Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests

14 | GUIDE TO ONGOING FORMATION FOR PRIESTS

II wrote in Pastores Dabo Vobis , “which demands that he be a witness to Christ’s spousal love and thus be capable of loving people with a heart which is new, generous and pure.” 24 He will be eager to administer the sacraments: washing souls in the regenerating waters of Baptism, healing them in Penance and Reconciliation and in the Anointing of the Sick, and uniting Christian couples in the sacrament of Holy Matrimony. He will rejoice particularly in providing his spiritual sons and daughters with the spiritual nourishment found in the Eucharist, the “source and summit” of our faith and indeed of his priesthood. 25 A holy and healthy priest will find his happiness in humble service, seeking not “to be served but to serve” (Mt 20:28). He recognizes in the people he serves the talents meant to build up the Body of Christ, and he promotes the proper autonomy of the lay vocation: to “seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God.” 26 He will find repugnant any semblance of a clericalist mindset that lords authority over his people, 27 or even its subtler manifes tation that seeks to “clericalize the laity” by reducing the dignity of their vocation to official church organizations or roles in the Sacred Liturgy. He will readily collaborate with all the baptized, recognizing their genuine and vital participation in the mission of the Church. 28 In the image of the priest’s anointing (quoted in paragraph 33), Pope Francis points to a beautiful truth about the nature of pastoral charity and maturation in priestly ministry. There is a wonderful reciprocal rela tion between the priest and his people that leads to mutual human and 36. 37.

24

PDV, no. 22.

25 See Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), no. 11, in T he Documents of Vatican II , ed. Walter M. Abbott (New York: Corpus Books, 1966). Subsequently cited as LG. “In fact, there is an intimate connection among the centrality of the Eucharist, pastoral charity and the unity of the life of the priest, who therein finds decisive indications for the way to holiness to which he has been specifically called.” DMLP, no. 66. 26 LG, no. 31. 27 “The specificity of the ministerial priesthood, however, is defined not on the basis of its supposed ‘superi ority’ over the common priesthood, but rather by the service it is called to carry out for all the faithful so they may adhere to the mediation and Lordship of Christ rendered visible by the exercise of the ministe rial priesthood.” DMLP, no. 6. 28 See CIC, c. 275 §2.