The Eternal Priesthood/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
THE INSTRUMENTAL MEANS OF PERFECTION.
S. Paul says: "We know that to them that love God all things work together unto good to such as, according to His purpose, are called to be Saints. For whom He foreknew He also predestinated to be made conformable to the image of His son, that He might be the first-born amongst many brethren. And whom He predestinated, them He also called. And whom He called, them He also justified. And whom He justified, them He also glorified:"[1] that is, He laid upon them the glory of the adoption as sons of God. Such is the end of our predestination as Christians; and the means to that end are vocation, justification, and adoption. And these means, with the graces of the Holy Ghost that are attached to them, are proportionate and adequate to the attainment of conformity to the Son of God, both in this life and in eternity. The works of God never fail on His part. If they fail, they are frustrated on our part. Grace enough is given to every regenerate soul to attain sanctity. All are called to be Saints: not, indeed, in the same measure or degree; for "star differeth from star in glory." The paths and vocations of men are beyond all number in their measures and diversities; but to each is given grace adequate to the attainment of the end to which he is called, and the circumstances of the path by which he is to attain it.
This sovereign law of the Holy Ghost is expressed by S. Bernardine of Sienna in words well known.[2]
Of all those who are predestinated to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, they come first who share His priesthood and character. They are called to be like Him, that they may be the representatives of His person, and the images of His mind. To them, therefore, are given all proportionate and adequate means of the closest conformity to Him. The means given to priests for this end are of two kinds: those that are of a general, and those that are of a special, nature. At present, we will keep to those which are general, and leave the special means, merely naming them, for a future chapter.
The general means are three: first, the sacramental grace of priesthood; secondly, the exercise of the priesthood; and thirdly, the exercise of the pastoral office.
1. The first means to sacerdotal perfection is the sacramental grace of the priesthood. Sometimes it is said to be attached to the character; sometimes to flow from it. Every Sacrament confers sanctifying grace; but as each is ordained for a distinct end, a special grace is given by each for the distinct end of each. S. Thomas describes it as follows: "As the virtues and gifts add, beyond the grace commonly so called, a certain perfection ordained determinately to the acts proper to the powers (of the soul); so the sacramental grace adds, beyond the grace commonly so called, and beyond the virtues and gifts, a divine help, auxilium divinum, for the attainment of the end of the Sacrament."[3] But this divine help is not given once for all, but initially, as the opening of a spring from which a stream flows and multiplies itself into manifold auxilia or helps in time of need, trial, danger, or temptation.
It is, therefore, of faith not only that in ordination sanctifying grace—unless a bar be put by the unworthiness of the man—proportionate to the sacerdotal state is given; but also that a distinct and special divine help, adequate, continuous, and manifold, enabling the priest to fulfil all the obligations of his priesthood. A priest has three characters, and therefore a threefold sacramental grace: as a son, a soldier, and a priest. These divine helps never fail on God's part. If there be failure, it is the priest that fails. It is his own sin, or his own slackness, or his own sloth, or his own insensibility to the divine helps that are urging and empowering him for the duty or the aspiration from which he shrinks. S. Paul answers his own question, "For these things who is sufficient?" by saying, "I can do all things through Him strengthening me."
It is of divine faith that God does not command impossibilities. And also that, to him that uses the grace he has, more grace is given. The priesthood is indeed a high estate and an arduous work. Men may shrink from it laudably, from humility, self-mistrust, and holy fear. But when the indelible character has been once impressed upon them, to waver and to doubt is like Peter upon the sea when the winds and waves were boisterous. Our Lord in him rebukes our cowardice: "O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" And these words ought to be for ever in our ears. If we begin to sink it is because we have begun to doubt. And then we begin to look here and there, backwards and forwards, and to think that safety and rest and sanctity is to be found in this state and the other, and anywhere but in our own. This is want of humble faith. If we would only use the grace we have we should never fail; and in using it the grace would be increased, or doubled, or multiplied tenfold in reward of humility and fidelity, and simple trust in our Divine Master. No man has so many talents to trade with till his Master comes again as a priest. And no man can therefore lay up for himself so great a reward. Of our Blessed Mother alone it can be said that she corresponded with every light and inspiration and grace of the Holy Ghost; and that promptly and adequately, so that the increase of her grace cannot be measured, and is called an immensity. But every priest, though far below Her because of our original sin and faults and falls, and of our tardy and inadequate correspondence with our great and innumerable graces—every priest may gain and store up in himself a great depth of sanctification, always increasing through life, and accumulating more and more unto the end.
