A year for priests - Teresa Pirola

In this ‘Year for Priests’, I am encouraged to see organisations publishing the personal testimonies of ordained men rather than simply articles extolling the gift of priesthood in theoretical terms. I confess to having harboured a niggling concern: Will this Year for Priests amount to little more than a ‘Let’s be nice to priests’ exercise—a few more pats on the back for Father, then back to ‘business as usual’? Or will we take this year as an opportunity to really listen to priestly men and be changed by what we hear?

We are accustomed to church documents emphasising that the priest acts in persona Christi, ‘in the person of Christ’. How can a priest ‘be’ Christ? Only by being himself.

The scandal of the Incarnation is that Jesus was God enfleshed within the limits of a physical gendered body, a particular personality and temperament, a family history, culture and religious upbringing. Similarly, to say that by ordination a priest is ‘configured in his being to Jesus Christ’, assumes that this occurs in and through his particular human body, personality, temperament, culture, upbringing and tapestry of life experiences.

To esteem the iconic role of priests is to celebrate not a cardboard cut-out Jesus figure but a fascinating plurality of expressions of the risen Christ in our midst, in fact as many as the number of those ordained. To affirm priestly holiness, ministerial zeal or eucharistic reverence implies the readiness to embrace these qualities as reflected in the unique human being who stands in persona Christi, that is, in the sensitivity of an artist, the professionalism of a corporate executive, the learnedness of an academic or the practical intelligence of a bricklayer. Just as ‘prayerfulness’ doesn’t exist apart from the person who prays, neither can we speak of the priest’s christic representation apart from the one who is ordained.

This is why we should avoid being doctrinaire about matters such as whether or not a priest should wear the clerical collar or an open necked shirt, be addressed in social circles as ‘Father’ or by his first name, adopt certain devotional practices, and so on. We may regulate priestly attire for liturgical action, but we must be wary of dictating how a man should dress when he walks down the street to buy a carton of milk.

Whatever rules govern priestly life (and whether they emanate from the Vatican or zealous parishioners!), they should never invade to the point that they stifle the individual’s experience of what it means to be himself  in his relationship with God and the community in which he lives and ministers.

We do not demand such uniformity from married couples. We recognise that the sacrament of marriage is articulated through diverse personalities, modes of dress, lifestyles and spiritualities. Husband and wife are a holy sacrament only because they are free to be human: so too a man who has received holy orders.

In this Year for Priests, then, let us celebrate priesthood, to be sure, but in a way that refers to real people. We might ask: Do we even notice priests as persons? Or could it be ‘any’ priest up there saying Mass? Can we appreciate those men who have personalities and gifts which are uncomfortably different to our own?

Can we affirm not just ‘priests’ but this man who is a priest, including the qualities and experiences that specifically make him this man and not another. Can we listen to his distinctive voice and hear his personal stories of happiness and hurt? Let’s hope so, because it is only through such graced depths that he can ‘be’ Christ for us.