Priestly Vocations:
Signs of Hope

By Cardinal Justin Rigali

We have just celebrated the great Solemnity of Pentecost, a celebration that brings the Easter Season to a close. The event of Pentecost not only sealed the faith of the Apostles in the Risen Jesus but also signaled the presence of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the Church, as Jesus had promised. Speaking of this presence of the Spirit in the midst of the Church, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Council teaches: “By the power of the Gospel (the Holy Spirit) enables the Church to grow young, perpetually renews it, and leads it to complete union with its Bridegroom” (Lumen Gentium, 4). Is this not a remarkable statement? The Church grows young!

In many ways, this is a contradiction to the world around us. Everything around us, even that which is most beautiful, is constantly growing old. We can enter a room or a house which was once beautiful but which has not been cared for and we can speak of it as “faded glory.” We anxiously look at the famous men and women of yesterday so that we might see any signs of age that have come with the passing of time. Even the beauties of nature, which we appreciate in a special way at this time of year, will eventually fade and die. Yet, the Church of Christ is bold enough to say that she is always growing young! However, this statement is most accurate. The Church is a living organism and she receives her life from Christ, who is her Bridegroom. Her message, which is the message of the Gospel, never grows old. Her life, which is the life of God himself, never dies.

How the work of Christ is continued
“Since Pentecost, it is through the sacramental signs of his Church that the Holy Spirit carries on the work of sanctification. A sacramental celebration is a meeting of God’s children with their Father, in Christ and the Holy Spirit” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1152, 1153). All the baptized are called to celebrate the sacraments because “by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, they are consecrated to be a spiritual house and a holy priesthood, that through all the works of Christians they may offer spiritual sacrifices” (Lumen Gentium, 10). “However,” the Second Vatican Council goes on to teach, “the Lord also appointed certain men as ministers, in order that they might be united in one body in which ‘all the members have not the same function’ (Romans 12:4). These men held in the community of the faithful the sacred power of order, that of offering sacrifice and forgiving sins, and exercised the priestly office publicly on behalf of men and women in the name of Christ. Thus Christ sent the apostles as he himself had been sent by the Father, and then through the apostles made their successors, the bishops, sharers in his consecration and mission. The function of the bishops’ ministry was handed over in a subordinate degree to priests so that they might be appointed in the order of the priesthood and be co-workers with the episcopal order for the proper fulfillment of the apostolic mission and that had been entrusted to it by Christ” (Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, 2). We see, then, that according to God’s plan, the ongoing life of the Church, which makes her “grow ever younger” is not accomplished without the ministerial priesthood.

Because of the intimate union between bishop and priest and because of the responsibility of the shepherd of each local Church to provide for the faithful, I have the responsibility of doing all I can to provide priests to feed Christ’s faithful with the message of the Gospel and the nourishment of the Eucharist. This is why the ordination to the Priesthood this weekend of three young men for service in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia brings me and our entire local Church such joy. This is also why we should all be filled with the spirit of prayer to “the Lord of the harvest” that He will continue to send laborers into the vineyard of our five-county Archdiocese, which is called to serve almost one and a half million Catholics.

What is it that I am inviting our young men to do?
There will always be a certain sense of mystery in describing the priesthood and in calling young men to embrace a possible priestly vocation. This is because we can never fully fathom God’s generosity in calling imperfect creatures to follow Him in an intimate way in proclaiming His work of salvation. However, during the Liturgy in which our Holy Father recently ordained twenty-nine priests, he summed up the call to and the mission of the priesthood in one word: joy! He said to the young men he was about to ordain priests: “This is your mission: to bring the Gospel to everyone so that everyone may experience the joy of Christ and that there be joy in every city. What can be more beautiful than this? To proclaim and to witness joy: this is the central core of your mission” (Homily, Ordination of new priests, 27 April 2008).

It is certainly true that the gift of the priesthood involves a number of sacrifices: a young man called to be a priest freely gives up the legitimate joys of a wife and children; he is not called to use his education and talents for worldly success but rather at the service of Christ and His Church; he is not always held in high esteem by the society around him, as he once was. Yet, the Holy Father tells these young men that they are to be heralds of joy! How can this be so? The Holy Father knows that the reason for this joy will be questioned and he tells us where to find the answer. The answer lies in another one of the themes of Pope Benedict’s Pontificate, as well as the theme of his recent Pastoral Visit to our country: Christ our Hope. He quotes the Letter of Saint Peter, who instructs us in this virtue: “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15-16).

This hope that we receive in Christ and that His servants are called to preach and to give an example of is a very clear reality: it has a past in the eternal teaching of Jesus, a present in the life-giving sacraments of the Church and a future in the eternal glory the faithful will receive as a result of the Paschal Mystery of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. The Pope speaks of this as a “priestly hope” when addressing the newly ordained priests because this is what they are called to nurture in their hearts and preach by word and example to others. He told the young priests that theirs is: “a hope of life and forgiveness for the people who will be entrusted to your pastoral care; a hope of holiness and apostolic fruitfulness for yourselves and for the Church; a hope of openness to faith and to the encounter with God for those who support you in their quest for the truth; a hope of peace and comfort for the suffering and for those wounded by life” (Homily, Ordination of priests, 29 April 2008).

This is why, without hesitation, I invite the young men of our Archdiocese to have generous hearts in listening to God and in responding to Him if they feel called to serve Him as priests. If they are called and if they answer, they will be entrusted with the beautiful priestly mission of joy and hope which our Holy Father has described. People are thirsting for this message, even when they do not realize it. If you were to look at the lists of best-selling books, very often you will see that their titles involve the quest for peace and happiness which so many are searching for. When we find this peace and happiness in Jesus, we are never disappointed and we are never misled.

Happy young men
I wish that all of you could see our young men studying at Saint Charles Seminary. My brother priests and myself, who come in contact with them, are always rejuvenated by their obvious joy in the Lord. We are edified by their generosity of heart and we are inspired to renew our own commitment to Jesus and to His Gospel. It has been said that there has been a great increase in the number of those requesting information from their local seminaries since the visit of our Holy Father to our country. This is because they heard the message of Truth and the call of Him who alone can satisfy the hungers of every human heart: Jesus our Savior. For two-thousand years, this Truth has had its own appeal and its own power and it will ever be so.

We who are older in the priesthood know the trials and temptations of our priestly lives but we also know the remarkable joys that have been ours as we seek to serve God’s people. I would like to summarize this joy in serving Christ our Hope, which animates the young to give themselves to Him and which never fails to reward them spiritually until the end, by quoting someone who speaks near the end of his earthly life: Cardinal Avery Dulles. As a young man, he was a brilliant and promising Harvard graduate, who had been raised Presbyterian and had become an agnostic. Some may recall that his father was the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. He became a Catholic and eventually, a Jesuit priest. He chose to give his great talents and promise to our Lord and became a well-known theologian. In reflecting on his priestly life and mission recently at the age of almost ninety, he said that in his own youth he became conscious of “the emptiness of a selfish life based on the pursuit of pleasure.” He continued: “the most important thing about my career is the discovery of the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in the field, the Lord Jesus himself” (Farewell Address, Fordham University, 1 April 2008). Pray that many young men in our Archdiocese who are searching for that treasure will find and embrace it.
May 15, 2008