By the time you read this, Bishop Kemme will have ordained two new transitional deacons and six new priests for our diocese. This is a great gift for us! Ordination week always prompts me to reflect on the priesthood, what it is, and how I’m living it.
Before seminary, I often thought of priests mostly as vending machines for sacraments. The priest is there for saying Mass, hearing confessions, baptisms, and to make sure the parish keeps running. That perception isn’t very flattering, and I wouldn’t have said that, but that’s how I saw them.
As I prepared to enter seminary, I began learning that the Church understands priests very differently. Being a priest is more about who you are than what you do, even if who he is can be seen most easily through what he does. When a priest is ordained, he begins to share in the priesthood of Christ in a new way. While all the baptized offer themselves to God through their daily lives, the priest is uniquely empowered to call down Christ and bear him to God’s people.
We see this character in action most obviously at Mass and in confession. At these moments, God acts both through and with the priest. If you listen to the words of consecration, the priest does not say “this is Christ’s Body” and “this is Christ’s Blood.” He says “this is my Body” and “this is my Blood.” Similarly in confession, the priest says “I absolve you” not “Christ absolves you.”
During the ordination rite, every priest is told to “imitate what you celebrate, and conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s Cross.” This is, perhaps, at the core of what it means to be a priest. We celebrate the sacraments where God gives his love and his mercy to his people abundantly and without hesitation. We are to imitate this generosity of spirit, but even more importantly, we are to conform our lives to the mystery of the Cross. We are called to imitate Christ by surrendering everything to God for the good of his people. I personally find the first half of this exhortation, to imitate what I celebrate, much easier than the second, to conform my life to the Cross.
Brothers and sisters, let us celebrate our newly ordained! Let us also pray for priests, so that they may more fully unite themselves to the mystery of Christ on the Cross.
May Christ always reign in your hearts and bring you peace!
Fr. Matt