops praying inevitably falls into self-deception, loses the sense of sure, true doctrine, and doubts himself. How many times have we said about a priest who was leaving the ministry in tragic circumstances: “He had stopped praying a long time ago!” This is an urgent matter. The reform of the clergy starts with a reform of the interior life of priests. It is time to rediscover our vocation to prayer” (93-4).
“To pray, therefore, is not to recite prayers or one’s breviary hastily and, so to speak, mechanically. To pray is to prostrate oneself before God in a silence of awe and wonder, to adore Him and to tell Him that we love Him, to thank Him for all His benefits, to sing His glory and exalt His saving power on behalf of mankind. To pray is to devote time to contemplating God, looking at Him and letting Him look at me. In our priestly ministry, we run the serious risk of activism, “the heresy of works,” the worldly mentality that does not admit that a significant part of our time each day should be devoted to silent prayer and standing in God’s presence. We no longer see the usefulness of entire lives devoted exclusively to prayer and sacrifice so as to make the wellsprings of the deep life of sanctity flow abundantly in the Church. Activism in priestly life is the result of a deep-seated tendency to deny in practice the action of the Holy Spirit in the soul and in the Church. Activism weakens our whole spiritual life, makes the apostolate fruitless — even though it may be decked out in brilliant external success — and may lead to lamentable moral and spiritual catastrophes. To spare us such dangers, Saint John of the Cross exhorts us to prayer and reflection: “Let those men of zeal, who think by their preaching and exterior works to convert the world, consider that they would be much more edifying to the Church, and more pleasing to God — setting aside the good example they would give — if they would spend at least one half their time in prayer. . . . To act otherwise is to beat the air, to do little more than nothing, sometimes nothing and occasionally even mischief . . . for God may give up such persons to vanity, so that they may seem to have done something, when in reality their outward occupations bear no fruit; for it is quite certain that good works cannot be done but in the power of God” (95).
Chapter 7: Concrete Sanctity
In his 7th chapter, Cardinal Sarah speaks of the tendency to “spirtualize” Christian realities in a bad way, that is, make ideas and phantoms out of the radical demands of the Gospel, such as physical fasting and gospel poverty. To combat this, Cardinal Sarah reflects on a 2008 meditation by Pope Benedict XVI with the clergy of Bolzano-Bressanone that speaks of real “concrete sanctity” for priests in imitation of the first priests as shown in the Acts of the Apostles.
“I have no miraculous solution to propose to you. But I am sure of one thing: our witness is not credible if we are incapable of a life of concrete charity and, therefore, of a life in common. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5:22–23). The fruit of each Eucharist is this unity among us, this common life and Christian fraternity that makes us brothers and sisters, because the blood of Christ flows in our veins. The breviary is designed to be prayed and chanted in common and experienced in community. What if we dared to make that possible? I think that the people of God need to observe and experience the fact that priests are the first ones to live like the Apostles. The faithful want to see their priests pray together and live together in charity. What credibility will sacramental communion have if it is not lived out in fraternal communion?” (117-8).
“There is an urgent mission for the bishops here. It is up to them to offer priests the emotional and realistic conditions for common life. This is not just an aid for their individual personal life. Common life is part of the identity of the priesthood” (see PO 8) (118).
“Let us dare to ask ourselves concrete questions. I think that the first place in which this common life of prayer, charity, and apostolate should be experienced is the Roman Curia. Presently the holy life of many priests there is obscured by the scandals and ambitions of a few. I dare to dream: What if we in the Curia took the Acts of the Apostles seriously? Would it be impossible for the cardinals to live around the pope, to pray together, to share a sober, common table? Maybe this is the reform of the Curia that would be the most evangelical! Pope Francis lets us experience this during the days of the annual spiritual exercises, during which we share together the same Eucharist, the same meals, the same moments of listening to the Word of God in meditation and prayer, in a godly atmosphere of recollection, silence, and solitude. Could we not experience it concretely throughout the year? What a joy it would be to share concretely our happiness in being priests! Certainly, common life is not always easy. It is demanding. But it is enough to visit monastic communities to know that it is the source of a profound, infectious joy” (119).
