The Jubilee Convention of Priests of the Archdiocese of Dublin
Apr 07, 2005
The Address of + Godfried Cardinal Danneels, Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, 3rd May 2000 - Holy Cross College, Clonliffe
'PRIESTS FOR THE THIRD MILLENNIUM'
Opportunities and challenges
How do priests feel at the beginning of this third millennium? Who are they? What are their fears and expectations?
It is not that priests wish to attract all of the attention. They also do not want to engage in self-pity or beg for sympathy and complain. They only ask of the people of God what is written in the Letter to the Hebrews: "Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God" (Hebrews 13:7).
PART I: LIGHT AND SHADOW
The joy of being and apostle
Many things – even in our times – bring happiness to the life of a priest. It is here we wish to focus first, before we pause and consider "the burdens and the heat of the day" that he must bear.
The joy of being called
Young people often ask the priest: ‘why did you become a priest?’ This is often very difficult to put into words. But one thing is certain: there is something alive in the heart of a priest: a vocation. It has come over the priest and he does not always know how. It is not that he is therefore better than others or holier, more capable or more perfect. But it does make him different.
Priests have discovered something in themselves not of their own making: they have ‘stumbled’ across it. They feel pulled in two directions: toward God and toward people. The have a ‘vulnerable’ heart, sensitivity for the interior of things and for invisible realities. This is most clearly expressed when they hear the Gospel: there are phrases that will not let them go and that they can never forget. This is called a vocation; and it makes the life of a priest very happy. Thus he is grateful to all those who have surrounded him with care and allowed this to develop: parents, friends, teachers or chance acquaintances. They know for certain that this sensitivity and calling did not come from themselves: it comes from farther and deeper. From the Other and the Church it was discovered and confirmed.
A passion for Christ
There is also something between the priest and Christ: in the depths of his soul the priest has been ‘wounded by Christ. And he will never be healed of this injury. When he reads the Bible or in all that he daily experiences, Christ is brought to his mind. Everything speaks of Him.
That is also why the priest is so captivated by the poor and the small, by the sick and by children. In them he hears the stifled voice of the impoverished Christ. His heart will not rest until reaches out to them. Sometimes this sensitive heart also plays tricks on the priest. People say: "you priests don’t know the real world and you are naïve. You speak a strange language and your action produces nothing: it does not fit this world". To this, priests cannot but answer: ‘we cannot do otherwise’. This passion for Christ is felt by the priest especially during the celebration of the Eucharist. Even though the service is sometimes poor, the singing awkward, and the assistance clumsy, it occurs without fail: without fail the priest instructs from the Scriptures that the Messiah had to suffer; and without fail he again recognises Jesus in the breaking of the bread (cf. Luke 24)
Giving life
Another source of joy for the priest is that he stands at the source of life: he guards the sources of grace which are the Sacraments; he is not the source of life, but Christ is: Christ baptises, nourishes and provides forgiveness. But it is no less true that Christ has no other lips, no other mouth or voice, no other hands and feet than those of the priest. Thus he is not just a detached witness of this blessing: he is its channel and instrument. The priest is not only a prophet that announces salvation – no mere John the Baptist – he is also the father who passes on life. Ignatius of Antioch says that the priest is the ‘image of the Father’ and a hereditary burden of paternalism does not make this fatherhood of the priest any less real. Paul said: "For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the Gospel." (1 Cor 4:15)
A passion for the Church
Those who love Christ can do no other than be passionate for the Church: to love the Head is also to love the limbs. Priests love the Church and thus can also suffer at the hands of the Church. Because in the Church there is much weakness, compromise, half-heartedness, self-complacency and sin. But beneath all of this, the Church guards its secret: it is the Body of the Lord and the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is even so that as priests get older they often love the Church even more. Paul’s view of the Church became more loving and moving in his later letters from prison: Ephesians, Colossians and Philippians. There the Church is called: "the glorious bride, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish" (Eph. 5:27).
Sometimes priests criticise the Church, rightly or wrongly. But then they suddenly realise that they have received everything from this Church: the Scriptures, the Sacraments, their pastoral function, all of their brother priests and the people of God who have been entrusted to them. They owe everything to the Church: when children, the sick, the burdened and poor, the unhappy and the helpless come to them, they have the Church to thank for this. Only it can provide the credibility that they need.
