Young people often ask us: “Why did you become a priest?” That’s difficult to put into a few words… Something happened to us. About this we have no doubts. We call it “a vocation.” It happened to us, certainly much more than anything we did. We stumbled upon it. We found it within us. And yet we freely choose it. But there is something that preceded it: we call it grace – a kind of special election. We were surely not better than others. But we were different. And what were the signs of this vocation? Two things. We felt ourselves drawn in two directions: to God and to people. We found within ourselves a ‘fragile’ heart. That became so clear to us when we heard the Gospel. There were words and sentences that went right to our hearts, and afterwards we could not forget them. Each of us has some special preferred texts that continue to inspire us. We carry them deep within us, throughout our lives.

There is also a special link between us and Christ. In some way, deep in our hearts we have been ‘wounded’ by Him. And we will never recover from that wound. His image goes with us in everything we think, say and do. We hold on to Him tightly.

We are immediately captivated by the poor and the lowly, by the sick and by children. From their lips we hear the very voice of Christ. Even though we sometimes resist, in the end we can do nothing but turn to them. Otherwise we find no peace. And this sensitive heart sometimes plays tricks on us. From time to time people say: “You people really don’t know the world. You are boundlessly naïve. You speak a strange language and you don’t behave normally. You are idealists who don’t belong to this world. There is not much we can offer by way of response. Except this: It is neither our fault – nor our reward. We simply can’t do otherwise because we cannot cut ourselves off from Christ.

Our greatest encounter with Christ comes in the celebration of Eucharist. Even when the liturgy is rather simple and there are few people in church, it is still a genuine encounter with Christ. Each time we experience it again: “Was it not ordained that the Christ should suffer and so enter into His glory?” (Luke 24:26) That glow of the Eucharist is sometimes tempered during the liturgy just because we have so many practical things running through our minds. We recapture that glow in Eucharistic adoration. That adoration is nothing other than an interiorizing of the celebration.

 

Through word and sacrament, we bring life to people: a fountain of life and vitality begins to flow forth. It is not us but Christ. It is He who baptizes, who confirms, who forgives and who anoints. But He has no other mouth, no other lips or voice; and no other hands and feet that ours. We are channel and instrument. The priest is therefore not only the prophet who announces what is to come. He is also the father who gives life. Ignatius of Antioch said it long ago: “the bishop and the priest are fathers.” The priest is father, the one who gives life. Even with the tainted term that we have inherited today – paternalism – there is no reason to turn away from the priest as father. All good things have their occasionally negative connotations. Paul writes: “You might have thousands of guardians in Christ, but not more than one father. And it was I who begot you in Christ Jesus by preaching the Good News.” (I Corinthians 4:15) We can say with all modesty and humility: We are fathers.

Anyone who loves Christ is also passionate about the Church. Whoever loves the Head also loves the members. We love the Church. And yes we can suffer because of her. In the Church there is also weakness, compromise, sloth, complacency and sin. But even with all of this the Church still carries within it a great secrete: the Church is the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. And isn’t it true that we priests love the Church more the older we get. That seems to be the case with Paul as well. His perspective on the Church was more affectionate, more refined and more steadfast in his later letters: Ephesians, Colossians and Philippians. There, for the first time, the Church is called: “glorious, with so speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless.” (Ephesians 5:27) 

Yes we criticize the Church. Sometimes justly. Sometimes unjustly. But then we open our eyes to all that we have received from the Church: the scriptures, the sacraments and our pastoral ministry terrain. From her we have the ministries of bishop and presbyter. And our allotted part of the People of God through whom we are enabled to serve the Lord.

We owe all credit to the Church. When all those children, the sick, the poor and all the unfortunate people with their depressions and anxieties come to us, we must thank the Church. We are really quite unworthy to take pleasure in so much trust placed in us. Who are we? We do not deserve the credit for this.

