The Eternal Priesthood/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
THE PRIEST'S DANGERS.
All that has hitherto been said has raised the priest to so high a state that the next thought must be of his dangers. If he should fall, how great that fall would be. To stand upon the pinnacle of the Temple needs a supernatural poise and fidelity not to fall. It is well—it is even necessary—that we should both number and measure the dangers which beset us.
We can all, perhaps, remember with what a sense of holy fear we prepared for our ordination; with what joy and hope we received the indelible character of priesthood; with what disappointment at ourselves we woke up the next morning, or soon after, to find ourselves the same men we were before. This meeting of devout and hopeful aspiration with the cold hard reality of our conscious state came like a sharp withering wind over the first blossoms of a fruit-tree. But the effect of this was wholesome. It roused and warned us even with fear. We then better understood such words as these:
"Son of man, I have made thee a watchman to the house of Israel; and thou shalt hear the word out of My mouth, and shall tell it them from Me. If, when I say to the wicked, 'Thou shalt surely die,' thou declare it not to him, nor speak to him that he may be converted from his wicked way and live, the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but I will require his blood at thy hand. But if thou give warning to the wicked, and he be not converted from his wickedness and from his evil way, he indeed shall die in his iniquity, but thou hast delivered thy soul."[1] With this commission weighing upon him, the priest fresh from his ordination enters upon his pastoral work. Then begin his dangers. S. John Chrysostom, after speaking of the trials of Bishops and priests, how they are exposed to all tongues and tempers, accusing them of contradictory things, and taking offence whether we will or no, says: "The priesthood requires a great soul; for the priest has many harassing troubles of his own, and has need of innumerable eyes on all sides."[2] This sounds as a warning. Let us look further into it.
1. To a priest who enters for the first time upon the sacerdotal life the first danger is the loss of the supports on which he has so long been resting in the seminary. As in the launching of a ship, when the stays are knocked away it goes down into the water, thenceforward to depend upon its own stability; so a priest, going out from the seminary into the field of his work, has thenceforward to depend under God upon his own steadfastness of will. The order, method, and division of time and of work; the sound of the bell from early morning through the day till the last toll at night; the example and mutual influence and friendship of companions in the same sacred life; and still more, the mature counsel and wise charity of superiors—all these things sustain the watchfulness and perseverance of ecclesiastical students until the day when, invested with the priesthood, they go out from the old familiar walls and the door is closed behind them. They are in the wide world; secular as the Apostles were—that is, in the world, for the world's sake, not of it, but at war with it; of all men the least secular, unless they become worldly, and the salt lose its savour. Then they deserve the title in all its extent, and are seculars indeed.
The first danger, then, of a priest sent out into the world is the loss of all surroundings which, until then, gave him support. For the first time he feels his own weight pressing upon him as a burden. He has a painful sense of loneliness and of unlimited liberty. Everything depends upon his own will and choice. His hours, his employments, his duties, even to the hours of his Mass and to his days for confession; his visits, his friends, his relaxations—all are dependent on his own will. It is a liberty which, generously used, turns all things and every day to gold, but if squandered and indulged must end in spiritual poverty, confusion, and peril. For a life of unlimited liberty is encompassed with manifold temptations. The very atmosphere is charged with danger. Few minds are so self-sufficing that they do not crave after human voices and human sympathies. A priest coming out of a seminary needs fellowship, and he often seeks it in society. He does not as yet know the character of those about him, or the reputation of the homes to which he is invited. Before he is aware he is often entangled in relations he would not have chosen, and in invitations which, if he had the courage, he would refuse. People are very hospitable, and pity a priest's loneliness, and like to have him at their tables. Sometimes the best of people are least circumspect and most kindly importunate in their invitations. How shall a young and inexperienced mind hold out against these facilities and allurements to relaxation, unpunctuality, self-indulgence, and dissipation? The whole of a priest's life may be determined by his first outset. He has been in it too short a time either to gain or to buy experience.