The joy of interiority
There is another joy for the priest, that of interiority and prayer. Prayer can be hard and dry, but even then it remains the cool stream from which the priest can drink after the ‘heat of the day’. In prayer, the feverishness of his hyperactivity disappears, the priest finds back his normal spiritual heartbeat. Glorifying, thanking and praising God brings him peace and confidence. This is especially true in praying the psalms. If the priest feels sad and discouraged, then a ‘psalm of praise prayed in the name of all of humanity can restore his happiness. And vice versa: a psalm of lament and a psalm of supplication on a sunny day can make the priest again aware of the need and pain elsewhere in the world. The breviary pulls the priest out of the convulsions of his momentary moods.
Another joy is that in praying, the priest may intercede for others. He is the ‘Moses’ who intercedes on the mountain while below the Israelites of the people of God do battle.
The joy of evangelical freedom
There is a text that touches each priest deeply: "Every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundred-fold, and inherit eternal life." (Matthew 19:29) There is great joy to be had in giving up even good things. Letting go of comfort, honour and power brings freedom and happiness. There is real happiness in giving up a high salary, comfort and security, in giving up a guaranteed future for a sober and poor life. If he wants, the priest can experience the charm of Jesus’ ‘Franciscan pronouncements’ in the Gospel concerning ‘the birds of the air and the lilies of the field’. After all, the Father knows their needs.
Moreover, an impoverished, pure and obedient heart also refines human power: it puts mankind on line with the powerful and tender will of God.
The burden and the heat of the day
It would not be honest if the pain of the priests would not be addressed: priests have it difficult in these times.
Less numerous and a day older
The number of priests in Western Europe is shrinking and the average age increasing. In many places there are no longer many vocations. Some priests are afraid: will anyone be there to take their place? On the other hand, the work keeps increasing and often the priest wants to do everything that he traditionally did in the parish.
It is certainly not the first time in the history of the Church that there are ‘too few workers’ for the harvest. Jesus himself said it and asked for workers in the vineyard. That several parishes must be served by one priest is in itself not a disaster. This has already occurred in the third world and is even quite normal. But we know how good it is for a local community to have its own priest; and the disappearance of a residential priest implies in a first phase many laypersons volunteering to lend a hand. But it is precisely these people who again ask for a priest. Otherwise they become quickly unmotivated and discouraged.
Building bridges between two shores …
Priests live day and night close to their people. They experience much: joy at birth and marriage, great pain at sickness and death. They often have only a few minutes time to switch from one to the other: empathy with joy and sharing in the pain.
Pastoral work is often like standing between two shores, in the middle of the stream. Which priest has not experienced the tension between law and mercy, high demands and understanding? Between what the Church teaches and asks, and what the believer is capable of? Some demand rigorous orthodoxy, dotted ‘i’s and crossed ‘t’s included; others ask for realism and adaptation. The priest is often squeezed between ‘conservatives’ and ‘progressives’. He is the poor Christopher that must carry the Christ child between two shores that are unable or unwilling to touch each other.
New and difficult questions
Priests must more and more deal with new and often very difficult questions. Especially in the area of morals there can be many questions: the AIDS problem and condoms, bioethical questions, the ethical implications of the economy, finance and politics, the problem of marriage and the new forms of living together, the painful problem of the divorced and remarried in the Church, the acceptance criteria for the Sacraments, and much more.
All of these problems were earlier largely limited to the realm of the specialist moral theologian. Now you hear these questions in each household. People want an explanation and advice, and the priest is not a specialist: he is a general practitioner. What is more, people want a clear answer without delay. One item from the news on television can raise more questions than a simple priest can answer in a few minutes.
The ‘deforestation’ of Christian memory
It is not simple when one realises that with Christians of the younger generation, Christian memory has been almost completely deforested and has disappeared. They no longer have a Christian language or concepts that would allow them to understand the answers that priests give them. They have lost the vocabulary, grammar and syntax of the Christian language.
Priests must deal with this language problem every day. What is a priest to do when words such as ‘grace, redemption, resurrection’ are no longer understood? There exist no satisfactory translations of these in modern language. Knowledge of the Christian mother tongue is gone.
On the other hand there are many words and concepts that modern Christians do understand. Think of democracy, participation, co-responsibility, power, management. But none of these terms can be simply transposed into Christian speech. They are like articles of clothing taken from the store that are always too large or too small for those who must wear them. All of these ‘modern’ terms from daily language need to be modified and corrected through the filter of Christian and Ecclesial speech. For example, ‘to lead’ is to serve, says the Church: but the two are by no means synonymous in the ordinary language of society. There, to lead is to exercise power.
