Participating in the Priesthood of Jesus

Does it benefit the Church, the world or my own family, one commentator asks, for me to contemplate my identity as a priest, prophet and king?  She who asks then answers in the negative, claiming that when every Christian is seen in a priestly, prophetic and royal capacity, the dignity of each term is lost. She is attempting to safeguard distinction, but in doing so she sets aside the Church’s theology of baptism.

Baptized Christians “participate in their own way in the priestly, prophetic and kingly office of Christ (Code of Canon Law, c. 204),” and before identifying any distinction that exists within the people of God, the Second Vatican Fathers assert the centrality of the baptism Christians share. All baptized persons are formed in the likeness of Christ, and by participating in the Eucharist such persons are brought into communion with Jesus and with one another. Within this unity, the “various members and functions have their part to play (Lumen gentium, 7),” but all, as baptized Christians, are called to holiness (Lumen gentium, 11).

Paragraph nine of Lumen gentium speaks of the people of God as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people.” This is language borrowed from I Peter (2:9), the author of whom is himself seeking continuity between the Christian understanding of the faithful and the Jewish one (for the Jewish people, as well, perceive God to be making his people into “a kingdom of priests, a holy nation [Exodus 19:5-6]“). To Bishop Emile-Joseph De Smedt, a participant in the Second Vatican Council, just as the whole Jewish people were commissioned by God, Jesus uses the community of those gathered around him to be an instrument for the redemption of all, and he sends forth such people into the world.

Participation in the priestly office of Jesus is not confined to members of the ministerial priesthood. Whether ordained or lay, each “in their own way participates in the one priesthood of Jesus (Lumen gentium, 10).” The Church’s theology presents the former (members of the ministerial priesthood) as acting in the person of Jesus, as making present the Eucharistic sacrifice and as offering it to God, and presents the latter (baptized Christians) as joining in the offering of the Eucharist “not indeed in the same way, but each in the way which is proper to himself (Lumen gentium, 11)” or herself.

Given that the Church actually teaches that all baptized Christians participate in the priesthood of Jesus, what benefit can be found in such a teaching? The key, I believe, is Paragraph 34 of Lumen gentium: A baptized Christian’s works, prayers, apostolic endeavours, married and family life, daily occupations, moments of physical and mental relaxation, and even hardships of life can become “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” With the Lord’s own Body, such sacrifices are “most fittingly offered in the celebration of the Eucharist” Consider the words of the new translation of the Missal: “Pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.”

To the Catholic person, the Eucharist holds a unique place. In this sacrament, we believe that Christ himself is mediated (Sacrosanctum concilium, 47). Reflection at the Second Vatican Council surrounded encouraging in the Christian people as receptive a disposition as possible (Sacrosanctum concilium, 59).  Catholics were not to be seen as “strange and silent spectators” at the celebration of the Eucharist (Sacrosanctum concilium, 48), and in my experience, when the Church’s vision has been communicated and accepted — communicated and accepted that baptized Christians participate in the priesthood of Jesus — this self-understanding has been one of those ways in which active participation, or true receptivity at the Eucharist, can occur.

My experience has been that when individuals are helped to discern the ways in which their works, prayers, apostolic endeavours, married and family life, daily occupations, moments of physical and mental relaxation and even physical hardships can operate as “spiritual sacrifices,” then not only is the Mass approached with a more appropriate disposition, but the events of one’s life are consciously tied to life’s Giver.

Against the statement of she who claimed that “when everyone is a priest, then no one is a priest,” I think the best response is that according to the Church’s theology of baptism, all baptized Christians participate in the priestly office of Jesus. Rather than grudgingly accepting that this is, in fact, what the Church teaches, perhaps persons should see the implications of such a teaching, and open themselves to ways in which they can experience the transformation it brings.

K.

Comments can be made at Vox Nova where this post first appeared. I also write at my blog Musings.

This Blog Will Self-Destruct

This blog is going to self-destruct. One week from now I am going to delete it.

You’ll just have to settle for the content you receive elsewhere.  :)

I will keep blogging  where I have been for the last 13 months — over at Musings — and that will be it.

K.

Thieving Christians?

Graham Greene

Of the various works of novelist Graham Greene, one of my more preferred is his A Burnt-Out Case. Published in 1960, A Burnt-Out Case follows Querry, a world famous architect who arrives anonymously at a leper colony in the Congo. Having lost meaning or interest in experiencing pleasure in life, Querry explains his arrival by saying that “the boat goes no further.” The colony is overseen by a Catholic religious community, and also includes Colin, a doctor and atheist, who diagnoses Querry to be the mental equivalent of a burnt-out case. A Burnt-Out Case follows Querry and the possibility of his being cured.

In one scene Querry and Colin sit on the steps of the hospital opposite a  church with open sides. They hear the Superior inside preaching to his congregation:

And I tell you truth I was ashamed when this man he said to me, “You Klistians are all big thieves —you steal this, you steal that, you steal all the time. Oh, I know you don’t steal money. You don’t creep into Thomas Olo’s hut and take his new radio-set, but you are thieves all the same. Worse thieves than that. You see a man who lives with one wife and doesn’t beat her and looks after her when she gets a bad pain from medicines at the hospital, and you say that’s Klistian love. You go to the courthouse and you hear a good judge, who say to the piccin that stole sugar from the white man’s cupboard, ‘You’re a very sorry piccin. I not punish you, and you, you will not come here again. No more sugar palaver,’ and you say that’s Klistian mercy. But you are a mighty big thief when you say that — for you steal this man’s love and that man’s mercy. Why do you not say when you see man with knife in his back bleeding and dying, ‘There’s Klistian anger’? Why not say when Henry Okapa got a new bicycle and someone came and tore his brake, ‘There’s Klistian envy’? You are like a man who steals only the good fruit and leaves the bad fruit rotting on the tree.”

Ratzinger’s Neglected Child

Karl Rahner & Joseph Ratzinger

An early Christian like Justin the Martyr (who died in the year 165) is often seen as laying the first foundations for a theology which, later, will become the backbone for a theology of religions. Justin believed that there were various kinds of religious knowledge (possessed by those he would have seen as pagan, possessed by those Jewish and those Christian), and that each kind of religious knowledge had (what he called) the Logos as its unique source. Justin believed that Jesus was this Logos, and Justin believed that although kinds of religious knowledge varied, each, even if in varying degrees, had some relation to Jesus. In Christ’s Incarnation God offers, to quote Karl Rahner, his “last Word,” but that is not to say that Christ, who is the source of all religious knowledge, has not been previously experienced in varying degrees.

Something that can be understood as so inclusive, throughout Christian history, eventually became a minority view. More rigid interpretations of an axiom such as extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church no salvation; hereafter EENS) took shape, and upon entering into four Magisterial texts (between the years of 1208 and 1442), critical engagement with the axiom lessened, and more pessimistic evaluations of those outside the visible boundaries of the Church were hardened.

I have a theory (a theory for which I am not willing to stretch my neck too far) about Joseph Ratzinger (the current Pope Benedict) and how he has engaged with this old axiom through his career.  My theory borrows an image from educational psychology. In educational psychology, there can be certain popularity types that are attached to children. For example, persons in a class might find themselves popular, average, controversial, neglected or rejected, and those neglected constitute the greatest challenge insofar as such students fail to receive acknowledgement, whether positive or negative, from their peers. I think this old axiom is Ratzinger’s neglected child.