Pope tells priests to be brothers, not tired workers
In his address to the International Theological Symposium on the Priesthood organised by the Congregation for Bishops, Pope Francis highlighted “four forms of closeness” that priests around the world ought to nurture, namely closeness to God, their bishop, fellow priests and people. The priestly life is a “small harvest”, not a treatise.
Vatican City (AsiaNews) – Pope Francis spoke at the International Theological Symposium on the Priesthood, currently underway in the Vatican at the initiative of the Congregation for Bishops.
In his address, the pontiff started saying that what he learnt as a priest was a “small harvest” that came from being with many fellow priests, not from a treatise on theology. "I do not know if such thoughts are the swan song of my priestly life, but I can certainly assure you that they come from my experience,” he explained.
In his long speech, Francis touched many topics, including the “vocational crisis that afflicts our communities in different places,” often due to a “missing contagious apostolic fervour,” one that does not only affect priests. Yet, “Even where they are not very committed and joyful,” the desire to consecrate oneself to God can come form the “brotherly life of the community”.
Several attitudes “give firmness to a priest’s character,” which he describes as “four forms of closeness."
The first one is closeness to God. "Without a meaningful relationship with the Lord, our ministry is destined to become sterile. Closeness to Jesus, contact with his Word, allow us to compare our life with his, learn not to be scandalised by anything that happens to us, and defend ourselves from ‘scandals’.”
As during Jesus’s life, priests also experience “moments of joy and wedding feasts, miracles and healings, multiplication of loaves,” but “hours of ingratitude, rejection, doubt and loneliness will also come, to the point that one might say: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Mt 27:46).”
Closeness to God is the key to facing such situations. “Many priestly crises have at their origin precisely a poor life of prayer,” which makes the priest “a tired worker who does not enjoy the benefits of the Lord's friends.”
But how can a priest find it difficult to pray? Answering his own question, Francis went on to say: “It is hard to give up doing things because when you stop being busy, desolation, not peace comes immediately into your heart.” In such a situation, “in order not to feel desolate, one is willing to never stop. However, it is precisely by accepting the desolation that comes from silence, from the fasting of activities and words, from the courage to examine ourselves with sincerity, that everything takes on a light and a [sense of] peace that no longer depends on our strengths and abilities.”
This capacity to “embrace, accept and present one's own unhappiness in closeness to the Lord" is the best school that teaches priests to “make room for all the unhappiness and pain that they will encounter every day in his ministry.”
A second form of closeness to be nurtured is that with the bishop, based on the kind of obedience that should not be read “only unilaterally”. It is an aspect of “communion,” a bond that unites beyond “every temptation to clam up, to self-justify, and to live the life of a ‘bachelor’.”
“Obedience is the fundamental choice to welcome those who are placed before us as a concrete sign of the universal sacrament of salvation which is the Church. Obedience that can also be exchange, listening and, in some cases, tensions. But it doesn't break” and presupposes, on the other hand, that bishops will have “humility, the ability to listen, to be self-critical and let themselves be helped.”
A third form of closeness is that between presbyters in brotherhood. It is precisely the lack of such closeness that often causes loneliness among many priests.
For the pope, priests cannot consider brotherhood as “a utopia, a shared space to stir nice feelings or elicit words of circumstance in an appeasing speech. We all know how hard it can be to live in community, but brotherly love – if we do not want to sugarcoat it, accommodate it, diminish it – is the 'great prophecy' that we are called to live in our throwaway society.”
Where “priestly brotherhood works and there are bonds of true friendship, it is also possible to live the celibate choice with even greater serenity.” But while the Latin Church views celibacy as a gift, “without friends or prayers, it can become an unbearable burden and be a negative example of the very beauty of the priesthood.”
Finally, the fourth form of closeness is with people, because, as Francis repeated once again, “the place of every priest is in the midst of people.”
"God's people hope to find shepherds in the style of Jesus, not ‘bureaucratic clerics’ or ‘professionals of the sacred’.” They want “pastors who know compassion, opportunity; courageous men able to stop before those who are wounded and reach out; contemplative men who, in closeness with their people, can proclaim the working power of the Resurrection on the wounds of the world.”
Being among the people helps us not “forget that the priestly life is due to others – the Lord and the people entrusted by him. This forgetfulness is the basis of clericalism and its consequences.” Unlike the "four forms of closeness”, clericalism feeds on “remoteness”. For this reason, it is a perversion of the priesthood.
Finally, Francis ends with an invocation. “May the Lord visit his priests in prayer, bishops, brotherly presbyters and his people. May routine disappear and bother a little, arouse restlessness, like with one’s first love, and activate all capacities so that our people might have life and have it more abundantly” (cf. Jn 10:10).
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