2. Another danger in a priest's life arises from the length of time that he has been in it. He came into it in all the first brightness of the character impressed upon him on the day of his ordination. The exercise of his priesthood, if faithful and fervent, would add a growing brightness to his sacerdotal character and life. But soon "the fine gold becomes dim."[3] He is acclimatised to his surroundings. It may be he is placed among older priests who, though good, have become lax and easy-going. His first charity subsides, and the old mind comes up again. He is the same man as he was before; or perhaps the old habit of mind comes back with the force of a reaction. He began by resolving to live up to many counsels of a higher spirit, but he subsides to the level of commandments. His good resolutions are not retracted, but often unfulfilled, and survive as intentions or conditional promises made by himself to himself, with a large latitude and a wide clause as to the possibility of observance. He does not lower his aim, or his standard by any express change of theory, but he moves along a lower level and with less self-reproach as time goes on.
Such a priest may still keep to the letter of his rule of life, and to the times of his horarium, but the interior spirit has declined. He does fewer things with an actual intention, many with a virtual intention, but most with only a habitual intention. He never omits his Mass, nor is absent from the confessional, nor neglects a sick call; but the spirit or mind in which all these things are done is lowered. He is punctual and exact from custom, and from a habit which gradually becomes unconscious. In saying the Divine Office much is said without intellectual attention. Psalm after psalm goes by without advertence, and, when said, no verse in it is remembered. The same befalls the mysteries of the Rosary; and even in the Holy Mass distractions spring off from the mementos of the living and of the departed. Thoughts run on like a double consciousness. The material action of the Mass may be faultless, but the intrusive thoughts overpower the perception of the words. So, again, in the confessional he hears with a wandering mind and absolves with distraction. Still more by the bedside of the sick or dying he is mechanically correct in giving the last Sacraments, but without a living word of consolation or strength, or contrition, or confidence. And yet such a priest may be good in heart, exemplary in life; bat he is as a well that is dry, or, as S. Jude says, nubes sine aqua—a cloud without water. There is no refreshment in him for the weary or for the thirsty, or for those who seek in him the waters of life and consolation and find none.
8. Another danger of a priest is that he has too much to do. Let no one think that a busy life may not be a holy life. The busiest life may be full of piety. Holiness consists not in doing uncommon things, but in doing all common things with an uncommon fervour. No life was ever more full of work and of its interruptions than the life of our Lord and His Apostles. They were surrounded by the multitude, and "there were many coming and going, and they had not so much as time to eat."[4] Nevertheless, a busy life needs a punctual and sustained habit of prayer. It is neither piety nor charity for a priest to shorten his preparation before Mass or his thanksgiving after it because people are waiting for him. He must first wait upon God, and then he may serve his neighbour. The hour and a half of a priest's Mass is both his own and not his own. It is the first-fruits of his day. They belong to God: he has the usufruct, not the dominium, of them. He cannot alienate them. If any priest do so he will be forced to say at last, Vineam meam non custodivi. The palmer-worm and the canker-worm will do their work stealthily, but surely.
The having too much to do often leads to doing nothing well. All things are done in haste and on the surface. There is no time lost which is given to mental prayer and union with God. Every word that proceeds out of such a mind does more than a hundred words uttered from the lips of a man dried up by overwork. The constant overtax of intellectual and bodily activity tends to form a natural, external, and unspiritual character. It betrays itself in the confessional and in preaching. How often we hear it said, "My confessor is a holy man, but he never speaks a word beyond my penance and absolution."
And how surely we know from what a superficial source the ready stream of bright, cold, intellectual preaching flows.