If it should so happen that any man by sin or sloth barred the grace of his ordination at the outset of his life, by true conversion to God the grace which sin had bound may yet revive. If in the course of his life he should lose his fervour, or even his spiritual life, the Sacrament of penance will restore him to grace, and by contrition the sacramental grace may yet revive. Who, then, needs to despair? Hope honours our Divine Lord. Let us hope greatly, strongly, and with perseverance to the end.
2. But, secondly, the priesthood itself is a source of sanctification to the priest. It is a restraint and a guard and a shelter against the world. It is a motive and a measure of aspiration. It is a constant impulse after a higher degree of union with God. A priest is set apart for God's greatest glory; and on all his sacerdotal life, as on the vessels of the Temple, is written Sanctificatus Domino.[4] To this also his personal actions ought to correspond. The words of the Psalmist ought to be expressly true in the mouth of a priest. "One thing I have asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life: that I may see the delight of the Lord, and may visit His temple; for He hath hidden me in His tabernacle."[5] The "one thing" of a priest's life is to dwell near our Lord on the altar, to bear the key of the tabernacle, and to be as a disciple ad latus Domini—by the side of his Lord. The title "Alter Christus" is both a joy and a rebuke. If we be identified with our Lord He will dwell in us and reign in us. "The charity of Christ urgeth us"—that is, His love to us urges us to love Him, to serve Him with all our inward life; for He died for us to this end—"that we should no longer live unto ourselves." "With Christ I am nailed to the Cross; and I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me."[6]
If the presence of Jesus penetrates throughout the soul; if it pervades the intellect, the will, the affections, He lives in us, and we, by Him, should live a supernatural life. All our freedom would still be perfect, but His mind and His inspiration would reign over us. We should think His thoughts, speak His words, do His acts. What a multitude of sweetness it would bring into our whole life if we, as priests, could say, "I live, not I, but Christ liveth in me." The world would have nothing in us: we should neither seek it nor fear it. The consciousness of our predestination and vocation, and justification and adoption, and of our second and higher vocation to be in a special manner and measure conformed to the image of the Son by partaking of His priesthood, would be a perpetual motive to all perfection.
8. Lastly, the pastoral office also is in itself a discipline of perfection. For, first of all, it is a life of abnegation of self. A pastor has as many obediences to fulfil as he has souls to serve. The good and the evil, the sick and the whole, the young and the old, the wise and the foolish, the worldly and the unworldly—who are not always wise—the penitent and the impenitent, the converting and the unconverted, the lapsed and the relapsed, the obdurate and the defiant, all must be watched over. None may be neglected—still less cast off—always, at all times, and in all ways possible. S. Philip used to say that a priest should have no time of his own, and that many of his most consoling conversions came to him out of hours, at unseasonable moments. If he had sent them away because they came out of time, or at supper-time, and the like, they might have been lost. Then again the trials of temper, patience, and self-control in bearing with the strange and inconsiderate minds that come to him; and the demands made upon his strength and endurance day and night in the calls of the sick and dying, coming often one after another when for a moment he has gone to rest; the weary and continual importunities of people and of letters till the sound of the bell or the knock at the door is a constant foreboding too surely fulfilled: all these things make a pastor's life as wearisome and, strange to say, as isolated as if he were in the desert. No sackcloth so mortifies the body as this life of perpetual self-abnegation mortifies the will. But when the will is mortified the servant is like his Master, and his Master is the exemplar of all perfection. "Si ergo dilectionis est testimonium cura pastionis, quisquis virtutibus pollens gregem Dei renuit pascere, pastorem summum convincitur non amare."[7]
To this must be added that the pastor's office is the highest discipline of charity; and charity is the perfection of God and man. It was charity that moved him to become a pastor, and charity binds him to give his life for his flock. Between the beginning and the ending of his life charity is the urgent motive which constrains, sustains, and spends all his living powers. He knows himself to be vicarius charitatis Christi. Every action of a faithful pastor is prompted habitually, virtually, or actually by charity. And in every action, from the greatest to the least, as charity is elicited into act, it is augmented by an increase poured out into the heart by the Holy Ghost, the charity of God. "God is charity, and he that abideth in charity abideth in God and God in him."[8] But where God abides there is sanctity, for though charity and sanctity are distinct, they are inseparable, coming and going, growing or lessening in intensity together, like light and heat, which are never parted.