Chapter 8: The Radical Character of the Gospel
In this chapter, Cardinal Sarah allows St. John Paul II to remind all priest that“the “evangelical counsels” that Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount are the privileged expression of the radicalism of the gospel (see Mt 5–7). Among these counsels, which are closely coordinated with one another, are obedience, chastity, and poverty. “The priest is called to live these counsels in accordance with those ways and, more specifically, those goals and that basic meaning which derive from and express his own priestly identity” (PDV 27) says Saint John Paul II” (120).
“Jesus Christ, who brought his pastoral charity to perfection on the cross with a complete exterior and interior emptying of self, is both the model and source of the virtues of obedience, chastity, and poverty which the priest is called to live out as an expression of his pastoral charity for his brothers and sisters. In accordance with St. Paul’s words to the Christians at Philippi, the priest should have “the mind which was in Christ Jesus,” emptying himself of his own “self,” so as to discover, in a charity which is obedient, chaste, and poor, the royal road of union with God and unity with his brothers and sisters (cf. Phil 2:5)” (PDV 30).
“The priest is a man set apart for the service of God and of the Church. He is a consecrated man. His whole life is set aside for God… Unless a priest experiences every day the fact that he is only an instrument in God’s hands, unless he stands constantly before God to serve Him with all his heart, then he runs the risk of being inebriated by a sense of power” (129).
“Celibacy demonstrates most obviously that the priest belongs to Christ and that he no longer belongs to himself. Celibacy is the sign of a life that has meaning only through God and for Him” (130).
“The priest’s obedience is not professional submission to a hierarchical superior. It comes within the scope of the Son’s obedience to the Father; it participates in it and prolongs it” (131).
“And what should we say about poverty? People talk about it so much and practice it so little! How painful it is to observe that, in many regions of the world, priests behave like prominent citizens, like comfortable, middle-class persons. They display the exterior signs of wealth: a lot of money, travels, yearly vacations, automobile, house, computer. Certainly, material goods can and should be useful in proclaiming the kingdom of God. But if a priest is another Christ, then he is a poor man! There is nothing to discuss… My dear brother priests, let us turn away from the world, from its filth, its luxuries, its proud pretentions, and let us constantly set our sights on Christ. Let us contemplate Him and try to imitate Him. He comes to us without splendor or grandeur or majesty, dressed like the poor man in his humility. May He be our one and only paradigm, our only path to follow” (134, 136).
Chapter 9: Finding One’s Place Again
In this chapter, Cardinal Sarah includes some passages by Georges Bernanos, a layman and twentieth-century French novelist.
“In his famous book, Diary of a Country Priest, the author states several essential truths about the priesthood. He has a somewhat bewildered, wavering young priest dialogue with an old, experienced parish priest, Father de Torcy. The latter pelts his young confrere with several hard truths: “You do not pray enough. You suffer too much for the little that you pray. . . . One must eat in proportion to one’s labors, and our prayer must be on the same scale as our troubles.” This adage reflects years of experience. The more we suffer, the more vitally necessary prayer is for us. Why? Because prayer brings us back “to our place in the Gospel.” This is our vocation: we are called to join Jesus somewhere in the gospel. There is a place where we met Him, where His glance rested on us. The priest must often return to this place through prayer. He must often put himself back there, in the sight of Christ. Is this an image? Maybe. But it is also a spiritual reality. Our personal vocation opens up for each one of us a place near Jesus” (139).
“Indeed, the prayer of a priest is supposed to continue for the Church the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane. His whole life, all his activities tend to carry out this essential priestly office of Christ. If only we could understand better each day that the priest’s prayer is the first form of the apostolate and the first goal of any priestly vocation!” (140)
Cardinal Sarah also includes a beautiful and mystical reflection on the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the life of a priest,
“Already on the day before each of our Eucharistic celebrations, we are snuggled like children in the arms of the Virgin Mary, and she herself prepares and leads us to commend ourselves, body and soul, to Jesus Christ, so that the miracle of the Eucharist may be accomplished. The Cross, the Host, and the Virgin Mary fashion, structure, feed, and strengthen our Christian and priestly life. You understand why every Christian, and more particularly the priest, must build his interior life on these three pillars: Crux, Hostia, et Virgo” (148-9).
