To better understand the Sacrament of Holy Orders and its relevance in the life of the Church, we need to ask two questions. Firstly, what is the Church? Secondly, what does Christ have in mind for His Church?
Is it the desire of Jesus that the Church be a gathering of like-minded do-gooders? To be fair, being good and doing good are taught by all religions and not just restricted to Christianity. Buddhism, Hinduism or Islam command their adherent the same too, do they not? Or should we flow with the trend that since all religions teach their followers to be and to do good, then it matters not which religion one embraces except that one should be and do good?
The idea that all religions are the same raises the question of what membership in the Church is for. After all every religion leads to the same end of being and doing good, membership is irrelevant. Thus it is essential to know what Christ has in mind for the Church. Membership has to be more than being and doing good. The famous chapter of the multiplication in John 6 is instructive.
In the subsequent conversation after feeding the 5000, Jesus invited the hearers to consider the supernatural food and drink He would offer. The attainment of eternal life is premised on eating His Body and drinking His Blood. In the exchange with the crowd, Jesus did not mince His words with regard to the necessity of consuming His Body and imbibing His Blood for eternal salvation. The crowd was so aghast because the proposal of Jesus tended towards cannibalism that everyone abandoned Him. Importantly, He made no attempts to stop them. Even though John’s Gospel carries no account of the Institution of the Eucharist, this episode leaves us without any doubt that Jesus was serious about eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood. If that be the case, then Jesus must make available the food and drink required for salvation.
He has kept His promise through His Church and very specifically through the Sacrament of Holy Orders. The Church is the ordinary instrument of salvation willed by Christ, making the priesthood the means for Him to ensure that eternal salvation can reach His Body. The Priesthood is His bloodline to the Body.
The Church is variously described of as the People of God, the Bride of Christ or the Body of Christ. The last description provides an organic sense that joins the Church to Christ. If Christ is the Head, then the Church is His Body. It is in and for this Body that the priesthood makes the greatest sense as the Sacrament of Orders is necessary for the proper functioning of the Church.
The Head looks after His Body through His priests. But there is a crisis in vocation number. This crisis challenges our understanding of the Church and the necessity of the Sacrament of Eucharist for salvation.
Do we need the Eucharist or not? We already know that eating His Body and drinking His Blood is not a figurative suggestion but a real command. We are speaking here in the context of ordinary salvation. We accept that Holy Communion is sine qua non for salvation, which means that the Lord must provide the means for the availability of the Sacrament. Thus, the lack of vocation poses a problem which highlights the problem not on God’s side but ours. If Holy Communion is Christ’s lifeline for our salvation, then God cannot have stopped calling. We have stopped responding.
The lack of response is possibly the painful reality that we do not believe Holy Communion is indispensable for the salvation of our souls. In other words, while we believe that God saves ordinarily through His Church, our practice is that God saves extraordinarily. It means that Holy Communion is not really that essential for salvation.
If we do need Holy Communion to gain eternal life, then the lack of vocation should spur the young men of the parish to give the Catholic priesthood a serious thought. To be a priest is to be another Christ so that he can give to the Catholic faithful, the Body and Blood of Christ. The priest does not need to be anything else. His only use is to confect and give the Sacrament of Sacraments only because he alone can.
We have to pray for more vocations. Get this into our heads that without the foundation of a ministerial priesthood, the whole Church will crumble. This is not clericalism at all. It is a statement of fact. Priests are sinners no doubt. Presently, our false sense of righteousness is hyper-focused on the weaknesses of the priesthood forgetting that Christ did not choose powerful men to be His apostles. He chose these weak men so that they can represent Him to the world. A priest does not have to be a great preacher, a brilliant theologian or a charismatic leader. Anybody can be those but no everyone can be a priest and only a priest can stand in the person of Christ.
The young men of the Cathedral should consider a life of service as Christ’s instrument to make sure that His Church is fed with His Body. Think about the bees. The female worker bee and the queen bee both have the same genes. The difference is the diet. A female worker larva is fed with royal jelly and it will develop into a queen bee. Likewise, eating the Body of Christ prepares us for eternal life. Who to feed the Church the Bread of Angels if not Jesus Christ Himself through His priests, the alter Christus? I leave you with two questions. 1. Where have all the young men gone to? 2. Right now, you still have the luxury of changing parishes. Do not like the priest, the politics or the liturgy, run to another parish. But how far can you run and for how long? Until you run out of priests?