In addition to linguistic poverty there is also a large amount of ignorance. For this priests are also partially responsible: adult catechism is not effective enough. However, sometimes it is the case that the priest must exhaust himself presenting and explaining things that should have been already known and be obvious by now.
"We carry this treasure in broken vessels …"
That which priests probably most suffer from is their own weakness and fragility. "We carry this treasure – the priesthood – in broken vessels …" (cf. 2 Cor 4:7). Paul talked of "the thorn in his flesh" (cf. 2 Cor 12:7). The apostle did not say precisely in what this "thorn" consisted. Was it a disease or a handicap? Moral suffering or weakness? The painful memory of his past as persecutor of the Church? A speech problem? No one will ever know. Luckily, because now it can stand for everything that can hinder the priest in his apostolic work.
Moreover, apostolic suffering is no mere accident along the way, something without significance. It is the only means God has, as Paul says, to save the priest from his tendency to trust only in himself and to count on his own powers. Paul says: "but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead …" (2 Cor 1:9).
PART II: WHAT IS A PRIEST?
More important than talking of what makes the priest happy or sad, is speaking of whom he is.
Being is more than doing
There has been much written and said in recent years about the priest. Sociologists describe his social role and explain his function in society. Psychologists examine how he feels, what his subjective world is and his psychic capacity and problems.
But all too often one attempts to define the priest by what he does; as if his doing determined his essence, and not vice versa. Many things that the priest does could also be done by others, and this casts a shadow over his originality. In this way the priest is reduced to a skeleton. But you cannot define a priest only by what he does. You must define him by what he is. And this identity is incomprehensible outside of faith. His deepest essence and being is invisible.
In persona Christi
The priest is called to a very specific task: he must make Christ present as the one who redeems and sanctifies: Christ-Head of the Church. With the faithful, priests are limbs of the body of Christ, but as priest they also stand in contrast to the faithful. They re-present (that is, they make present) Christ as Head of the Church. Of course the head cannot be separated from the limbs, but the two are also not the same. And so it is with the priest: he belongs to the faithful but also stands in contrast to them. Both priesthoods – that of Baptism and that of Ordination – differ in essence and not only in degree. They are indelible and irreducible to each other.
Thus no one is served when both priesthoods are confused or mixed up. One should not blur the distinction and not play them against each other. It concerns the integrity and the complete truth of Christ’s presence among us: as Head and limbs of the one body.
In the name of the Church
The priest stands not only in contrast to the Church community: he also stands right in the middle of it. He prays and offers the Eucharistic gifts to God in the name of the Church. How?
It is not the case that the community delegates the priest to this task. The prayer and offering of the Church are taken up in their entirety in the prayer and offering of Christ. The gifts of the Church are none other than the one offering of its Head: to this she adds nothing. Thus it is precisely because the priest represents Christ as Head of the Church, that he is able to act in the name of the limbs. Not vice versa.
The indispensable presence of the ministry of priesthood in the Church, however, means still more: it makes visible the deepest essence of the Church. The Church indeed does not make of herself what she is, but she receives herself entirely from Christ. She exists only by the grace of Christ. That is also why a priest is given to the church ‘from somewhere else’. The community may propose a candidate but may never ordain. The Christian community cannot found itself, build itself up or maintain itself. For this the ministry of priesthood is symbol and guarantee.
Preacher more than speaker
The priest speaks. But his word is the word of Christ. Certainly others besides the priest also proclaim the word. Sometimes they may even do this technically better and with more fire or enthusiasm. Laypersons sometimes have excellent theological knowledge and are well educated. Some are even more eloquent or gifted in communications or know their public better.
All of these talents and skills are indeed not given or guaranteed at ordination, though there are some requirements in this area placed upon the candidate priest. But what is specific to the priestly proclamation is not to be found here.
The priest has another charism. His speaking is a guaranteed speaking, at least when he joins with the Church’s proclamation. He carries with himself the guarantee that his preaching is ‘apostolic’, that is, a word that authentically goes back to the truth and authority of Christ and the apostles. This also goes for an awkward preacher. Paul says it well: "When I came to you I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling; and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Cor 2: 1-5). And elsewhere: "We also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the world of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God,…" 1 Thes 2: 13).
