Fr. Paolo M. Siano FI

The Catholic Priest as seen through the eyes of St. Francis of Assisi

Ideas for some reflections on current affairs

The figure of St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the threefold seraphic militia (Order of Friars Minor, Poor Ladies of St. Clare or Poor Clares and the Third Order secular), deacon, mystic, stigmatist, constitutes an exemplary point of reference for authentic knowledge and practice of the priestly ministry and life.

The Seraphic Father professed his crystal clear faith in the Roman Church and did not have any doubts on the identity of the priest: this is the ministry of the Body and Blood of the Lord and it is offered in the Holy Sacrifice which is the Mass. In the Letter to all clerics the saint takes up guarding the sacred ministries from Eucharistic profanations by which these same clerics could be guilty by reason of negligence or ignorance. The great treasures of the Seraphic Father, in this earthly life were the Eucharist and the Word of God. Francis exhorted the sacred ministers to administer the sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus and His revealed Word with faith and decorum. Every day we place Jesus “in our hands” but also we ministers will be “in his hands” on “the day of justice.”¹

St. Francis knew well that priests in themselves are not sinless; he did not allow himself to be influenced by the Neo-Donatist attitudes of the Cathars and the Waldensians his contemporaries, therefore well founded in the Catholic faith he could say on the subject of priests:

“And I do not wish to consider sin in them, because in them I perceive the Son of God and they are my masters. I do this because, in the same persons I see the highest Son of God and none other do I see corporeally in this world, if only because of his most holy Body and Blood which they receive and they only administer to others.²

In Admonition I Francis puts forth an analogy between the womb of the Virgin which received the Word made flesh and the hands of a priest, which under the appearance of bread receives Christ in the Sacrifice of the Mass:

“Behold, everyday He (our Lord Jesus Christ) humbles himself, as when he descended into the womb of the Virgin from His royal seat; Everyday He himself comes to us in humble appearance; everyday he descends from the bosom of the Father onto the altar in the hands of the priest.”³

In the Letter to all the faithful, the Saint recommends: “Reverence towards the clerics, not only for themselves if they are sinners, but through the office and the administration of the most holy Body and Blood of Christ that they sacrifice in the altar and receive and distribute among others. For this reason we all have to know firmly that no one can be saved if it is not through the holy words and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ that the pronounces announces and administers.”⁴

In the Letter to the order of minors, St. Francis recommends to his brother priests: “Every time that one celebrates the Mass it must be with purity and one has to fulfill with reverence the sacrifice of the holy body and blood with a holy intention, not only for early motivations and not for fear or love of any man or as one who wants to please other men.”⁵

The seraphic father full of zeal threatens with Gods punishment the priests who like “a traitor Judas…becomes guilty of eating the Body and Blood of the Lord. Keeping this in mind Francis gives advice to his brother priests (and this advice is valid for all priests, religious and secular) to not offend, to not trample the Body and Blood of our Lord and to not receive it hastily just as would happen with an ordinary meal.”⁶

As well in this letter Francis offers a comparison between the blessed Virgin Mary and the priest: “Hear o my brothers if our Lady is honored and just in this way because she carried him in her holy womb, how much more must be holy, just and worthy the one who touches with his hands, receiving in his heart and with his mouth and offers him to the others to be eaten. He is not one who will die but he is eternally alive and is glorified. He is the one on whom the angles fix their gaze.”⁷

Francis not only denounces dangers and vices that are in execution now but as it is supposed, he exhorts one to fix his eyes on the big examples of holiness: “Jesus and Mary: the Eucharistic redeemer and co redeemer⁸ who is the incomparable adorer of the Eucharist. Then Francis encouraged the priests to meditate on their own dignity: “See your own dignity brother priests and be holy because He is holy. This is the way that the Lord God has honored you over all men, with the fact of entrusting to you this ministry. It is because of this that you have to love him completely, to revere and honor him. It is a misery and a terrible weakness that having him present in this way you prefer to take care of other things in this world.”⁹

As well in this text that is addressed to all the brothers, Francis is not able to hide his admiration in front of the Heavenly relationship between the Eucharistic Jesus and the priest: “All men fear and the whole universe trembles and Heaven exalts when on the altar, from the hands of the priest Christ the Son of the living God is made present. O wonderful thing, and great humility, O sublime humility that the Lord of the universe, God and Son of God humbles himself by hiding himself for our sake under the small appearance of bread.”¹⁰

