Guide to Ongoing Formation for Priests

CHAPTER 1: PRIESTLY LIFE | 15

spiritual growth. 29 Pope Francis speaks of a generous humble priest coming to “feel and taste” his full identity as a priest through his relationship with his people. A priest who is open to the dignity and gifts of his people and willing to enter into communion with them in their faith, hope, trials, and joys will be formed by them. He embraces the beauty and value of the co-re sponsibility of all baptized in building the Kingdom. Even as he helps his people grow through his ministry, his people will help him become a better minister of God’s grace and mercy. The priest will benefit from his people’s wisdom and insights to grow in understanding. The goodness and holiness of his people can inspire him to seek a deeper union with his Savior. Their struggles and heartaches will move him to have recourse to intercession and teach him to preach a word that will comfort and renew hope. The various difficulties of his people will lead him to seek practical means to assist. For example, the pastor of an immigrant community may need to help his people with medical and legal aid or adult education. These are not things most priests are trained to do, but with generous hearts they will grow in order to serve their people. In these ways, the community will draw him into greater pastoral charity and help form in the priest a deeper iden tity as spouse and father that will inspire and enliven “his daily existence, enriching it with gifts and demands, virtues and incentives.” 30 To flourish, a priest will take great care to fulfill the promises that he made on the day of his ordination. He will see his celibate commitment as a path to undivided love for God and for his people, a living witness to supernatural realities, a fitting complement to his spousal love for the Church, and a privileged way of living spiritual fatherhood. His obedience to the Church, and specifically to his diocesan bishop and the Holy Father, will be mature, free, and ungrudging. 31 Praying for the Church and espe 29 St. John Paul II asserts a similar point when he speaks of communion between the priest and his people as formative: “Those responsible for the ongoing formation of priests are to be found in the Church as ‘communion.’ In this sense, the entire particular church has the responsibility, under the guidance of the bishop, to develop and look after the different aspects of her priests’ permanent formation. Priests are not there to serve themselves but the People of God. So, ongoing formation, in ensuring the human, spiritual, intellectual and pastoral maturity of priests, is doing good to the People of God itself. Besides, the very exercise of the pastoral ministry leads to a constant and fruitful mutual exchange between the priest’s life of faith and that of the laity. Indeed the very relationship and sharing of life between the priest and the community, if it is wisely conducted and made use of, will be a fundamental contribution to permanent formation, which cannot be reduced to isolated episodes or initiatives, but covers the whole ministry and life of the priest.” PDV, no. 78. 30 PDV, no. 27. 31 “By its very nature, the ordained ministry can be carried out only to the extent that the priest is united to Christ through sacramental participation in the priestly order, and thus to the extent that he is in hierar chical communion with his own bishop. The ordained ministry has a radical ‘communitarian form’ and can only be carried out as ‘a collective work’ (Angelus, Feb. 25, 1990).” PDV, no. 17. See also CIC, c. 273. 38.