A celebrant more than a driving force
The priest celebrates the Eucharist and the other Sacraments. Even when a Sacrament is celebrated with much care, it remains very sober and modest, an unspectacular and even impoverished event. All rituals are spares and short. They have little or no visible effect, not physical and in many cases also hardly psychological. Thus the Sacraments owe their effect to somewhere else, not human riches, power of expression and impact. Their power comes from the paschal mystery of Christ. The priest alone enters the ritual circle in which Christ with His grace become present. Thus he is not always a driving force, but rather a believing celebrant who makes himself an instrument for the actions that Christ Himself performs for him. Because it is Christ who baptizes, confirms, forgives and anoints.
Shepherd more than skilful leader
The priest also has a pastoral function. But this also does not primarily draw upon his human talents and gifts. One can easily imagine people with greater ‘agogic’ gifts than he, who can lead, motivate and keep together groups, who are stronger in managing tensions and conflicts. But the essence of this leadership does not lie here. His pastoral office takes its power and legitimacy from the authority entrusted in him by Christ. "Those you hear you, hear me, and those you reject you reject me, and those you reject me reject Him who sent me." (Luke 10:16)
In fact, only through the eyes of faith is one capable of seeing what the priest genuinely is. The simple of spirit generally understand this first. Like Francis of Assisi says: "the Lord blessed me with a great trust in priests, who live following the norms of the Holy Roman Church, due to their ordination. Even if they were to persecute me, I would still seek my refuge in them. If I were to have all of the wisdom of Solomon and encounter a poor and insignificant priest who was living in sin, even then I would not want to preach against their will in the villages where they live. I wish to respect and honour them and all the others." (Testament of Francis)
PART III: THE PRIEST’S JUBILEE
On the 18th of May priests will celebrate their jubilee in Rome. Also on this day Pope John Paul II will turn 80 years of age.
A jubilee of conversion
Some people ask themselves if there really is much to be ‘jubilant’ about for priests. In many areas of Europe priests do not have it very easy. They are ‘supported’ less and less by a broad consensus of public opinion and sometimes even the wind of suspicion blows over them, which can cause them much pain.
But it is also true that ‘jubilation’ is not only a synonym for feasting. The primary purpose of this jubilee year is that of a step toward conversion. Priests wish to undergo a conversion this year. In what way?
Perhaps the first and most important ‘metanoia’ that priests must undergo this jubilee year is that of the rediscovery of their deepest essence. This is not a folding in on oneself in fruitless introversion, but a revalidation of the ‘secret’ that they carry within them and which is defining for their priesthood. They must make the transition from ‘acting’ to ‘being’. The priest needs much more to rediscover that behind everything that he ‘does’, he ‘is’ in the first place a priest. His ‘being’ precedes his ‘doing’. He fulfils his functions but prior to his ‘doing’ something, he ‘is’ a priest in the deepest part of this being. The jubilee invites priests to take on this journey inward: away from the activism and feverish urge to do, toward the peaceful realisation of their ‘being.’
This journey from the visible toward the invisible, moreover, must occur across all of the terrains of faith. Thus for Christ everything: what can be seen in Him is a person who expresses himself in human speech and human action. But from here the journey must be undertaken toward the invisible: He is primarily and before everything else, God’s own Son. The same goes for the Church: from the outside it appears to be an institute of people with its own organisation and goals. Some see it as a sort of great service club or a UNESCO with spiritual ends. But the real Church is invisible: it is the Body of Christ. The same goes again for the Sacraments: from the outside they appear simple and humble rituals, from the inside and invisibly, they are sources of divine life. Finally, all of this also applies to the priest. The transition must be made from his exterior ‘pastoral actions’ – his function – to the secret of this being, which is only accessible to the eye of faith. Outside of this eye of faith the priest is nothing more than an ordinary functionary of the sacred as can be found everywhere in all religions.
God has taken many risks
God incarnated himself and thus took on great risks.
He abandoned himself to all the vicissitudes of history, both Jewish and Christian. He entered into the (sometimes precarious) adventures of his people, with its ups and downs, its moments of faithfulness and moments of infidelity.
He even subjected himself to the adventures of transmitting a text. His message is strongly dated: it is encapsulated in a language and a worldview two thousand years old. How can this message be transported to other languages, mentalities and cultures without being untrue to its meaning.
God also abandoned himself to the adventure of the faithfulness and infidelity of the people leading the Church, already beginning with Peter.
Thus God has taken great risks by linking his transcendent mystery with human adventures, collective and individual. He also delivered himself to the cultural and temporal expression of the priesthood throughout the centuries. When his Son became man, God immediately accepted all historical mutation.
