Dear Friends,
This weekend I celebrate 35 years of priesthood. It has been a rich and wonderful journey of service and love. I could have never imagined all the wonder that God would put into my life when I lay prostrate on the floor of the Cathedral 35 years ago. Thank you for letting me share ministry with you.
In March, Pope Francis wrote a letter about the priesthood to priests in Latin America, but I think it has insights for everyone. His reflection looks at the relationship between priests and laity. Let me share a portion of the letter with you:
“A father is not understood on his own without his children. He might be a very good worker, professional, husband, friend but what makes him a father has a face: it is his children. The same happens with us, we are Pastors. A Pastor is not conceived without a flock, which he is called to serve. The Pastor is Pastor of a people, and the people are served from within. Often one goes forward indicating the path, at other times behind so that no one is left behind, and not infrequently one is in the middle to hear well the people’s palpitation…
To look at the People of God is to remember that we all entered the Church as lay people. The first Sacrament, the one that seals our identity forever and of which we should always be proud is Baptism. By it and with the anointing of the Holy Spirit, (the faithful) are consecrated as spiritual house and holy priesthood. Our first and fundamental consecration sinks its roots in our Baptism. No priest or Bishop has baptized anyone. Lay people have baptized us and it is the indelible sign that no one will ever be able to eliminate. It does us good to remember that the Church is not an elite of priests, of the consecrated, of the Bishops, but we all form part of the Holy People faithful of God. To forget this brings in its train various risks and deformations both in our own personal as well as in communal living of the ministry that the Church has entrusted to us. We are, as Vatican Council II well points out, the People of God, whose identity is the dignity and the freedom of the children of God, in whose hearts dwells the Holy Spirit as in a temple. The Holy People faithful of God is anointed with the grace of the Holy Spirit; therefore, when it comes to reflecting, thinking, evaluating, discerning we must be very attentive to this unction.”
The Pope went on to address the problem of clericalism in the church:
“Clericalism not only annuls the personality of Christians, but it has a tendency to diminish and devalue the Baptismal grace that the Holy Spirit put in the heart of our people. Clericalism leads to the functionalization of the laity, treating them as “messengers,” restricts different initiatives and efforts and I even dare to say the necessary boldness to be able to take the Good News of the Gospel to all the ambits of the social and especially political endeavor. Far from stimulating the different contributions, little by little clericalism extinguishes the prophetic fire that the Church is called to witness in the heart of her peoples. Clericalism forgets that the visibility and sacramentality of the Church belongs to the whole People of God, and not just to a few chosen and enlightened…
…as Pastors, we must be committed in the midst of our people and, with our people, to sustain their faith and their hope – opening doors, working with them, dreaming with them, reflecting and especially praying with them…It is never the Pastor who tells the layman what he must do or say; they know it better than we do. It is not the Pastor that must determine what the faithful must say in the different realms. As Pastors, united to our people, it is good for us to ask how we are stimulating and promoting charity and fraternity, the desire of the good, of the truth and of justice.
We have received the faith; it is a gift that has come to us in many cases from the hands of our mothers, of our grandmothers. They have been the living memory of Jesus Christ in the heart of our homes. It was in the silence of family life where the majority of us learned to pray, to love and to live the faith. It was within family life, which afterwards took the form of parish, school, communities, that faith came to our life, becoming flesh. It was also that simple faith that has often accompanied us in the different ups and downs of the path. To lose the memory is to be uprooted from where we come and, therefore, we will not know either where we are going. This is key, when we uproot a layman from his faith, from that of his origins; when we uproot him from the Holy People faithful of God, we uproot him from his Baptismal identity and thus deprive him of the grace of the Holy Spirit. The same happens to us, when as pastors we uproot ourselves from our people, we lose ourselves.
Our role, our joy, the joy of the Pastor lies precisely in helping and stimulating, as many did before us, whether mothers, grandmothers or parents — the real protagonists of history. Not by a concession of ours of good will, but by proper right and statute. The laity is part of the Holy People faithful of God and, therefore, the protagonists of the Church and of the world, to which we are called to serve and not to make use of.”
Peace,
Fr. Damian