We also have the joy of interiority. That is above all the joy of prayer. Prayer can be hard and dry. But even in those moments it remains the fountain that offers a refreshing drink in the heat of the day. Or the fire that warms us when we are surrounded by so much cold indifference. Because when we pray a hard crust falls away from our hearts and we regain our freedom and responsiveness. We escape the busyness that leaves us out of breath by forgetting ourselves and turning to praise and thanksgiving. Our hearts open wide – as wide as the seaside. This is especially true when we pray the psalms. When we feel sad and discouraged, a psalm of praise, that we happen to come across in the ebb and flow of daily prayer, teaches us that we can speak in the name of countless believers who are joyful and happy. And the other way around – a lamentation or a psalm calling for mercy on a bright summer day makes us immediately aware that the Church in other parts of the world suffers in the pains of countless believers. The psalms free us from the cramped restrictions of our occasional moods.

And the prayer of the priest knows yet another joy: we can speak on behalf of other people. All the intentions of our communities and the entire world are entrusted to us. We are like Moses speaking from the mountain while the Israelites are fighting among themselves down below. But he needed the help of Aaron and Hur. We priests need the help of the supportive community that helps us to pray.

There is a Gospel text that grasps us in a special way: “And everyone who has left houses, brothers, sisters, father, mother, children or land for the sake of my name will be repaid a hundred times over, and also inherit eternal life.” (Matthew 19:27) There is joy in being able to free oneself from and set aside good things. Today in this time of attachment to so many things it can be troublesome for us priests as well. Detachment can also bring contentment.

There is joy in giving up a high salary and comfort and security in the future and living a sober and impoverished life. No one can escape the charm of the ‘Franciscan passages’ in the Gospel about “the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.” We feel spontaneously that along this path a very unique kind of happiness is to be found. And that is true for the celibate lifestyle as well. And obedience for us is not coercion. It is freeing yourself, by your own choice, to engage yourself in the powerful jet stream of God’s plans for the Church. Obedience doubles your energy because it puts you online with God’s powerful will. A poor, pure and obedient person refines his capabilities. He sees more clearly, hears with greater sensitivity and feels more intensely. And certainly he feels more intensely pain and suffering for the sake of God’s Kingdom. Indeed, the person who hears clearly hears better all the loud noise. But he hears all the lovely music much better as well!

But…these days we priests have a difficult time. There is pain. Even when we struggle to bear it with faith and trust.

The number of priests is diminishing and they are getting older. There are not many vocations. Sometimes it cuts deep into the heart of today’s priest: when I am gone, will people still have a priest? And the work just continues to pile up: we just can’t do everything anymore and not as well as when younger. And that’s a painful reality.

Of course we know that evangelization is not just a matter of quantity. Nor is it the first time in history that there are “too few laborers for the harvest.” Jesus said it as well. The fact that each parish no longer has its own resident priest is not the end of the world. That has happened before and in other places as well. But we know how invigorating it was when each parish had its own priest and each priest could live within his own community and didn’t have to care for other communities without always being able to be there. Certainly lay people come to help when the priest just can’t do any more. But experience teaches that lay people quickly call for a priest for the support and the encouragement to carry on.

Priests today live much closer to the people than before. They experience a lot with them: both pain and joy. In a few minutes they must quickly shift from the intense sadness at a funeral to the immense joy of a wedding or baptism. That asks a lot from the priestly heart. The shifting of feelings and the sympathetic living-along-with are very tiring. But they bring serenity and contentment as well.

Pastoral ministry is often ‘standing between two shores.’ Which priest does not know the tension between law and mercy, between doctrinal teaching and actual life practice, between being demanding and showing understanding? Between what the big Church demands and what the simple poor soul can minimally do. Some people demand from the priest a strict orthodoxy with every ‘I’ dotted and every ‘t’ crossed. Others turn to him for realism and a sensitivity for adaptation and enculturalization. A priest can get caught in the bind between progressives and conservatives. He is like a kind of St. Christopher who must continually carry the Christ Child back and forth from one shore to the other.

Priests today find themselves more and more confronted with questions for which there are no easy answers. This is especially true in the area of morality: the aids problem, bioethics, ethical issues in economics and politics, the abortion and euthanasia issues, the painful problem of divorce and remarriage in the Church, etc. I think as well about the criteria for who can receive Eucharist.

Once upon a time these kinds of issues seemed to be found most often in the office of the moral theologian at the major seminary. Today you find them in every living room, as you watch the evening news on television. People turn to their priests with questions: what should we think and what should we do? Priests in their ordinary apostolate are not specialists: they were not trained as family doctors and general practitioners. But people today demand straight and clear-cut answers and preferably right away. And we all know that just one televised interview can create more problems in a few minutes than the advice of a council of wise men. What can a humble priest do?