We might draw out this in other details as in humility, purity, piety, generosity, and the like, which are in continual exercise and in continual increase in the life of priests and pastors. But mortification and charity are the two conditions of perfection; and no more words are needed to show that they are called forth into the fullest exercise by the demands of a priestly and pastoral life.
As to the other means of perfection, it will be enough now to enumerate them, because they will come back hereafter on our attention.
First is the law and obligation of chastity, with all its safeguards and sanctities.
Secondly, the life and spirit of poverty which binds a priest in his ecclesiastical revenues, and counsels a pastor with a peremptory voice, in the administration of any patrimony he may possess.
Thirdly is obedience to the Church, to his Bishop, to law, to discipline, to the living voice of authority, which may be as minute and far spreading as any can desire if they have the will to obey.
These three obligations are instrumental means of perfection. To them must be added:
Fourthly, the habit of prayer and meditation, which is the habit of contemplation.
Fifthly, the daily Mass, with its preparation and thanksgiving, and the manifold relations of the priest to the Blessed Sacrament, distributing the Bread of Life to his flock in benedictions, processions, expositions, and in personal visits to the presence of our Divine Lord.
Sixthly, in the confessional. The priest who is faithful and patient as a father, a physician, and a judge of souls, gains more in the living histories of sin and sorrow, contrition and conversion, sanctity and perfection in the confessional, than from all the books upon his shelves.
Seventhly, in the preaching of the Word of God, to which daily meditation and study of Holy Scripture are vitally necessary. S. Augustine says "that a man will preach so much the more or so much the less wisely as he shall have made more or less progress in Holy Scripture."[9]
Eighthly, in his seven visits to the heavenly court in the daily Divine Office.
Ninthly, in the rule of life given to him and wrought into him in the seminary, which, in outline at least, has become a second nature, directing, constraining, counselling, and ordering his life in its union with God.
Lastly, in the law of liberty, the highest and most constraining of all obligations, to which we will return hereafter.
With such abundant means of confirming himself in the interior spiritual perfection in which he was ordained, and of attaining continually a nearer conformity to the mind and life of his Master, no priest can fail of any degree of humility, charity, and sanctity, except through his own fault. God has done for us more than we could ask or think. And "the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance"[10]—that is, there is no change of mind or purpose towards His priests, whom He has chosen to be His representatives, and to be, like Himself, "the light of the world" and "the salt of the earth."
- ↑ 1 Rom. viii 28-30.
- ↑ "Omnium singularium gratiarum alicui rationabili creatoræ communicatarum generalis regula est quod quandocunque divina gratia eligit aliquem ad aliquam gratiam singularem, seu ad aliquem sublimem statum, omnia charismata donet, quæ illi personæ sic electæ et ejus officio necessaria sunt, atque illam copiose decorant."—Serm. de S. Joseph, tom. iv. p. 231.
- ↑ Summa Theol. P. iii. q. lxii a. 2.
- ↑ Zach. xiv. 21.
- ↑ Ps. xxvi. 4-6.
- ↑ Gal. ii. 19, 20.
- ↑ S. Greg, in Reg. Past. P. i. c. v.
- ↑ S. John iv. 16.
- ↑ De Doct. Christ. lib. iv. 5.
- ↑ Rom. xi. 29.