“The Virgin’s glance is the only truly childlike glance, the only true glance of a child that has ever been directed toward our shame and our misfortune. Yes, my lad, in order to pray to her correctly, you have to feel upon you that glance which is not quite a glance of indulgence — because there is no indulgence without some bitter experience — but rather of tender compassion, of sorrowful surprise, of who knows what other inconceivable, inexpressible sentiment that makes her younger than sin, younger than the race from which she stemmed, and although she is our Mother through grace, the Mother of all grace, she is the littlest daughter of the human race” (Diary of a Country Priest, Georgres Bernanos).
“In mentioning Mary’s glance at the priest, Bernanos uses the word “compassion.” I think that we must understand it in a strong sense. Not only is Mary not indifferent to the joys and sorrows of a man who has become a priest, but, more profoundly, she suffers with him; she enters with him into that passion, just as she accompanied Christ on Calvary. Her motherhood is revealed there in its fullness. At the Cross, Saint John, the apostle and priest, receives Mary as his mother. She encourages us at every moment to live out our priesthood in its fullness. She lifts us up when we fall and tells us continually: “Go up higher; dare to go even to Golgotha. That is where souls are saved. That is where Jesus, my Son, the eternal priest ransoms the world” (152).
“In a married couple, the wife is often the one who pays attention to the details, to the humblest and hidden aspects. Women have the genius of simplicity. They see precisely the discreet, hidden, and secret things. Men tend to think that the only important thing is what is noticed at first. The Virgin Mary gives to the priest the ability not to neglect any detail of his life. She teaches him that nothing should escape his priestly tact. It seems to me that prayer to Mary, prayer with Mary, through the daily recitation of the Rosary, introduces into the life of a celibate priest a necessary motherly presence. This is not a matter of emotional or psychological compensation. But we know that manliness needs to be refined through contact with the feminine sensibility. This spiritual contact with Mary balances the soul of a priest and makes it deeper and more refined. Mary is the mother and the instructress of priestly souls. She watches daily over the interior joy of her priests” (152).
Chapter 10: Priest and Victim
In this chapter, Cardinal Sarah allows St. John Henry Newman to deliver a powerful message for priests to “live the Mass” and thereby imitate Christ as sacrificial victims in this world. The key passage of Newman is this prayer, “My Lord, I offer Thee myself in turn as a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Thou hast died for me, and I in turn make myself over to Thee. I am not my own. Thou hast bought me; I will by my own act and deed complete the purchase. My wish is to be separated from everything of this world; to cleanse myself simply from sin; to put away from me even what is innocent, if used for its own sake, and not for Thine. I put away reputation and honour, and influence, and power, for my praise and strength shall be in Thee. Enable me to carry out what I profess” (Meditations on Christian Doctrine, 108).
“This prayer of Saint John Henry Newman reveals his priestly heart. Reputation, honor, influence, and power are so many snares for the priestly soul. They are like will-o’-the-wisps, the illusory lights in antiquity that misled mariners toward reefs and caused shipwrecks. How can a priest detach himself definitively from these temptations? His vocation sets him in front of the people of God. He must often speak. Sometimes it is his responsibility to unravel tangled situations. How could reputation and influence not be attractive? How can he avoid attributing some power to himself under the guise of good intentions? Newman answers us very clearly: it is enough to put into practice what we profess. Now, what we profess is first and foremost the Mass. At the altar, Christ makes use of our words to make present and to actualize His unique sacrifice. The Cross is the sacrifice that reconciles us with God because, in it, the Victim and the Priest are one body. The One Who offers is the One Who is offered. When a priest offers the Sacrifice of the Mass, he does so in the first person: “This is my body.” He is sacramentally identified with Christ, Who offers. The priest at the altar, therefore, must offer himself, too, as a victim on the Cross” (154-5).