To answer all these questions is no simple task. And it certainly is not made any easier when one realizes that for many Christians the deforestation of Christian memory is just about complete. They no longer posses the necessary Christian understandings and terminology. They simply lack the Christian thought categories that would enable them to understand the answers they receive. They have lost their Christian mother tongue. This of course multiplies the difficulties for their understanding the Church’s response to their questions.

Every day priests are confronted with these language problems and shaky catechesis. They try their best to respond; but people have great difficulty understanding the answers to their problems. And quite often there simply are not any truly helpful new words. Where does one find, in contemporary language usage, contemporary words for things such as: grace, forgiveness, resurrection… These words belong uniquely to our Christian mother tongue. They have to be learned. You can’t find them in contemporary modern language usage. On the other hand there are indeed a number of words that contemporary people do know: authority, democracy, participation, shared responsibility, power, control … But all these concepts and words are not so readily and easily applied to the Church. They are like articles of clothing that one takes off the hangers in the store and you think: that might work for me, I will try on that one. And so you try on a jacket and find that it is too narrow or too wide. It is not made to fit you. That’s the way it is with these words: as such they are never completely applicable to the Church: there its power but it is spiritual, government but it is service more than giving orders. Democracy, yes but not completely. True authority comes not just from below but from our founder Christ.

We are confronted today with an immense poverty of language when it comes to Christian understandings and words. Immense ignorance. Not so long ago a priest told me: “It wears me out trying to bring things up, point to things and explain things that for a Christian ought to be obvious and speak for themselves.” Catechesis and Christian formation today require tremendous effort.

What we priests suffer most from today is our own frailty and weakness. “We carry this treasure – priesthood – in fragile vessels.” (II Corinthians 12:7) Paul spoke about a ‘thorn in the flesh.’ And each priest carries that thorn in the flesh as well. The Apostle never explained what that thorn was. An illness or a handicap? Moral suffering or weakness? The painful old memory of when he hunted the followers of Christ. A speech impediment? Chronic sickness or pain? No one will ever know. It’s probably better that way. The ‘thorn in the flesh’ is everything deep within us that hinders our doing priestly work.

In the life of every priest there is something that he repeatedly asks of God: “God, take that away from me: It will be for you and your best advantage. I can then serve you as a much better priest. I will work more effectively.” But God always responds: “If I take that away you really would not serve me better. My grace is sufficient for you. Strength springs from weakness.” (cf II Corinthians 12:9)

The sufferings of the apostle – then and now – are no accident along the way, no afterthought. That suffering is inescapable. Because…it is the only sure way the apostle has to protect himself from relying just on himself and his own energies. It protects us from pride and from the idea that we can accomplish a lot without God’s grace.

But yes this ‘thorn in the flesh’ does bring suffering with it and makes priesthood and priestly ministry more difficult.

Much more important than knowing what we feel is knowing who we are as priests.

 

In recent years much has been said and written about the priest. There are divergent views about him. Each person speaks and tries to define the priest from his or her own particular discipline. The sociologist defines the place of the priest by the role and function he plays in society. The psychologist describes how he feels and his strengths as well as his psychological problems.

Most often people describe the priest by what he does: his function defines his being. That is correct yet it really does not get to the deepest being of the priest. And on top of that, there are a number of things that someone other than a priest can do. Especially when there is a scarcity of priests many of his responsibilities are assumed by lay people. And happily so. But if you want to determine what a priest is by what he does, cut off from what others can do, you end up with just some residual functions, regardless of fact that they are indispensible for the community: Eucharist and confession. This reduces the priest to a kind of skeleton. The priest cannot be adequately defined by what he does. This is true of course about the meaning of man and woman: if you only look at men and women in terms of their biological characteristics, you fall into a roll pattern type description that just doesn’t work. Men and women do a great many similar things; but they do them differently. So too the priest: everything he does, he does as priest and this is much more than just his specific functions. The priest can only be described in terms of what he is. And this cannot be grasped outside of faith: in order to understand what the priest is we have to look at him from the perspective of God, Christ and the Church.

The deepest roots of being-priest are found in Christ who calls and who sends. But aren’t all believers sent out? Where then is the

difference?