The faith and meditation of this sublime reality makes us prostrate in front of the Lord with a humble and thankful attitude of adoration: “See O brothers the humility of God and open your hearts in front of him and even become humble yourselves and in this way you will be exalted by Him.”¹¹

When he was close to the end of his life, Francis restated his faith in the Roman Church and in the ministerial priesthood as a beautiful gift of the Lord. It is in this way that we read in the testament of the seraphic Father (1226): “Then the Lord had given me and is giving me such a great faith in the priest who lives according to the way of the Roman Church because of his ordination. I want to address the ones who have persecuted me. And if I would have such wisdom like that of Solomon and be able to find poor priests in this world who live in the different parishes, I would not want to preach against their will, to these and others I want to fear and love and honor like my lords.”¹²

In the Assisi Compilations (known as the Perugian legends) we read that blessed Francis when he lived in the Portiuncula, not having many friars, he used to go around the villages preaching penitence. After preaching to the people of the town he used to look for the priests present and meet with them in a different place so as not to be heard by the seculars. He would talk to them about: “The salvation of souls” exhorting them to maximum care in maintaining clean the altar and utensils which are used in the celebrations of the divine mystery.”¹³

Two Franciscan priests who are trustworthy hagiographers, Blessed Thomas of Celano (the first biographer of St. Francis) and St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (who later became bishop, cardinal and doctor of the Church) said that while he was sick in the palace of the Bishop of Rieti (between 1224-1226), Francis obtained the healing of a Church official called Gedeone who was pleading to be healed. “For a long time” he was living according to the desires of the flesh, without any fear of the judgment of God. Francis reprimanded him for his behavior, threatening him that once he was healed, if he returned to “the horrors” of his preceding sins he would receive a worse punishment, but once he obtained a physical healing, this canon went back to his sinful life. But one night when he was sleeping as a guest in the house of another canon, the roof collapsed on him and killed him.”¹⁴

The hagiographers also describe the friendship and veneration that the saint received during his life from prelates and bishops.¹⁵ Among the many miracles the saint obtained after his death, there are at least two for priests: “In one case a priest invoked St. Francis was freed from an imminent death.”¹⁶ “In another case a priest had healed perfectly after a very grave sickness.”¹⁷

From the first days of his minor order we find among his sons some clerics and priests from the time of the father general Aimone di Faversham (1240-1244) the Franciscan order with the consent of the Holy See became distinctly clerical. The process of clericalization comes conveniently; it is good that the responsibility of superior falls to the brothers who are ordained in sacris. They are conformed to Christ the priest and shepherd and are more intimately connected to the Roman Church. “As well it is considered that by the oral approbation of the Franciscan proto-rule by Innocent III, Francis and the first eleven companions received the clerical tonsure and because of that they were added to the Roman clerics.”¹⁸

Through the course of history of the seraphic order from the time of St. Francis until the present it is possible to find shining figures of brother priests who have been excellent examples of the religious and priestly dignity evidenced in different areas of the apostolate such as study, preaching, taking care of souls, missions, charity (even material).” We can think for example of St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231), St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1217/1221-1274), Blessed John Duns Scotus (1265-1308), St. Bernadine of Siena (1380-1444), St. Laurence of Brindisi (1559-1619), St. Leonard of Port Maurice (1676-1751), Blessed Ludovico of Casoria (1814-1885), St. Leopold Mandic (1866-1942), St. Pio of Pietrelcina (1887-1968), St. Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941) and Venerable Gabriel Allegra (1907-1976).

A panorama of the contemporaneous ecclesiastical situation

  After having admired the faith and love of St. Francis for the catholic priesthood and after having meditated on his more celebrated models of Franciscan, priestly holiness we make an analysis of the present epoch. It’s not a secret that after the sixties in the twentieth century and even more after the second Vatican council there has been an amazing self secularization spreading from the inner part of the Christian society and even more in the inner part of ecclesiastical sectors especially from Europe and North America.