“There, on the Cross, at the altar, the priest is truly himself. That is where he extends his arms to let himself, too, be nailed to the wood. In short, that is where his hands will be pierced so as to retain nothing, so as to be delivered from the temptation to be grasping. Our priestly hands must not take but, rather, must offer. The good that we do is not our property. The souls we help are not ours. They pass through us to go to God, as God passes through us to go to souls. We are only instruments. During Mass, at the altar, we become aware of this again. We experience our nothingness before the greatness of God. We become lost in Him, in His sacrifice, like the drop of water in the Precious Blood in the chalice” (155).
“If we do not mount the Cross each day, we run the risk of making the altar the vain, illusory throne of our ego, of our glory. In the liturgy, when a priest chatters, comments, and incessantly adds human words to those of the Church, he demonstrates his unwillingness to be self-effacing in the presence of the Word. He wants people to look at him, a petty human person, to listen to him, to be interested in him. At the altar, the priest must wish to disappear, to be forgotten, to hide in the Church’s words and in Christ’s. He ought to tremble with fear and astonishment at the divine majesty and hide under the mantle of the Church. There, forgotten by everyone, he will let Christ appear through him. Then he will be at his place. O priest, remember that you will be yourself only when you are truly a victim” (155).
“Dear confreres in the priesthood, we disappear from the world’s sight if Jesus Christ wholly takes first place during our celebration of the Eucharist, if we immerse ourselves in prayer and if our life is “hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). Mass is the prayer par excellence, the high point of our encounter with Our Lord. However, we run the risk of it becoming for us merely a cold ritual, repeated thousands of times. No! Dear priest friends! We must pray during Mass; in other words, we must communicate with God, converse intimately with Him and not only with the people who are in front of us. We must be able to see Him with our own eyes, touch Him, contemplate His presence. Let us ask ourselves, let each one of us pose the question: When I celebrate Mass, do I pray? Do I address God? Do I really speak with God? Do I look at Him face-to-face? Do I let Him look at me?” (155-6).
“Before any apostolic commitment, every morning and in the course of the day, this poor priest that I am must enter and disappear into the mystery of the Holy Eucharist, celebrated fervently and contemplated and adored at length. This little Host, which bears the whole world, the entire universe, and all of human history, must become the center of our existence, the life of our lives. We must offer ourselves to God as a sacrifice and be transformed into this Host, allow ourselves to be transubstantiated, so to speak, and to become Christ Himself” (159).
“We must spend our whole lives as priests discovering this immense treasure of the Eucharistic Sacrifice that Jesus gave us so that we ourselves might become Eucharist and thus hide ourselves in Jesus. Only then will we be able to give ourselves, too, as Christ did, by accomplishing the Father’s will in its entirety (159)… Indeed, with the Holy Eucharist, the sacrament that we could call the sacrament of divine generosity, God grants us His grace (160).
“As John Henry Newman reminds us, we must “put away [= renounce] reputation and honour, and influence, and power.” But there is only one way that can free us from these forms of slavery and lead us to carry out fully our ministry as pastors and shepherds: it is the way of love. Love is the key to understanding Christ, resembling Him, and living in communion with His suffering and becoming conformed to Him in His death. He who performs pastoral ministry in the Church can draw his energies only from a supreme love for Christ. To feed the flock is an act of love, and the Mass is its highest expression” (163).
Chapter 11: The Priest: A Consecrated Man, a Man of the Sacred
In this chapter, Cardinal Sarah allows Pope Benedict XVI to speak again, this time from his powerful 2009 Chrism Mass homily. One of the most challenging statements is: “Our being priests is simply a new and radical way of being united to Christ. In its substance, it has been bestowed on us for ever in the sacrament. But this new seal imprinted upon our being can become for us a condemnation, if our lives do not develop by entering into the truth of the Sacrament.”