The priest is sent for a very specific task: to make Christ present in the Church as Head, as the one who redeems and who sanctifies. All believers are members of the Body of Christ, but Christ is the Head. To be distinguished from all believers, priests are those who represent and make present Christ as Head. The head is not separate from the body; but they are not the same thing. The same is true of the priest: in solidarity with all the faithful, he remains one vis-à-vis. He belongs to the people but is also set apart. There are two priesthoods that of baptism and that of ordination. The two are not the same; they differ substantially and are not interchangeable. It is true that the priesthood ordination stands in service to the baptismal priesthood. The only reason for the existence of the priest is that the priest is completely focused on the existence of the community of believers: to enable believers, in all they are and all they do, to make “a spiritual sacrifice” to God.

No one is well served when the two priesthoods are confused or mixed together or the boundaries confused; nor when they are artificially placed in opposition to each other. For priests it is tremendously important that they be ever MORE priest. And for lay people that they be ever MORE lay people.

Within himself the priest bears a special presence of Christ: in a very special way he is clothed by the Holy Spirit, in a truly unique way. That doesn’t keep him from failure, or from sin. Only his genuinely priestly acts are guaranteed: his preaching and his sacramental actions. But his other activities are sometimes well marked and wounded by human inadequacy and mistakes.

The priest stands not just at the side of the community of the Church. He also stands in the very middle. He prays and offers to God the Eucharistic gifts. In the name of the Church.

It is not the community that delegates him to pray and offer in priestly fashion. It is the prayer and self-offering of Christ that occurs through his hands. And it is precisely because the priest represents Christ the Head that he can do this.

But the indispensable presence of the priest in the church means even much more. Priesthood also makes the deepest essence of the Church visible: the Church does not make itself what it is but receives itself completely from Christ. He makes the Church what it is. The Church does not exist by virtue of itself. It is not a self-made power. When the Church says and does something it does that through the empowerment and commission of Christ. The Church on its own does not create priestly ministry: the Church receives it from Christ.

The priest therefore is given to the Church ‘from elsewhere.’ Of course the community can propose a candidate but cannot ordain him priest and commission him. The Christian community, as such, cannot establish itself, build itself and maintain itself. The community receives its identity ‘from elsewhere.’ And the ministerial priest is both the sign and the guarantee for the gratuitous nature of the Church.

And none of this is pejorative for the lay person. Priests and lay people work complementarily: you can’t divorce them from each other and they are not competitors. There are situations in which lay people can assume some of the tasks ordinarily fulfilled by the priest. And that is hardly a new occurrence in the Church. But when lay people do this, they really don’t ‘replace’ the priest: his chair remains symbolically empty. People wait for the priest.

There is certainly more than just one theology of priesthood. Why is this so? Because it is not all that clear what priesthood is? Absolutely not. The reason is because priesthood is such a rich reality that you cannot adequately fit it into just one theology.

Some theologies look at the priest primarily as a minister of the word. But then that is more than strictly the proclamation of the word. In the sacraments as well we find powerful words. They are definitive and effective. They are so strong that they move far beyond the capacities and reach of the speaker. Sacraments are ‘exalted words.’ And it is through that word that the entire community is pastorally held together. And above all, through the greatest word: the Eucharist. This is the theology of people like Walter Kasper.

Other theologies are rooted in Eucharistic ministry. Here the priest is the one who primarily makes present the Pascal Sacrifice of Christ. But this presupposes that first of all the word is preached because proclamation must awaken and lead to faith; and faith is absolutely essential for the Eucharistic celebration. And it is also true that the priest, through his Eucharistic ministry, makes the community one and keeps it together. Therefore from this perspective the three priestly functions are guaranteed: word, sacrament and pastoral leadership. This has been the classical theology of priesthood since the days of scholasticism.

Other theologies see priesthood primarily in the reality of the priest as the one who assures and maintains the unity of the community. He is the shepherd who keeps all together through the power of Christ’s Spirit. And here he follows two paths: preaching and sacrament.

No single theology is sufficient and exhaustive. Each puts the accent on one dimension and the others remain somewhat in the shadow. In fact,  priesthood can only be comprehended through the eyes of faith – making Christ present in the Church. All theological perspectives have their inadequacy and bias.

