The Eternal Priesthood/Chapter 19

by Henry Edward Manning

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CHAPTER XIX.

 

THE PRIEST'S LIFE.

 

The Fourth Provincial Council has also traced out in its twelfth decree what a priest's life ought to be in the following words:

1. "'They who are not holy ought not to lay hands on holy things.'^[1] All the faithful of Christ, as the Apostle testifies, are called to be Saints.^[2] But priests ought to ascend to the perfection of sanctity. 'For he who, by the necessity of his position, is compelled to teach the highest things, by the same necessity is bound to show them forth in himself.'^[3] The warning is altogether fearful: 'No man ought rashly to offer himself to others as a guide in the divine light who, in all his state and habit, is not most like to God.'^[4] 'For they who are appointed to divine ministries attain to a royal dignity, and ought to be perfect in virtue.'^[5] For so we are taught by the Catholic Church in its solemn ritual, and in the very act of conferring the priesthood. As God commanded Moses 'to choose out seventy men from the whole people to be his helpers, to whom the Holy Ghost should distribute His gifts,' so the Lord Jesus chose out presbyters of the second order to help the Apostles—that is, the Catholic Bishops—that He might teach His Church, both by word and deed, that the ministers of His Church ought to be perfect in faith and in works—that is, founded in the virtue of the twofold love of God and our neighbour.'^[6] For priests are chosen by God, that, being commended by heavenly wisdom, pure morals, and a lasting observance of justice, and 'keeping the ten commandments of the law they may be, by the Sevenfold Spirit, upright and mature in knowledge and in action; and that, preserving in their morals the integrity of a chaste and holy life, the pattern of all justice may shine forth in them."'^[7]

2. "Let priests, therefore, bear in mind that sanctity in them is presupposed. 'That for the reception of sacred Orders simple sanctifying grace by no means suffices; but that beyond this, interior perfection is required, as is proved by the unanimous consent of fathers and doctors, who with one month demand it.'^[8] No degree, therefore, of sanctity is judged to be proportionate to sacerdotal perfection^[9] by the Church of God, and by God, the author of the priesthood, but that which bears some likeness of the great High Priest Jesus Christ our Lord. For the priest is set in the sight of the world, to be a living image of the life of Jesus toiling in solitude and in the straits of poverty, and suffering also the contradictions of men."

This teaches us three things: first, that interior perfection is required before ordination and as a prerequisite condition to sacred Orders; secondly, that the state of the priesthood is the state of perfection; thirdly, that a priest is bound to sustain himself in that state and to persevere in it to the end of life.

The perfection of man is defined by S. Bernard in these words: Hæc hominis est perfectio similitudo Dei. But God is charity. Therefore, perfection consists essentially in this gemina Dei et proximi dilectione. The essential perfection is a quality of the person. The state in which a person is placed is the instrumental perfection.

The perfection of charity is determined by its extension.

The first extension is to persons, as to friends and to enemies. The second extension is to acts—that is, to the fulfilment of the commandments and of the counsels.

But the new commandment, which is twofold, includes all commandments and all counsels. This personal perfection does not mean a sinless state, and it is compatible with infirmity and the failures of infirmity in which there is no deliberate will to sin.

S. Bernard says: Indefessum proficiendi studium, et jugis conatus ad perfectionem perfectio reputatur.

Studere perfectioni, esse perfectum est; profecto nolle proficere deficere est.^[10]

Such, then, is the nature of perfection to which all are called. And to this, before ordination, as the Council teaches, all who desire to enter the priesthood ought to have attained.

3. "For which reason the dignity of the priesthood is derived from a twofold source. Priests are the beloved companions of Jesus, and receive a share in His own mission, which He received of the Father. 'As the Father hath sent Me, I also send you.'^[11] For they are partakers of the priesthood of Christ, and share in the twofold jurisdiction over His natural and over His mystical Body. By sacred Orders they are deputed 'to the highest ministries, by which service is rendered to Christ Himself in the Sacrament of the Altar: for which service greater interior sanctity is required than is required even by the state of religion.'^[12] Moreover, they are friends, to whom He said, with familiar love, ' I will not now call you servants, but My friends, because you have known all things which I have done in the midst of you.'^[13] And forasmuch as in the dispensation of redeeming grace it is so ordered that the servants of God receive the help of the Holy Ghost, according to the height of their dignity or the arduous greatness of their office, to none assuredly are given more abundant graces than to the friends and partakers of the priesthood and mission of Jesus our Saviour."