4. There is yet in a priest's life another danger the reverse of the last; namely, the having too little to do. If, as we have seen, the exercise of the priesthood and of the pastoral office is of itself a means of sanctification, then in the measure in which it is suspended or unexercised the priest must suffer loss. But the loss is not only privative. Not to have a sufficient demand on his powers to call them out into activity is the reason of the inertness and incapacity of many a priest who is capable of great effort and of high attainment. There are two things which bring out into activity the powers that lie hid in men. The one is a great force of will which makes a man independent of external stimulus. The other is the tax which is laid upon him by duty and responsibility. Few have such force of will, and many have little to tax or elicit their powers. Sometimes men who, as students or clerics, promised great works for the Church have been placed by necessity in a sphere so narrow that their powers have had little to call them out. Such a sphere was too limited for their zeal. But in saying this we must not forget the words of S. Charles: that one soul is diocese enough for a Bishop. In counting by number we lose sight of the worth of each single soul, and the reward of saving if it be only one eternal soul. This would give work enough to a priest in the scarcest flock. But this conviction needs much reflection and much force of will. The effect of inactivity on most men is relaxation, and a love of ease. A small mission becomes a Sleepy Hollow, and the priest too often a harmless lotus-eater. First, time is wasted, and then powers waste themselves; as muscles not used grow weak, so the brain and the will grow inert and torpid. A vigorous man will make his own work. Time never hangs heavy on his hands. He will make work when none is made for him. Priests who have only a handful of souls may become theologians and authors, and may serve the Church more lastingly by their writings than by their activity. Leisure and tranquillity are two necessary conditions for sacred study. And, as S. Augustine said, Quamobrem otium quærit charitas veritatis; negotium justum suscipit necessitas charitatis. Quam sarcinam si nullus imponit, percipiendæ atque intuendæ vacandum est veritati.[5]
But for this are necessary a love of study, or a constraining conscience, and a resolute will. For the most part good men succumb to any easy life, which, blameless as it may be, is too like to the servant who folded his talent in the napkin. When a man has neither work enough nor study enough to fill his mind, he suffers from monotony, and is restless for change. He is weary of vacancy, and craves for an interest. He finds none at home, and he seeks it abroad. His mind wanders first, and he follows it. His life becomes wasted and dissipated—that is, scattered and squandered, full of weariness and a tediousness in all things, which at last invades even his acts and duties of religion. A priest may be chaste and temperate in all things; but weariness is the descending path which leads to sloth, and sloth is the seventh of the sins which kill the soul. To have too much to do is for most men safer than to have too little.
5. There is still one more danger to which the last directly leads, and that is lukewarmness. It was to a Bishop our Lord said: "Thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou wert cold or hot; but because thou art neither cold nor hot I will begin to vomit thee out of My mouth."[6] The rejection is not yet complete, but it is begun; and if the priest does not know himself it must come at last. A lax priest is of all men most to be pitied. When his priesthood ceases to be sweet to him, it becomes first tasteless, and then bitter in the mouth. The perpetual round of the same actions and the same obligations becomes mechanical and automatous. Sancta sancte, as the Council of Carthage enjoins. But when holy things cease to be sustaining and refreshing, they are a yoke which galls, and a burden which oppresses. Such priests easily omit Mass, and have no sense of loss.
Still they may preach high doctrines of the spiritual life with as much eloquence as ever. But their heart does not go with their words; and to ears that can hear there is a hollow ring in all they say. Such men will read the lives of the Saints, and desire to be like them. They try and fall short. They retain an intellectual perception of some high standard which is habitually in their mouth till an unconscious intellectual simulation is formed, sometimes with selfdeception, which is dangerous; sometimes with conscious unreality, which is worse. Such men grow inwardly hollow. There is a decay at the heart, and a preparation for falling. The words of Isaias are fearful and true: "Therefore shall this iniquity be to you as a breach that falleth, and is found wanting in a high wall; for the destruction thereof shall come on a sudden, when it is not looked for." Many a time when a priest has fallen all men have wondered except one or two, who have closely watched him, and his own conscience, which has known the secret of his fall. And when it comes, it is terrible, and sometimes final. The "high wall" comes rushing down in utter ruin; the higher the more hopeless. As the prophet says again: "And it shall be broken small as the potter's vessel is broken all to pieces with mighty breaking; and there shall not a sherd be found of the pieces thereof wherein a little fire may be carried from the hearth, and a little water drawn out of the pit."[7] When angels fell they fell for ever; for there was for them no redemption. When a priest falls he may rise again, for his Master is very pitiful. But since Satan fell like lightning from heaven there has been no fall like the fall of a priest.