Running through all of these perspectives however is a golden thread: the priest is the one who enables Christ to continue speaking in His Church, to make holy and to govern. Through him, Christ continues to visit His people with the Gospel, the sacraments and pastoral love ‘until He comes again.’

The priest speaks the word out of Christ. Certainly others proclaim the word in Church, sometimes technically better, sometimes perhaps with greater theological understanding and more real talent for speaking. Ordination does not guarantee that the priest will be a good communicator. His charism lies elsewhere: his word is a guaranteed word when he is linked-up with the tradition and the teaching of the Church. His preaching is apostolic, which means that, without any falsehood, it goes back to Christ and the apostles. That is guaranteed. It is the very word that Christ, here and now, speaks to His community. This is true for even the lost awkward of preachers. Even if his word does not have a great psychological impact, does not move people and has no success…it is still Christ’s word and irreplaceable. Paul, himself, considered himself a poor preacher: “When I came to you, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.” (I Corinthians 2:1-5)

And later we read: “We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is: God’s word.” (I Thessalonians 2:13)

The priest celebrates Eucharist and the other sacraments. Sacraments – even when they are very nicely done – are really not so spectacular. They are small gestures with a few words. The ritual is always brief and humble. It has very little visible or tangible effect: neither physical nor psychological. Eucharist doesn’t really satisfy hunger. Baptism doesn’t wash us. Sometimes the ritual is not very stirring. It remains cold. Sacraments do not get their operation out of these very impoverished effects. Their power comes from somewhere else: from the Paschal mystery of Christ that is made present through priestly ministry. Even if the priest has little talent to inspire and animate, the sacramental effect comes from elsewhere and not from his human ability to influence.

The priest has a pastoral ministry. But he does not get this first of all from his human talents and ability. One can easily find other people who often have more talent to lead and direct, to motivate and to keep people together, to resolve conflicts and to temper tensions. But this is not the specific pastoral ministry of the priest. He draws his authority not from himself or from his own abilities. It comes to him from Christ: “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” (Luke 10:16) Anyone who reads Paul can nit get around it. He leads his communities with the authority of Christ.

Isn’t this dangerous? Is there not a temptation to pride or hubris? Indeed: the Bible warns about shepherds who feed themselves and oppress their flock. But there is also the community that reminds him of his duty to humility and service. And on top of that the pain that comes with all leadership and responsibility, especially in these days: that in itself is very humbling.

Actually, only through the eyes of faith can we see who the priest is: a man of God even if he has defects, shortcomings and sinfulness. Sometimes simple people realize this right away. They have a pre-logical understanding if what the priest is. Like Francis of Assisi: “the Lord has given me great trust in the priests who, by virtue of their ordination, live according to the norms of the holy Roman Church. Even if they would prosecute me, I would still go to them for refuge. Even if I would have the wisdom of Solomon, and should meet poor little priests living in sin, I would still not want to preach against their will in the towns where they live. Them and all the others I will respect, obey and honor.” (Testament St. Francis) And it was a simple woman from Shunem who saw in Elisha a man of God, and said to her husband: “Let us make a small roof chamber with walls, and put there for him a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp, so that he can stay there whenever he comes to us.” (II Kings 4:10)

 

There are fewer priests and they are getting older. It is an issue that affects all of us. There is cause for concern and the faithful realize that. But not all.

But there is real cause for concern. But not for panic. There are still priests and new ones are coming along as well. And there is a lot of help from lay people. Moreover there are churches that are certainly more priest-poor than ours. And historically this is not the first time that we in the Church have to do with fewer priests.

One thing stands out very clearly: in the future the faithful will certainly have to get along with fewer priests and they will not be able to minister in our parishes as they have done for centuries. A kind of pastoral care that is intensively à la carte will no longer be possible. Our availability is reduced and our options are limited. There is certainly a loss. But it is not a catastrophe.

Here and there one hears suggestions for resolving this personnel crisis. Couldn’t one lighten up the entry requirements and allow married men to become priests? In view of the fact that the celibacy rule is a decision of Vatican II and a subsequent synod, it is doubtful whether the celibacy requirement can be the main reason for the shortage of priests. And the situation in other churches, where this requirement doesn’t exist, would seem to point in this direction. And moreover, would the suppression of the evangelical council of Jesus’ Himself be a prophetic act in this erotic time?