“What was he telling us?” Cardinal Sarah asks. “The priest is radically consecrated, entirely immersed in God’s intimacy. Are we really consecrated to God? Generally, we reserve this term for men and women religious. And yet Benedict XVI explained very clearly: the priest is removed from the profane sphere, from the common sphere, so as to be given to God, so as to be offered as a sacrifice to God. To be consecrated means, therefore, to be taken away from the world; it means to leave the context of worldly life so as to be given absolutely to God. It is to be set apart so as to represent the others in His presence — not because of his merits or his exceptional qualifications but by vocation, by a personal call from God” (165).
God clearly addressed these questions to us: Do you want to belong wholly to me? Do you want to be my priest? Do you want to be offered as I am offered? It is good for each of us priests to recall those moments when we met Christ’s gaze at us. “And you? Do you also want to belong to me alone?” We answered yes, and our response was like an echo of Jesus’ yes to the Father. “Consecrate them in the truth,” Jesus said. For His disciples and for each of us, Christ asks for the true sanctification that transforms our being and transforms us in our innermost depths; He asks that this may not remain merely ritual but may be a genuine appropriation of our whole person by God Himself. Above all, He wants this transformation to be achieved day after day in us, to be expressed concretely in our lives, and to make His presence visible and influential in us. So that in seeing us, people will see Christ; so that in hearing us, they will hear Christ; and so that in touching us, they will feel this sacred strength, this physical emanation that went out from Jesus and worked cures (see Mk 5:30) (166).
“The priest is consecrated; he is a man of the sacred because he belongs to God… The sacred character of the priest does not make him immune to temptation and evil. He is not preserved from them. On the contrary, every time he falls into sin, his offense is, so to speak, a “sacrilege,” and he profanes the fact that he belongs to Christ. His sin has a more serious, more scandalous, more incomprehensible character” (168).
“Be signs of God. Understand, however, that the power of the sign lies not in conformity but in distinction. The light is distinguished from the darkness so as to be able to enlighten the path of the one who walks in the night and the darkness of our world. Salt contrasts with food so as to be able to give it its flavor. Fire is opposed to ice so as to be able to warm the limbs that have been numbed by the cold. Christ calls us the “light and salt of the world.” In a scattered, confused world that has lost its bearings and is disoriented by the serious crises that we are going through at the moment — a crisis of faith, a crisis of the priesthood, anthropological and cultural crises, the desacralization of the liturgy — the power of the sign consists precisely in daring to be different. The sign must stand out all the more since apostolic activity requires great integration into the mass of humanity. We must dare to present ourselves distinctively as priests. We must dare to wear clothing that distinguishes us. We must dare to contrast with the spirit of the world. Without this, we will no longer be a sign of anything” (181).
Chapter 12: Christ, the Perfect High Priest
This chapter is based on Pope Francis’ reflection on the priesthood of Christ in the Letter to the Hebrews, which “categorically affirms, as though in a splendid homily on Christ’s Priesthood, that the only Priest is Christ. In reality, we have only one High Priest, and that is Jesus Christ. The priesthood of bishops and of priests is nothing but a sacramental participation in this unique priesthood which was accomplished in the only efficacious sacrifice: the one on the Cross” (184).
“People often expect the priest to act, to take initiatives, to organize, to be a social leader and an excellent manager. They would like him to be the head of a company. Pope Francis invites us to change our way of looking at this. He recalls that being a priest consists, in the first place, of suffering, of bearing the consequences with Christ. Being a priest boils down to identifying with Christ’s Passion and prolonging it every day. To be a priest is to say, as Saint Paul does: “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Gal 6:17).
In a world centered solely on the material aspects of life and on technological, economic, and political success, what can God do, if not suffer, especially if man commits his own heart to deliberate, stubborn egotism? In a world of ingratitude, indifference, or even manifest hostility to God, in a society that constantly insults God by deliberately violating His laws, how could the priest shirk suffering? (201).
