A
few nights ago in the company of my brother priests in the residence where I
live, I had the opportunity to watch the documentary made by the Rome Reports
News Agency entitled Bad Apples: Dealing With Sex Abuse In The Church. I guess
the title explains it all. It was well done, objective and fair in its data.
For me it was a very powerful and riveting presentation of the gravity of how
power could corrupt. All of us could remember of living through the painful
experience of living through the scandal as the Church. The episode of the
scandals shows us of how much evil the corruption of power could wield. The
priesthood is a power, and there is no doubt in anybody’s mind that these
priests have abused this power and the confidence that people had in them as person
empowered by the Lord himself.
Our
reflection of the readings of this Sunday’s liturgy could lead to this
direction, in considering the way how power should be understood, and how
authority should be understood within the community of believers, within the
Church. This reflection especially affects those who, by virtue of their
configuration to the Good Shepherd by priestly ordination, exercise this
authority. The words of the First reading, taken from the prophet Malachy, is
chilling for any priest: “If you do not
listen, if you do not lay it to heart, to give glory to my name, says the Lord
of hosts, I will send a curse upon you and of your blessing I will make a
curse…”. The Lord was addressing himself to a priesthood that had thought
more of itself than its duties, one that had considered more of what it could
have than what it should exercise, than what it could offer in service. In many
other places in Sacred Scripture we would hear the Lord castigating shepherds
who have grown complacent and negligent in their office. This is one evil that
continued in the time of Jesus. In the Gospel, we could see our Lord speaking
against against the princes of the people, the priesthood of the temple, the
doctors of the Law and its interpreters, the Pharisees. By itself the Lord does
not attack the authority that they have; in this sense he could not be called a
revolutionary who went against the establishment as some would like to believe.
By his example the Lord teaches us to respect legitimately established
authority: “The scribes and the Pharisees
have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all
things that they tell you…”. The community of disciples—the Church, has a
structure that is hierarchical. This is a structure that is essential to the
life of the Church; when our Lord founded the Church during in many instances
of his earthly life, by choosing the Twelve and appointing to Peter the primacy
among them, he showed this organic structure within the Church; through their
ministry the Lord continues to guide and strengthen it. He has granted the
power of the keys to Peter and the Apostles in union with him; all ordained
ministers share this power, either as bishop, priest or deacon. Thus we could
appreciate the hierarchical structure of the Church, one that is not
democratic, but whose power stems from Christ and is exercised by His appointed
ministers.
This
power and hierarchy, however, is not one of dominion and prestige, but rather
one of service. Real power does not stem from dominion, but it is the power to
be able to serve, a service which in turn is founded on love. For service to be
true, it must be selfless and disinterested. The Lord in the Gospel did not
lash out against the authority of the scribes and the Pharisees; what he
attacked was the greedy interest for prestige and power that they evidently
craved. This is one evil that all Christians—ministers of the Church
especially—must tenaciously avoid: the
thirst to accumulate power, to achieve that power as a means to a life of
privilege, comfort, security, wealth, popularity, because these things
hinder one to give oneself totally to the disinterested service of the Gospel.
Far from the Gospel of Christ is to seek the cult of personality which many
pastors seek and easily find, and which eventually lead to division within the
community; far from our ministry as priests should the quest of security be,
material or otherwise; it is alien to the teaching of Christ that thirst for
the myth of power, or power understood as domination, of lording it over the
others, instead of something that capacitates one to serve because one loves.
The
hierarchy that the Church has is one of service, a service based on love. Let
us consider the power that the Apostle Paul had with respect to the communities
that he founded. Paul was an energetic man, tireless in his mission to spread
the Gospel and creating communities, a strong man; yet in his letter to the
Thessalonians he compares himself to a mother in his gentleness towards them. “With such affection for you we were
determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our very selves as
well, so dearly beloved had you become to us.” As a manifestation of that
selfless love, in which he identified himself with his Master, he had worked so
as not to impose his needs upon the community, though he had a right to be
supported by them materially. The example of this apostle teaches us ministers
of the Church to be animated in our service not by that search to live a life
of prestige within the community and relative comfort, things which our faithful
would not begrudge us; rather let us be moved by the love of Christ: caritas Christi urgit nos.
In
the Gospel the Lord further admonishes his listeners: call no one on earth your
father; you have but one father in heaven. Do not be called “Master”; you have
but one master, the Christ. In all things, what the priest should ask is not
that his faithful look at him, but that in seeing him, they see the Christ in
whose ministry he shares. This is what is meant when we say that the priest is
called to be the transparency of Christ in the world. There is so much sense in
why the liturgical reform being effected by the Holy Father in the Church
propose that the crucifix be situated at the center of the altar. Some would
argue that in this way, the people’s view of the celebrant would be obstructed.
Well, it is precisely for this reason: in order that the focus would not be on
the priest, who is not the main protagonist of the liturgical action, but Christ
himself, whose Spirit the priest had received in ordination. We are all
disciples of the one master who is Christ. That is why it would not be a bad
idea to make our own the motto of Archbishop Palma: Non nobis Domine; not to us
Lord, not to us. Only when the priest allows himself to be taken over by Christ
would he be fruitful and faithful in his ministry, and this would be for him,
not only for the Church but for the priest himself as well, a source of joy and
a foretaste of Heaven. Amen.
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