We have seen what sanctity is required by the manifold relations in which a priest stands to the Person of his Divine Master. Here S. Thomas tells us that it is the greatest interior sanctity required by any state on earth. And as this sanctity is required by the state itself, so it is certain that the grace and help of the Holy Ghost are always proportionate and always present for our assistance. We are always telling the people of the world that if they ever fail it is not God that fails them, but they that fail themselves; that they have always and everywhere the grace needed by their state in all straits and dangers. How much more justly and truly may they return this counsel to us if we priests fail. We are set forth first to be the pattern of the all-sufficiency of sovereign grace. Therefore, a priest is inexcusable who seeks the cause of his imperfection anywhere but in himself.

4. "How great a love of God and of souls ought, therefore, to be kindled within us, and with what a fire ought our hearts to burn. 'The flame of the pastor,' S. Bernard says, 'is the light of the flock.' For in the priest the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the principle and fountain of love and fervour, ought to live and reign. Our missionaries, kindled with the ardour of zeal for souls, will strive to deliver, by a true exposition to the people committed to them, the commandment of God, 'exceeding broad' in all fulness and sanctity. Let them take heed lest, putting darkness for light, they think it enough if they keep the faithful of Christ from mortal sin."

S. Paul tells all Christians that they are dead, and their life hid with Christ in God.^[14] He bids them, therefore, to be heavenly-minded. He bids them also to be perfect;^[15] to forget the things that are behind, and to stretch forth to the things that are before, for the prize of their high vocation. S. Jude says: "But you, my beloved, building yourselves upon your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God."^[16] S. Paul, again, tells the Ephesians "that he prays that by comprehending with all the Saints what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth of the love of Christ, they may be filled unto all the fulness of God."^[17] And with all this before us, we hear it said that perfection is for priests, nuns, and recluses; but for all others it is lawful and enough if we aim at keeping them out of mortal sin. Few will say this; but many act as if they would say it, and as if it were their belief. Of how much glory God is robbed; of how much sanctity souls are deprived; for what innumerable venial sins they who so act are responsible; how many, walking on the boundary-line, may pass from venial to mortal sin, and therefore by low guidance how many souls may be lost.

The Provincial Council, therefore, goes on to teach as follows:

5. "Forasmuch as the distributions of the Holy Ghost are manifold and inscrutable, and as the faithful are called, some before others, to various degrees of perfection, it is not enough that a priest should be able to distinguish scientifically between leprosy and leprosy if he cannot discern also between spirit and spirit, lest, giving ear to the human spirit or even to the diabolical as if to the Spirit of God, he be led into error and lead others into error with him. For sometimes not only the faithful of a more cultivated intelligence, but the rude and the simple among the people, are called to the highest perfection of sanctity. Therefore the guide of souls ought so to discern and know the ascents of the heart to God and the degrees of prayer by science at least, if not by his own experience, that he may be able to confirm beginners in the purgative way, direct those who are advancing in the illuminative way, and lead upward the more perfect to higher things in the way of union. Labia enim sacerdotis custodient scientiam, et legem requirent ex ore ejus, quia angelus Domini exercituum est.^[18] In every flock some will be found who, being called by God to the life of counsels, seek the science of the spiritual life from the lips of the priest. Let Us, therefore, give all heed, lest in the hidden life of God the sheep be found going before the shepherds."