The priest is called to be nailed on the Cross with Christ, so he is no longer the one who lives, but rather Christ lives in him. Every time he celebrates the Mass, he commemorates the Sacrifice of Jesus on Golgotha. He renews it by the power of the Holy Spirit. And at that moment, he is, so to speak, seized by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the words that he pronounces possess the same efficacy as those that came forth from the mouth of Christ during the Last Supper. And in a profound desire for total identification with Christ, he must be able to say, as Saint Bernard did: “I am nailed to the Cross with Christ, my side against his side, my hands against his hands, my feet against his feet, the same nails piercing him and me, our blood mingling in one blood.” Christ crucified is really present in each priest. I think, in particular, of priests who are sick or handicapped, confined to bed in the hospital or at home, thus filling up in their flesh what is lacking in the trials of Christ for His Body, which is the Church (cf. Col 1:24). And even if illness makes him incapable of celebrating Holy Mass, that is really the moment when he celebrates the Holy Sacrifice fully, by joyfully offering his sufferings and by mingling his trials and his agony with Christ’s. His sickbed becomes the altar of Sacrifice.
But as we just emphasized by mentioning sick priests, we do not have to reduce the presence of the Passion to the ritual renewal of it. The whole life of a priest is a presence of the Passion, presence of the priestly, offered flesh of Christ the Priest, to repeat the words of Pope Francis. All of priestly life must have a sacrificial form, Saint John Paul II said. It is important, therefore, for us to renew profoundly our way of looking at the life of priests in this light. A sick, bedridden priest is not useless and ineffective; if he experiences the Passion in his flesh, he is fully and totally a priest. On the contrary, a restless priest who seeks only human success and the admiration of the worldly public runs a high risk of being useless. This does not mean that priests must renounce zeal and missionary inventiveness; quite the contrary! It tells us, rather, that every act of a priest, each one of his initiatives, must be done with a profound union to Jesus’ Passion in his heart“ (202).
A priest must offer himself incessantly with Christ. Every time he implements a project, his heart should sing interiorly the words of Jesus: “Not what I will, but what You will.” Thus, human success and failure are not his ultimate criteria in making a judgment. He does not act as the owner of his actions but offers them, while constantly ready to be dispossessed of what he does, what he has, and what he is. As long as the People of God expect priests to be covered with human glory and social success, we have to expect abuses of authority, resounding falls, and, above all, a drift away from the priesthood of Christ and a lethal deformation of it. We should expect priests who are identified with Christ on the Cross. No one cheered Christ on the way to Golgotha; He was not applauded but, rather, was covered with spittle and insults. A priest who wins acclaim should worry; a popular priest should ask himself some fundamental questions. If preaching the Word of God does not lead us to the Passion, maybe it is because we are preaching too timidly, fearful of proclaiming Jesus Christ in full fidelity to the Word of God and to Tradition, or because we are overly concerned about pleasing and have compromised with the spirit of the world.
Therefore, just as Jesus did not teach His own doctrine but taught that of the One Who sent Him, so, too, the priest must not seek worldly success or teach his opinions to please people but must teach only the Gospel and the teaching of Jesus Christ (cf. Jn 7:16–18). Is it necessary, then, to seek failure? Certainly not. It is up to a priest to continue his formation, to study constantly, to be a theodidactos, a “pupil of God,” to deepen his personal relationship with our Lord, to ask himself challenging questions, to improve himself so as to be more effective. But he must know interiorly that grace will never be the product of a technique, that it always flows from the open heart of Jesus on the Cross.
A priest whose heart is not broken and open may well master all the techniques of preaching and management, but his work will remain fruitless. Priests must be competent in theology, preaching, and methods of pastoral care, but their competence must be irrigated and animated by a life of grace, or else it will be sterile” (203).
Chapter 13: Forming the Soul of a Priest
The 13th chapter is based on a meditation by Pope Pius XII. My favourite quotation is: “The purpose of seminaries is precisely this: to guide young seminarians so that they may become perfect, effective, and docile instruments of Christ… a conscious instrument of Christ, who, like an ingenious sculptor, makes use of him as a chisel to model the divine image in souls” (Pius XII).
