Letter

of

His Eminence Cardinal

Darío Castrillón Hoyos

Prefect of the Congregation for Clergy

 

 

 

on the occasion

of the

World Day for the Sanctification of Priests

 

 

Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

 

18 June 2004

 

 

 

 

"The Eucharist, wellspring of sanctity in priestly ministry."

Dear Brother Priests,

The world day for the sanctification of priests, which will be celebrated on the joyous Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, offers me the opportunity to reflect with you upon the gift of our priestly ministry, sharing your pastoral concern for all the faithful and for the whole of humanity, and in a special way the People of God entrusted to your respective Ordinaries of which you are solicitous and generous collaborators.

 

The theme which I place before you this year is in harmony with the encyclical letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia which the Holy Father, John Paul II, gave us on Holy Thursday of last year, the twenty-fifth anniversary of his Pontificate and the year of the Rosary: "The Eucharist, wellspring of sanctity in priestly ministry".

 

1. Created to love

"You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am Holy" (Lv 19,2). The book of Leviticus reminds us of the grace and goal of every believing creature, in a special way all ordained ministers: Sanctity, an intimacy with God, a love without reservation for the Church and all souls. The vocation to the priesthood "is essentially a call to holiness in a form which derives from the sacrament of orders" (John Paul II, Apst. Ex. Pastores Dabo Vobis, 33). The priest is called, in the circumstances where God has placed him, to meet, to know and to love Christ in the exercise of his given ministry and to always identify himself more with Him.

 

If in the forthcoming Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we maintain our glance toward the Lord, to His Son the eternal High Priest, our horizons will be broadened beyond the confines of our daily lives and our existence will be enriched with a more universal and missionary dimension.

 

"I tell you, lift up your eyes and see how the fields are already white for the harvest" (Jn 4,35). These words of Our Lord resound even today in our hearts and show us the immense horizon of the mission of love of the Incarnate Word, a mission that can be made our own: He has consigned it as the inheritance for all the Church, and in a specific way, to us, his ordained ministers. How truly great is the mystery of love by which we have been made ministers, us priests!

 

The Acts of the Apostles remind us that the same Jesus with whom the Apostles had lived, and eaten and shared the daily hardships, now continues to be present in his Church. Christ is present to you not only because he continues to attract to Himself all the faithful from His Throne of Grace and Glory which is His redeeming cross (Cf. Col 1,20), forming with all mankind of all generations, One Single Body, but also because he is always present in time and in an eminent way as Head and Pastor, who instructs, sanctifies and governs His People. Such presence is realized in priestly ministry which He wanted to institute in the heart of His Church. Through this every priest can affirm that he was chosen, consecrated and sent forth to make known Christ, of whom he becomes a representative and messenger. (Cf. Congregation for the Clergy, Directory of the Ministry and Life of Priests, 31.1.1974, n.7).

 

The life of Christ, of which we are bearers Christo-foroi, is like water which runs through a rocky cliff to arid land, rendering it fertile. With the coming of Christ into space and time, history has stopped to be arid land, as it was before the Incarnation, and has now assumed the meaning and value of universal hope.

 

"We cannot allow ourselves to present to the world an image of dry earth; nor can we ever claim to be one bread if we prevent the scattered flour from becoming one through the action of the water which has been poured on us" (Cf. St. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, III, 17: PG 7, 930)." (John Paul II, Incarnationis Mysterium, N.4).

 

2. With the Heart of Christ

What is needed to achieve happiness is not a comfortable life, but a heart in love like that of Christ’s. The most sacred and merciful heart of Jesus, pierced by a lance on the cross in a sign of His total self-giving, is an inexhaustible font of true peace, it is the full manifestation of the sacrificial love of oblation with which He "loved them to the end" (Jn 13,1), forming the foundation of the friendship of God with man.

 

The Solemnity of His Sacred Heart invites us to the joy of charity, in a gift of ourselves to others: "Sing to the Lord anew song, for he has done marvelous things"! (Sal 97, 1).

 

Dear priests these marvelous things are our life, the mystery of the divine predilection and the gift of his mercy, thus fully expressed in the words of the prophet Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." (Jer 1,5). Not only the priesthood but also the journey toward it is a gift, as St. Paul says "And one does not take the honor upon himself, but he is called by God" (Heb 5,4).

 

Through the baptized priesthood we are all servants of Christ. As St. Paul says in the second letter to the Corinthians, we are servants of the joy of men (cf. 2 Cor 1,24). But the ministerial priesthood – we remember the words of Pope Paul VI – "it is not a job or some service which is exercised for the good of the ecclesial community, but a service which participates in an absolutely unique way and with an indelible character in the power of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, through the grace of the sacrament of Holy Orders" (Paul IV, Message to Priests, 30.6.1968, Closing of the Year of Faith).