It is also noteworthy that this shortage in candidates for priesthood goes along with an even greater decline in vocations to monastic life, especially among women. Don’t we have to look farther and deeper to find the reason? Perhaps it is indeed true that our faith is less intense, less alert and less missionary; and that the intensity of our hope and our love has diminished. That has certainly happened in our history; but then once again reformers and saints arose to relight the fires of faith. And isn’t that happening in our time? There are new movements in which evangelical celibacy captivates young people and fills them with enthusiasm. There are places where faith, radical and total commitment are once again strongly profiled and demanded. There one does see vocations and increased appreciation for the value and significance of the unmarried life.

There are many voices calling for opening priesthood to women. What does one think about that? Jesus didn’t do it. Was this simply due to the prevailing cultural pattern that has now changed? But on the other hand, Jesus’ interaction with women was much more flexible and far less inhibited than that of his contemporaries and of the rabbis. Jesus felt Himself very free in many areas when it came to traditions and customs. Could He not have departed from the tradition of not accepting women in ministry? But he didn’t. And the Church in its tradition has not departed from it either. To correctly understand this tradition in its deepest significance one needs a thorough-going and deep refection about what it means to be a woman, her specificity and what God wants from her. Pope John Paul II did this in his meditation Mulieris Dignitatem. The problem of the priesthood of women requires deep reflection and is actually more rooted in the biblical anthropology of man and woman than the strict domain of theology.

But we need priests. And therefore we also need a sound pastoral approach toward vocation. But can you generate vocations through effective techniques of marketing and publicity? Is there a strategy?No. Regardless how you look at it, it is nothing more than the simple expression of faith that even in our days God continues to call people. Any good pastoral approach to vacations simply reinforces God’s call – just as the Baptist did in the desert.

It is clear than over time the image of what it means to be a priest has changed.  From the traveling apostle in the Scriptures, the prince-bishop in the Middle Ages, the priest under the ancien regime to the parish priest of the last century, the forms and the lifestyle of the priest have changed considerably. The deepest essence of what it means to be priest, however, remains unchanged. We have to keep that in mind even though the next image of the priest cannot be point-for-point extrapolated out of what he was in the past.

Above all it is absolutely necessary, in our pastoral approach to vacations, that we clearly outline and express the essence of the priest. It is a call and a mission, by way of Christ, to proclaim the word, to celebrate the sacraments and to exercise pastoral ministry in the name of Christ. Priestly service is not based on a pragmatic division of labor within the one People of God. The ministerial limits and boarders come from elsewhere.

For this reason we must clearly inform young people what a priest really is. Can anyone be moved to become a priest if there is a continual lack of clarity about what priestly ministry really is? Clarity cannot be missed because, as Paul says: “…if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?” (I Corinthians 14:8) A clear profile of the priest is absolutely essential in stimulating vocations.

We cannot fabricate priests. We have to get them. That means: we have to ask for them in prayer. We don’t control the process. We also know that Jesus prayed during the hours of night and said: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:37-38) Is there serious prayer for vacations in our communities? At all times and not just at those set moments like vocations Sunday? Ardent faith can move mountains.

Vocations usually bloom in families where love and self negation constitute the very fabric of thought and action. Vocations arise out of that “abundant righteousness” about which Jesus spoke in the Sermon on the Mount. Families where people do more than is strictly asked or more than is just reasonable. There people live according to the new law, that of blessedness and the Beatitudes.

In Matthew 5 and 6 we read what is necessary for the germination of vocations. Families where the Beatitudes become a kind of natural rule of behavior: poor in spirit, meek, pure, merciful and forgiving, where one is not afraid of being persecuted for the name or being mocked for being Christian. A home where trust prevails at a given word, forgiveness is rendered well before evening, where hospitality is communicated and given away without being overly worried about tomorrow, because “your Father knows that you need all this.” And finally, homes where people pray for vocations.

