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By Fr. Jerry Hardy
This past week was a great one for priests. For me it was a kind
of high. Last Wednesday, Archbishop Donnellan gave the priests a day of
recollection. Saturday, the Holy Spirit gave us another priest in Fr. Terry
Young. Sunday, the Marists gave us a chance to celebrate Fr. Larry
Schmul’s 25th year in the ministry of the priesthood.
An interesting thing happened at the day of recollection that was
certainly to be present again in the other two celebrations. During the
discussion, someone asked what we thought, among ourselves, was the biggest
problem facing the priest. The answer was: developing and remaining faithful to
the quality of personal spirituality that would enable us to be spiritual
leaders for people. Not authority, not celibacy, but the radical quality of
spirituality needed to lead.
Fr. John Adamski preached at Fr. Terry’s first Mass and spoke
directly to Terry. He told him flatly that if he wanted to be the spiritual
leader of his people he would have to communicate to them something of his own
faith, his own believing, his own daily struggle for holiness.
At Fr. Schmul’s 25th anniversary celebration you
could sense something of all this just in the presence of so many people for
whom he had, in fact, become a spiritual leader, touching their lives as they
were and showing them what they could become.
The last time I wrote here I used the text of a program Fr.
Adamski and I use in trying to get people to think about ministry. One of the
last lines says something about ministry, asking a man to make himself
available for an “uncommon kind of holiness.” That’s not saying
that priests or sisters are “holier” than anyone else. All it’s
saying is that we, more than men and women with families and family
responsibilities should make ourselves more intensely available to the Spirit
of God and his power to transform us. It’s saying that more than anything
else, we should be people to whom you can turn with the confidence that we are
spending most of our presence to LISTENING for the Lord, to catch the sound of
his voice, NOT just for ourselves but for you. It’s saying that if we are
going to pass ourselves off as ministers of the Gospel of Jesus then we had
better give him every chance to unfold its meaning for us by spending time in
prayerful reflection. Not that you can’t do that for yourself; you MUST do
it for yourself. But if we are to be of any service to you at all, it should be
here that we are helpful.
This point of emphasis doesn’t absolve a priest or sister
form the task of preaching the social and moral imperatives of the Gospel. Nor
does it release us from the sometimes painful application of its real life
ramifications for you. It simply adds the all important coloration that comes
from this fact: What we as priests and sisters must be able to include in our
preaching of the Gospel is the force and humble strength of our own lives lived
as Gospel. Not tinkling brass or clanging cymbal but living voices from
credible lives about the practical struggle to be a believer today.
Not tinkling brass or clanging cymbal but common people trying to
live uncommonly close to the fire at the heart of things so that we can become
warmer witnesses to the life of a God come among us, the Lord for whose people
we would spend ourselves. |