“We see too many seminaries that are merely houses for immature, solitary students. On the contrary, a seminary should be a place of apprenticeship in the fullness of priestly life. Now, that life is not characterized primarily by nervous, unbridled activism. Priestly life is primarily a life of intercession with Christ the Priest. In seminaries, the main element of formation is, therefore, the interior life. We ought to see liturgies celebrated carefully there. Daily Mass and the recitation of the Divine Office in common are structural elements in the formation of a priestly soul. The identity of a minister of Christ is forged at the foot of the altar and in the daily repetition of the psalms. By joining each day in the sacramental renewal of the sacrifice of the Cross on the altar, little by little the soul espouses the sentiments of Christ’s priestly heart” (206).
“Two main elements are conducive to acquiring this equilibrium of moral virtues. First, communal and fraternal life. In it, everyone learns to do his part in working for the common good. In it, one learns justice and mercy among brothers. In it, one practices forgiving offenses and truth in friendly relations. This moral manliness, this simplicity in virtue should enable seminarians to break with the image of the oversensitive, lazy, and emotionally immature cleric. A priest must be a balanced man. In order to be a priest with one’s whole soul, one must first be capable of being a just, generous, balanced, and virile man. Many problems of emotional excesses and abuse would have been avoided if seminaries formed men in real emotional maturity, as experienced in friendship and fraternal sincerity. A major contribution to this is work done in common, including manual labor” (206).
“One sign of this maturity is the ability to obey sincerely and simply. Therefore, in the seminary, it must be possible to experience obedience to the bishop concretely. This presupposes that the bishop truly behaves as the father of the seminarians and of his priests. He ought to be able to live with them, pray with them, listen to them, and counsel them. What a joy to see a bishop surrounded by his seminarians like a father with his children! This is the way to develop the trust between the bishop and his priests that should last their whole lives. How many priests are too lonely! How many priests go through deep spiritual crises without the fatherly presence of their bishop! Episcopal fatherhood can no longer be an empty word reserved for liturgical texts. It must become a reality” (207).
Chapter 14: Son of the Church
Cardinal Sarah bases this chapter on St. Augustine’s insights into the priesthood. The Catholic Church is a Mother that produces sons of God. My favourite quotation is from Cardinal Ratzinger,
“[T]rue “reform” does not mean to take great pains to erect new façades (contrary to what certain ecclesiologies think). Real “reform” is to strive to let what is ours disappear as much as possible so [that] what belongs to Christ may become more visible. It is a truth well known to the saints. Saints, in fact, reformed the Church in depth, not by working up plans for new structures, but by reforming themselves. What the Church needs in order to respond to the needs of man in every age is holiness, not management” (The Ratzinger Report, 53).
Conclusion: The Joy of Being a Priest
“In these meditations, I wanted to give the podium to the saints, to the popes — in a word, to the Church. Allow me to add in conclusion a more personal note. I would like to confide something to you. Every day, every morning and every evening, I am amazed by the grace that God gave me in calling me to be a priest. Every day, I am surprised: How could Jesus Christ bend down and regard my misery? Why did He choose as His priest, me, the little child from Ourous? Why did He come looking for me in my tiny village in Guinea? Why me, an ignorant, unworthy creature? Every day I appreciate the gratuitous, undeserved gift that He bestowed on me. This daily awareness is an ongoing source of peace and joy. Yes, every day I can celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, every day I ascend Calvary with Christ. Every day I die with Him on the Cross. Every day I pray with Him, I intercede for the whole world by chanting the hours of the breviary. The Liturgy of the Hours is an extraordinary treasure, because it makes us stand constantly, with the whole Church, in the presence of God to praise Him and serve Him. Daily prayer and adoration before the Most Blessed Sacrament are the heart of the priest’s life and his principal activity. Is this a weight too heavy for us poor human beings? Of course. But when Jesus loads His Cross on our shoulders, He carries it with us” (225).
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