The first form of priesthood in the beginning was that of ‘travelling apostle’. The first priests had no house and scarcely a bed and table. Like Paul, they travelled continually. Later the priest took up residence, especially at the moment that the Christian faith began to establish itself in the cities. They then became (with James in Jerusalem as its head) the residential bishop and priest.
Still later came the prince-bishop. He lived in the city as defensor civitatis: he was responsible for safety, health care, education, worship and liturgy, for culture and art, for employment and welfare.
The last until now is the classical ‘pastor’: he is residential, shares his life with his faithful and preaches, celebrates and leads. Until very recently he was often an orchestrator of people just like the bishop but on a smaller scale.
It is by no means certain that this image of the priest as pastor will continue in the next century. The entire Church – bishops, priests and laypersons – will need to search out a new image of the priest for the coming years. Will the priest even remain residential? Or the all round man that he is at the moment?
The priest is something like a chameleon: he takes on the colour of the environment he is in, yet he remains the same: throughout the forms and cultural changes the priest remains the presence of Christ-Head within the local community. He remains the guarantor of the invisible in the middle of the visible, and of the gratuitousness of our redemption. Our salvation comes from elsewhere – from Christ and his Holy Spirit – and the priest is the witness and mediator of this.
New possibilities
A number of difficulties facing the priest have already been mentioned. However, there are many others.
The first of these is that society has become so pluralistic that the priest no longer commands the respect, understanding and appreciation of the entire human community. Sociologically he is no longer a figure around which unanimity exists. Faith is less and less transmitted via the bloodline of the family. Faith has more and more become the voluntary adherence to a very personal position, often no longer supported by family and friends. This means that the social legitimation of the priest is located elsewhere than it was in the past: no longer in social consensus but in a voluntary acceptance by a more limited group.
Another difficulty is that public opinion often almost exclusively defines the value and essence of someone by his or her functionality: does he do something and is he useful? The priest falls outside this functionality. His usefulness is situated in a completely different domain than that of material prosperity, affluence and efficiency.
The world is also determined by the principle of profitability. Yet the priest who is busy with invisible things can seldom produce a balance sheet at the end of the year indicating his profitability.
Due to the scarcity of priests and the greater collaboration with laypersons who insist on having a greater role, the priest is no longer capable of running a one man enterprise. He must make the transition from what is called ‘monarchical’ leadership to communitarian teamwork.
Spiritual exercises for our time
In the coming days, priests will need to practice approaching a number of things in a spiritual manner.
Firstly, priests will need to become more and more aware that being a priest is more than pastoral activity: the 'being' is more fundamental than the 'doing'. It is not acts that primarily determine what the priest is but his ordination. His inner secret is the source of his acts.
In addition, they must also become more aware of the sacramental bond that links them with Christ: they make him present in the Church as Head. This is more important than any considerations of functionality or profitability; it is also the visible sign that the Church receives its redemption from elsewhere and not from itself. The Church receives everything from Christ and the priest is sign, guarantor and instrument of this fact. He is the visible guarantee of the gratuitousness of salvation.
In this jubilee year it would also be appropriate that the priest resist the age-old seduction of Pelagianism on the part of himself and his community. They will have to put an end to the conviction that they can or must do everything themselves and that God is only there to fill in for what they cannot achieve. God's grace is not a mere helping hand at the end of the race. 'Without Me you can do nothing' says Jesus. The seduction of thinking of oneself as self-supporting or to think that everything depends upon the priest can only lead to discouragement and depression. Moreover, it is also theologically completely incorrect. Augustine was already aware of this.
A strategy to emerge from the grey zone
To progress on this path, perhaps this will help.
In all things there is no reason for unconcern or for panic. Priests need a slow process of learning to trust and receive and need to hope more strongly. Such a process of learning is always slow, because hope is only born of steadily encountering and overcoming obstacles. Hope is never given immediately: it is the virtue of ‘endurance’. This process of learning to trust occurs precisely in prayer – personal and communal – ; it is fed in practice by the Sacraments and especially by the continuous reawakening of the grace of ordination to the priesthood: "Awake the grace which is in you through the laying of my hands" Paul said to this disciple Timothy.
In the coming years, all in the Church – priests and laypersons – will need to cooperate in finding the new priesthood for the 21st century. The social and sociological function of the priest will probably have to change considerably. Will he work in an equally territorial manner according to the model of ‘each parish has its priest’? Will he need to learn to work with significantly less means? He will certainly have to draw more from the deep mystical wells of faith, hope and love. And slowly he will need to learn that being a priest is more than working a lot and being active, inspiring is more than organising. We have also reached the end of the priest as one-man-show: he will become more the axel of the turning wheel and less each spoke.