 

Men need to contemplate in the priest the face of Christ, to meet in him the person who "is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God" (Heb. 5,1) so that one can say with St. Augustine "Christ is our knowledge, and the same Christ is also our wisdom. He Himself implants in us faith concerning temporal things, He Himself shows forth the truth concerning eternal things." (St. Augustine, De Trinitate 13, 19,24).

 

3. Through the Eucharist, our strength and hope

The Gospels speak to us of the initiative of Christ when, by walking on the water, he brought aid and comfort to the Apostles, who had found themselves in a storm beaten boat on the lake of Tiberias (cf. Mt 14, 22-23).

 

It is an invitation to renew our full faith in Christ. He repeats to us the exhortation addressed to the those in the boat "Take heart, it is I, have no fear!" (Mt 14, 27). Do not let us be intimidated by difficulties, we have faith in Him! The priestly vocation, planted in you with efficacy by Christ and accepted by you with generous humility, will bear abundant fruit in such a fertile terrain.

 

Like Peter, let us go to meet Jesus Our Saviour fixing our eyes on his merciful countenance: only the view of the Crucified and Resurrected, contemplated in our prayer and in the Sacrament of Confession, can overcome the force of gravity of our smallness, our limits and our sins. St. John Chrysostom commenting upon this Gospel passage says: "When our cooperation is lacking, God’s help becomes less" (Commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew, n 50).

 

Especially in the Holy Eucharist we rediscover the truth and efficacy of the words and actions of Christ: "He immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him ‘O man of little faith, why did you doubt?" (Mt 14,31). The arm of God sustains us and the dark waters, agitated by our pride and Satan, will have lost their power. We will draw from the Most Holy Eucharist the strength of the charity of Christ. In this regard, in the Encyclical Letter on the Eucharist, the Holy Father writes: "Every commitment to holiness, every activity aimed at carrying out the Church's mission, every work of pastoral planning, must draw the strength it needs from the Eucharistic mystery and in turn be directed to that mystery as its culmination." (John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucaristia, n.60)

 

Almighty God asks you, diocesan priests, missionaries and religious, to do all you can with enthusiasm in this sacred ministry, so as to rediscover, especially in the Holy Eucharist, the beauty of your priestly vocation. May each and every one become an educator of vocations, without any fear of proposing this radical choice of sanctity.

 

Being aware, as the Curé D’Ars affirmed, that "the priest is the love of the heart of Jesus" (Esprit du Curé D’Ars, M. Vianney dans ses catéchismes, ses homélies et sa conversation, édition de Téqui, Paris 1935, p177), how can we not remember that nothing is more exalted than the impassioned testimony of our own vocation? "The priest – continues St. John Vianney – is a thing of immensity, if he himself were to realize it he would die" (Esprit…op. cit., p113).

 

As watchmen of the House of God, which is the Church, we must arise so that in all the ecclesial life of our Parishes the meeting of Christ crucified and resurrected is revived. We must avoid obstacles of activism, which drown the best apostolic and pastoral plans, and dry up many busy lives in a service which is not adequately watered with the Word of God and His presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament. We repeat the words of the Holy Father: "In the humble signs of bread and wine, changed into his body and blood, Christ walks beside us as our strength and our food for the journey, and he enables us to become, for everyone, witnesses of hope." (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, n.62).

 

We make the Christian faithful experience again the Cenacle, which was in a certain sense the first formative course of the Apostles. In the Cenacle the Master, after having instructed the Twelve, washed their feet and anticipating the bloody Sacrifice of the Cross, gave himself wholly and forever in the sign of bread and wine. In the Cenacle, in anticipation of Pentecost, the Apostles were found "All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus." (Acts 1,14)

 

This year sees the 150th anniversary of the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, proclaimed by Blessed Pius IX on 8 December 1854. Therefore we invoke, with particular faithfulness Our Blessed Mother. We ask her, this ‘Eucharistic’ woman to always sustain in us the desire to fully identify with her Son, to be ipse Christus, alter Christus, to be in every place a herald of the Gospel, experts in humanity, knowers of the hearts of modern men, participators in their joy and hope, sorrow and sadness, and to be at the same time, contemplative and in love with God.

 

We present ourselves to Mary, Queen of the Apostles and Mother of Priests. We ask her to accompany us in our ministerial journey, just as she accompanied the Apostles and the first disciples in the Cenacle. To her the Star of Evangelization, we faithfully present ourselves so that, through her intercession, Our Lord will grant to each one the gift of faithfulness in his priestly vocation. We ask that the Immaculate Conception shine as the centre of our ecclesial communities and that she may transform them into elevated signs among mankind as "a city set on a hill" and as "a light upon a lamp stand which gives light to all". (Mt 5,14-15).