The Auctor Incertus says: "It is truly great confusion for priests and all clerics, when laymen are found more faithful and more just than they: how can it not be confusion to them to be inferior to laymen, to whom it is great confusion even to be only equal."^[19] S. Ambrose says: "Vides divisiones? Nihil in sacerdotibus plebium requiri, nihil populare, nihil commune cum studio atque usu et moribus multitudinis. Sobriam a turbis gravitatem, seriam vitam, singulare pondus, dignitas sibi vindicat sacerdotalis. Quo modo enim potest observari a populo, qui nihil habet secretum a populo? dispar a multitudine? Quid enim in te miretur, si sua in te recognoscat? Si nihil in te adspiciat, quod ultra se inveniat? Si quæ in se erubescit, in te quern reverendum arbitratur offendat? Supergrediamur igitur plebeias opiniones, … ac detritæ viæ orbitas declinemus."^[20] In the Old Law every priest during the service of his course in the Tabernacle was forbidden to drink wine or strong drink.^[21] What self-denial befits the priests of the New Law, who have no alternation of courses: they are always not only in the Tabernacle, but in the sanctuary, before the mercy seat of the Divine Presence.

The aspiration of the people for higher ways is one of the greatest rewards of a priest's life. A fervent people implies a fervent pastor. S. Bernard says truly, Flamma pastoris lux gregis. When the priest is kindled with the fire of the Sacred Heart his people too will walk in a great light. They will see and aspire after the higher ways of the kingdom of God. Then he will be to them angelus Domini exercituum—a guard and a guide.

6. "It is truly a wonderful saying of the Apostle: 'For Christ sent me not to baptise, but to preach the Gospel.'^[22] Therefore in the Council of Trent we read that the chief office of Bishops is to make known the Word of God to men. That which is chief in Bishops must be surely of the highest moment for all. But as the simple and masculine preaching of the Gospel is the salvation of the hearers, so a vain and inflated declamation is to the faithful scandal, and to the preacher destruction. The mysteries of the kingdom of God are not to be handled as rhetorical exercises or lucubrations of literary art. The witness of the Holy Ghost does not need the persuasive words of man's wisdom; rather the simplicity of divine truth contemns and rejects the loftiness of our speech, that our faith may not be in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God.^[23] Let all guides of souls, therefore, labour diligently, that in handling the mysteries of faith and in exhorting the faithful to piety they admit nothing that is not full of simplicity and gravity."

7. "The life of a priest is, in truth, arduous; yet it is surrounded and guarded by innumerable means and helps to acquire perfection. For our provident Mother the Church, in imposing upon the clergy the office of divine praise, vindicates and secures for its ministers in the midst of their labours of charity a time of quiet. Seven times a day it bids us ascend in heart and mind to the King of Saints and to the heavenly court; and if by the Communion of the Body and Blood of Jesus once received men may be made Saints, nothing can be wanting to the companions and priests and friends of Jesus that they be made and be Saints, who are refreshed by the daily oblation of the Holy Mass and the participation of His most holy Body and Blood. All things in the priest's life contribute to this—the daily meditation on divine things; the intimate service of the most Holy Sacrament; sacred studies hardly interrupted; the ministries of charity, which, while they exhaust strength, refresh the mind; the habit also of religion and of dignity; the sign of a kingdom and of perfection which was put upon them when they were tonsured."

8. "Furthermore, to us in England in warfare for the kingdom of truth singular helps for the acquiring of sacerdotal perfection are granted by our Lord, who pities our infirmities. To the priesthood, with which missionaries are invested, the cure of souls is intrusted, and therefore all kinds of spiritual gifts which are annexed to the state of pastors; moreover, they are pastors especially of the poor, the friends of Jesus, 'who have not wherewith to recompense us,' and are poor themselves, fed and content with the alms of the poor. Add to this also the daily and almost perpetual abnegation of their own will, in bearing the burdens of others, in consoling the sick, in supporting the dying by day and by night. Finally, there remains the signal grace and privilege of the missionary oath, whereby, on the threshold of the apostolate which they have received, after the likeness of the oblation of Jesus upon the Cross, they freely offered themselves a living, daily, and acceptable sacrifice to God the Father."

The Fourth Provincial Council warns us that we are bound to our flock by multiplici et conscientiæ et cordis ligamine—by manifold bonds of conscience and of heart.