The priest is a man of the Church. He thus shares the identity of the church at every time and is self-identified with it. Criticism of the Church can touch him deeply and cause great pain. He knows as well that he must be continually working on reforming the Church and the Church’s renewal. But one really cannot reform if he is always speaking and acting negatively. Such a priest finds himself in a sort of schizophrenia that will ultimately knock him to the ground. A priest cannot continue living with that kind of split personality: minister in the Church and yet continually criticizing the Church. At first he becomes worn out, then frustrated and in the end very bitter. As a priest, for your own spiritual well-being and health you must love the Church.

Young people cannot become priests if they cannot live in a milieu where people are happy to see the Church. This does not mean of course that they should conceal or deny her mistakes. A great number of saints have vehemently denounced the Church. But never without love. Think about the letter of Bernard to his fellow brother, Pope Eugene III, De Consolatione. Or of Catherine of Siena who criticized the pope for staying in Avignon but ended her letters by calling him il doce Cristo in terra. We will get no vocations unless we are able to create places where the Church is really loved.

Entry into a priestly vocation in the Church has at always been accompanied by a kind of shock effect. Was it really so attractive to be a Christian at the time of the persecutions? Or in a medieval Church plagued by simony and the hunger for power? Or during the French Revolution when thousands of priests and sisters were beheaded? Or in the former Eastern bloc where one had to live under dictatorship? There has always been a shock effect for those along the road that would go up to the priesthood.

Young people also have to learn – in a positive environment in which they are received – to make the transition from the Church as they dream it to be and the Church as it is: the object of faith and gratitude. And to make the transition from a Church to be observed to a Church in which one will live and work.The person who only sees the Church as a kind of spectacle, always responds with “that’s pretty or that’s ugly.” That suits me or that is really not for me. He considers the Church under his current mood or sensibility. The person who really wants to stand in the middle of the Church does not pass judgment. He says: “She is my mother and it is my job to take care of her.”

Regardless how old the Church is, it never succumbs to sclerosis. The Church always finds its way within new cultures. Yes she can be rather slow because she wants to distinguish between what has quality of life in the new culture, and what not.

We need to find solutions for the shortage of priests. Certainly along several paths at the same time: regrouping parishes, rationalization of our pastoral care, establishing clear priorities simply because we are not capable of doing everything, redistribution of priests – also with priests from elsewhere – and greater involvement of lay people in the work of the Church more strictly speaking.

But if we are honest with ourselves, we know that more is necessary that an exercise in dispatching, changing and setting priorities. Perhaps new have to begin calmly and courageously to accept the fact that we as Church in the future will have to be much poorer: in our financial capabilities, in personnel and our impact on life in society, in the media, poorer perhaps also in potential and intelligence, and in competence. Certainly poorer in numbers. But a poorer Church is not necessarily a Church that sacrifices quality, devotion, love for God or love for the people. Such poverty can actually enrich us. In what way?

It can save us from a ‘rich’ idiosyncratic vision of pastoral aggiornamento and new evangelization. Of greatest importance is not what we plan for the future of the Church but what God has in mind for the Church right now. God’s ways are not always our ways. The entire history of God and God’s people shows this. Not the means that we dream about are real but the ones God here and now effectively allots. Perhaps the poverty of our resources, can make us priests more sensitive to the essential values of our priesthood: the secret of our vocation, the strength of our ordination and mission, the belief in the inexorable power of the evangelical word to take root and grow, devoid of any decoration or rhetorical artifice. We will learn so much more to place our confidence in the quiet power of the Gospel and the sacraments. We will work toward a more spiritual kind of leadership, now that other elements being a leader have slipped away from us.

Didn’t the same thing happen to Israel? As all the external supports fell away, Israel’s faith deepened and the people came closer to God. It is precisely in and after the Babylonian captivity that the psalmists and the prophets wrote down the most moving texts about God’s tenderness and trust. Poverty purifies and enriches.

Besides, isn’t poverty as old as the Church itself? It is congenital. Did not the Church begin at Bethlehem and end up on the cross? The crib and the cross are still there. They are the wood out of which the great building of the Church is constructed. Poverty did not prevent the shepherds and the wise men to set out on their way and come to Jesus. And Jesus didn’t even have a stone to lay his head on. We always have so much more. And moreover, Jesus Himself formulated the secret of germination and growth: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)

All of this is neither to make a virtue out of need nor a kind of self-consolation. No. It is rather the pure and unadulterated Gospel. Only poor faith is the reliable base on which the Church can stand.