It will be more and more necessary that priests develop a deeper sense of their belonging to the presbyterate around the bishop and of their sacramental bond. Like the Scriptures say: 'A brother helped by another brother is a fortified castle".
Priests will also have to reflect more on the irreplaceable place of suffering and the cross in their apostolic life. They accept that Christ 'had' to suffer. But miss the part that says 'the disciple is not better than the Master'.
When priests suffer they all to often turn against themselves: "I probably did not perform well enough; I am inadequate. I lacked the insight, energy and skills." Or they turn against the Church: "If the Church were not such a stumbling block in the path of faith for many, all problems would be solved." But here the question arises as to whether, if the Church would be perfect – pope, bishops priests and all its members –, people would be stampeding to enter the Church and the life of faith. Christ did all that could be done; no mistake can be attributed to Him, yet he ended up being crucified on a cross. And his life was full of suffering. No apostle can avoid suffering and this apostolic suffering is a secret in the depths of his heart: that of the battle between good and evil. Paul said it like this: "I find my joy in the suffering that I endure for you. In this way I complete in my body what is missing from the suffering of Christ, for the benefit of his body the Church"
The feeling of powerlessness that overcomes many priests today can only be healed by two things: on the one hand, a deeper belief that it is Christ and Christ alone who saves us; on the other hand, by concentrating more on the mystery of the Cross of Christ: "It is through his wounds that we are healed, not through his successes. This feeling of powerlessness can only be driven out by a long contemplative look at the powerlessness that Christ endured on Good Friday. Only contemplation can save us from the anxiety of our apostolic inadequacy, not an intensification of our extraversion in still more activism. The heart lives only from the alternation between expansion and contraction, between diastole and systole, between action and quietude.
Loving the Church as it is
The priest is a man of the Church: He participates in its 'image' and is rightly identified with it. Critique of the Church touches him deeply and causes him suffering. The priest cannot live a life of schizophrenia: on the one hand servant of the Church and on the other hand distance himself from the Church in certain areas, be a servant and critical outsider at the same time.
Entering the Church has always been accompanied by a sort of shock. What was so attractive to the first Christians that they became Christians at the risk of death? Or later in the Middle Ages, a Church plagued with lust for power and simony? Or during the French revolution where hundreds of priests and religious were killed? To say nothing of the period of the former East Block. Or of countries where Christians feel the warm breath of a dictator on their neck.
However old the Church might be, it has never sclerosed. It has always left the safety of its homeport in order to embrace the unknown: in other cultures and among other peoples. Modern culture is also often 'a land of Zebulon and Naphtali, a land of darkness and a Galilee of heathens.' Priests – and all who want to engage in the Church – must love the Church, as it is.
Toward a Church with impoverished means?
The priests of today will certainly have to look in many places for solutions to the shortage of priests: regrouping parishes, making pastoral work more efficient, setting priorities – they can no longer do everything! – redistribution of the pool of priests, using laypersons for work in the Church. And much more.
But there will probably be more required than the work of dispatching and re-conversion. We will peacefully and cheerfully have to accept that in the future we, as Church, will have to learn to live a poorer life: in finances, personnel, prestige and impact, media influence, perhaps even poorer in grey matter, competence and academic education. Certainly poorer in number.
But there is hope: a poor Church does not necessarily mean a lessening of evangelical quality and strength: her love of God and people does not therefore have to become less. Such poverty can even make one richer. How?
It can free us from a 'headstrong or arrogant and overconfident vision' in the area of the pastoral, renewal and the new evangelisation. It is not what we plan that is important, but what God wishes for us in the future. Perhaps this poverty will make all in the Church – priests and laypersons – more sensitive to essential values. Especially priests: for the deep secret of our calling, the power of ordination, faith in the irrepressible power of the Gospel averse to all decoration or rhetoric, trusting in the silent power of the Sacraments and valuing a more a more spiritual and slimmed down leadership. Thus did Israel fare during the Babylonian captivity: all points of support disappeared: king, temple, country, priests. But Israel's faith was purified and its dedication became stronger. It is here also that the prophets wrote their most beautiful texts including those on the 'motherhood' of God. Perhaps God wishes to again lead us into such a Babylonian captivity, which purifies and finally enriches and especially strips us of the seduction to self-sufficiency. That would be a great grace for the jubilee year 2000.
The Jubilee Convention of Priests of the Archdiocese of Dublin