First, it says, "a missionary priest receives the oblations of the faithful for no other reason than because he is a missionary therefore he is bound to serve them." Missionary priests are bound to labour without weariness for the salvation of the souls of those subject to their care. Let them call to mind the solemn hour in which, when invested with the ineffable dignity of priesthood, kneeling before the Bishop, they promised obedience and reverence to the Ordinary. When, therefore, they are chosen out and sent by the Bishop, to whose precepts they subjected themselves with a willing mind to fulfil the pastoral office over the sheep intrusted to him, it is plain that they are under grave obligations by the precept of obedience to fulfil rightly so great a duty.

"Moreover, by the grace of the Apostolic See three hundred years ago, it was ordained that the missionary priests in England, robbed of all maintenance by sacrilegious hands, might be admitted to sacred Orders on the title of mission, taking at the same time a truly apostolic oath for the good of the universal Church—in bonum universalis Ecclesia (which Alexander VII., in the Brief Cum circa juramenti vinculum, on the 20th of July 1660, explained with the required declarations)—so that they might bind themselves for ever, so far as in them lay, to seek and to save the sheep of the English nation. From that most constraining bond, when a cruel persecution, raged for so many years, arose and was strengthened that wonderful constancy and patience even unto martyrdom which is the crown and the glory of our clergy. Wherefore the Holy See, which still grants to the Bishops of England the faculty of ordaining their subjects on the title aforesaid, exhorts our missionaries that year by year they remember to renew the oath they have made on its anniversary (granting to them also a plenary Indulgence), and that they seriously meditate how great is the divine goodness shown to them in making them ministers of the Word to declare the wonders of His might and power; how imperishable a crown is prepared for them in heaven if they fulfil their duty in holiness; and on the contrary how strict a judgment awaits them if by their negligence or indolence, which God forbid, it happens that any perish.

"Finally, from all these (obligations) taken together—that is, from equity, from sacerdotal charity, from the promise of obedience, from the sanctity of the oath—there arises the reciprocal obligation between the priest and his own Bishop, by which both are happily bound faithfully to fulfil their respective offices, united together by common toil and by mutual co-operation."^[24]

9. "Wherefore, if, which God avert, it ever happen that any one fall from the manifold grace of this state, let him know that those things which in others are light in priests ought to be judged as grave. For the most part, that which in a layman is not a fault to those in sacred Order is a sin."

A blot upon a layman's coat is little seen; a spot upon an alb cannot be hid.

The Church must guard the souls of the faithful, and the sanctity of the priesthood, and the honour of the faith, the Church and our Divine Master.

If this seems a harsh note to end with, let us remember how our Lord ended His last words before He was betrayed. He prayed for those whom He had just ordained as priests. "And now I am not in the world; and these are in the world, and I come to Thee." "Those whom Thou gavest Me I have kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition."^[25] There will ever be wheat and tares growing together till the harvest both in the world and in the sanctuary.

 

1. Conc. Carthag.
2. 1 Cor. i. 2.
3. S. Greg. Cura Past. P. ii. c. iii.
4. De Eccl. Hier. c. v.
5. S. Thom. lib. iv. Sent. Suppl. ad B. i. quæst. xi.
6. Pontif. Rom. in Ordin. Presbyteri.
7. Ibid.
8. S. Alphon. Theol. Moral. de Sacr. Ord. lib. vi. 57.
9. S. Greg. Naz. Orat. ii. lxvii.
10. Ep. ccliv. tom. i. p. 534.
11. S. John xx. 21.
12. S. Thom. Summa Theol. 2da 2dæ, q. 184, a. 8.
13. Pontif. Rom. § 1.
14. Col. iii. 1.
15. 2 Cor. xiii. 11.
16. S. Jude 20, 21.
17. Ephes. iii. 18, 19.
18. Mal. ii. 7. S. Jerome says: "Si sacerdos est sciat legem: si ignorat legem ipse se arguit non esse Domini sacerdotem."—In Aggæum.
19. Auctor Operis Imperfecti inter Opp. Sti. Joan. Chrys. Hom. vi.
20. S. Ambros. Classis i. Epist. xxviii. 2, 3.
21. Levit. x. 9.
22. 1 Cor. i. 17.
23. Sess. xiv.
24. Conc. Prov. IV. Dec. x. § 3-7.
25. S. John xvii. 11, 12.