Today is also called Vocation Sunday which traditionally has been dedicated to the promotion of priestly and/or consecrated life. Parishes used to host elaborate bazaars where diocesan seminarians and various religious mingle around to promote the calling to priestly and/or religious life. These days, a shift may have taken place as the emphasis is placed on the universal call to holiness.[1] In other words, every baptised person is called to holiness. There is no such thing as a “higher calling” for the priestly and/or religious vocation. Under this universal clarion, married couples have as much responsibility to answer the call to live the fullness of Christian life and embrace the perfection of charity.
Furthermore, in some parts of the world, vocation to priestly and/or religious life is mostly unheard of. In fact, the more developed the economy is and the more progressive the society is, the more unnecessary is this call. In particular, a priest may have limited utility for people who grieve or those who need to signal a rite of social passage, like baptism, confirmation, marriage and funeral. Otherwise, he is superfluous. This situation basically reflects society’s lack of need for God and fundamentally, it is an indication that God is redundant. More and more the priesthood (and by extension religious life) is becoming irrelevant in a dystopian worldview that has painted God out of the picture.
In the context of this pandemic, there is a yearning detected and also a weakness revealed. Firstly, the general mood is that every nation has been trying to get back to where we were. What were we? From the mouth of Pitbull[2], “No doubt about it”, we are straining to return to that domain where “You can do what you wanna do. And do who you wanna do. Be what you wanna be. Freak who you wanna freak”. We yearn for the life we knew before Covid-19 blanketed us. There is a mental fatigue that comes from this loss of “freedom” and we are craving for the unregimented life we were accustomed to. Such a longing is natural but our Covid response may have just uncovered our unchallenged practical atheism[3]. In a certain sense, humanity wants to get back to an almost “Godless” past rendering any talk of priestly/religious vocation rather mindless. Why should we be concerned about a vocation which is slowly but surely relegated into irrelevance?
Good Shepherd Sunday is perhaps a chance to get reacquainted with the significance of Holy Orders. What is it to be a priest in the context of sacramental theology? It is to be an extension of Christ. According to the Catechism, “…in the age of the Church, Christ lives and acts in and with His Church through the sacraments”.[4]
Since the Sacraments are actions of Christ done through the Church, we can appreciate the powerful instrumentality of Holy Orders. Christ instituted this Sacrament so that He can save humanity. But, in these days as we are rightly reminded of human frailty and moral fragility, there is no currency for the priesthood. Such a despairing sentiment whilst proper actually reveals how poor and dependent we are. This question of why God chooses weak men to serve His Church comes a position of strength, a position which thinks that the strength of the Gospel message lies in the personal prowess of the messenger. But, every single Apostles in the Upper Room was nothing but weakness personified. Peter denied Jesus. Thomas doubted Him. Prior to that, Judas sold Jesus out. The current scandals only illustrate for us that from prince to pauper, no one is immune from the indignity of succumbing to human weaknesses. There is no doubt that everyone from clergy to congregation ought to be more professional. The idea being that weaknesses, heinous human flaws do not invalidate Christ’s means of salvation.
The priesthood is vital to the mission of Christ in saving humanity. St Paul writing to the Romans, speak of “how others are to hear if no one preaches to them”. In the context of the universal call to holiness, that is, the priesthood of all the baptised, every Christian is to preach with his or her life the Gospel truth. However, two quotes from St John Mary Vianney may help us understand the heart of this particular vocation to the priesthood. Firstly, he says, “There is nothing so great as the Eucharist. If God had something more precious, He would have given it to us”. Secondly, "O, how great is the priest! ... If he realised what he is, he would die... God obeys him: he utters a few words and the Lord descends from heaven at his voice, to be contained within a small host". This second quote must be contextualised especially in an age of personality cult. Instead, it should be read in light of Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel, where Jesus declared to the Jewish crowd, which subsequently abandoned Him, that eternal life is premised on eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood. He did not hedge or fudge on this requirement. The Sacrament of Holy Orders is the guarantee given by Him that the Church will always have the power to confect His Body and His Blood so that our passage to eternal life can be assured.
Holy Orders is necessary for Christ’s earthly mission to save the world. St Pio Pietrelcina said this, “It would be easier for the world to survive without the sun than to do without Holy Mass”. For this reason, we should never stop praying for more vocations in general and to the priesthood in particular.[5]
Today is a day for the appreciation of the Sacrament of Holy Orders. It is not a focus on the person of the priest. Rather, in the light of Easter, the priesthood was instituted by Christ for the mission of salvation. Without the priest, there is no Eucharist. Without the Eucharist, there is no Church. Without the Church, there is no salvation. Christ cannot save virtually. He cannot even save with a magic wand. He saves sacramentally. Through Holy Orders, Jesus gives us His Body and Blood, the only food that can sustain the pilgrim on the journey to eternity.
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[1]Lumen gentium (LG5). Dogmatic Constitution of the Church
[2]Pitbull, aka Armando Christian Pérez, the American rapper in the music video from the TV series Empire, featuring Jussie Smollet.
[3]Simply defined as belief in God but living as if there is no God.
[4]Despite our awe with technology and its powerful applications, salvation does not come from human capability. We tend to forget that programmes, no matter how sophisticated they are in themselves, do not save. It may be true to an extent, as witnessed in history, that Man has, by and large, solved the problem of human hunger. But what happens when human efforts fail? The pandemic gives us the answer on two front. Firstly, human solutions provide the condition for the possibility of human flourishing. Secondly, more importantly, programmes can only do that much. No matter how much it can accomplish, salvation belongs to Christ alone. This means we need Christ. We need the Sacraments.
[5]It is ironical that we idolise people through the cult of personality and yet recoil at the “pedestalisation” of the priest. But this is for a good reason because the person of the priest is NOTHING more than a signpost to the sacred. Sadly, through personality cult, he has been reduced to be a purveyor of preferences. Even if a priest chose to obey the liturgical rites of the Church, that would be read as his “personal preferences”. Instead of pointing to Christ, in the cult of personality, unwittingly, the priest is relegated to pointing at himself. This process itself places a limitation on his effectiveness as a sacrament of Christ.