The openness to the world promoted in a pastoral way by the council has been on the other hand seen and interpreted (until today) by sectors and personalities of the Catholic world as a progressive “self secularization.” Many believers are active in social works, but how many of these really believe in eternal life? People are very sensible towards certain themes like ethics, society, culture economy that are very popular among public opinion, but it seems that it is hard to talk about: mortal sin, divine grace, theological life and everlasting life. Much care has been taken to teach more thorough participation in liturgical celebrations; but this action in many cases has destroyed the fascination for sacredness. Even in the last forty years the numbers of priests (and religious) has decreased notably.¹⁹

Several symptoms have arisen, sometimes subtly or others very evidently. These are the ones of theological progressivism and of self secularization which come from words, writing and actions of some of the participants of the second Vatican council.²⁰ Already in July 1966 just a few months after the council closed, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith transmitted to the different Episcopal Conferences a letter in which they warned against the different errors that came out from the wrong interpretations of the council’s decrees. These are the different errors:

-To understand and interpret divine revelation and sacred scripture as independent of the tradition; restricting the action and the strength of biblical inspiration and of inerrancy; errors on the just value of th historical books of Sacred Scripture;

-Historical evolutionism of the dogmatic formulations and also of their objective content;

-A loss of value of the ordinary Magisterium of the Church arriving to the point of thinking that it is a simple opinion;  

-Rejection of the objective immutable truth. Continuation with the same ideal relativism that puts any truth as dependent on the necessary evolution of the progression of history;

-The tendency to reduce the doctrine about Christ the man - God to a Christological humanism (Christ = only a man who progressively acquired the consciousness of the Divine sonship);

-Theory of the transignification of the Eucharistic elements and not of the transubstantiation; in relationship to the Eucharist the emphasis is placed more on the concept of agape than sacrifice;

-A loss of value of sacramental confession

-Minimization of original sin and the concept of sin in itself, (not understood as an offence against God any more);

-Situational morals; especially related with sexual matters (this is an ethical subjectivism)

-A false ecumenism which is understood as Irenism and religious indifference.²¹

If we study carefully the different documents of the Roman congregations and the pontifical pronouncements understanding that even with the efforts to put up barriers to contain the problem, from 1966 (until today) those same errors continue overflowing the banks in different priestly, religious and lay sectors. This accelerates the inner-ecclesial and social secularization.

Do we not remember how many bishops, priest, and theologians from the United States, Germany, Netherlands and Belgium cried out against the encyclical Humanae Vitae of Paul VI?²²

In the general audience of Wednesday, 19 January 1972 Paul VI denounced openly the actuality (under other names) of “modernism” already condemned by Pius X with the decree Lamentabili in 1907 and the encyclical Paschendi.²³ In the sacred college of cardinals of June 23, 1972, Paul VI denounced the “lack of trust” towards the Church from a certain number of Christians and religious, “criticism” is a “false and abusive interpretation of the council that produced a break with the tradition (even doctrinal) arriving to the total rejection of the preconciliar Church and to the idea of the conception of a “new” Church almost “reinvented” from within, in the constitution, the dogma, the customs and the law.”²⁴

On that occasion the Holy Father announced a wrong concept of “pluralism understood as a free interpretation of doctrine and the free coexistence of opposite conceptions.”²⁵ In the homily of June 29, 1972 the Holy Father making reference to the Church of today, confessed that he had the sensation that from some crack, the smoke of Satan had entered into the temple of God.²⁶ Even among the members of the Church doubt, and uncertainty ruled and dissatisfaction was imposed towards the teachings of the ecclesiastical Magisterium. The Holy Father affirmed that there was an exaltation of progress, but with the idea of destroying that which was conquered and returning to “the primitive”.²⁷ In the annual encounter with the Roman clergy Saturday, 1 March 1973, Paul VI denounced the “crisis” of identity and secularization that had been diffused within the Catholic clergy. Here is a synthesis of some of his ideas in that healthy and clear discourse.

“If the priest is a man, his culture must be the profane. It is for this reason that we have the invasion of newspapers, magazines and books, those are the publications that nurture the profane culture of the media. It is said that if the priest is a man it is for this reason that he has to have the whole experience of a man. By experience normally is understood those negative experiences…it is necessary that he knows, but to know what? Evil, temptation, the fall, bad experiences. It is necessary-it is said- that he has some direct knowledge of life, otherwise he is a person who does not know anything. It is almost like a man who has been wounded, deformed in his moral figure in his spiritual intangibility like a baptized son of God, that he has something to learn from, when he sees the marks of these wounds. In the understanding of this conception for example, what is the place for the ecclesiastical habit?…the Pope has defined as hypocrisy the attitude of a priest who assimilates himself so much into the profane, so that he is not able to be distinguished. The assimilation to the profane is a much diffused idea that produces secularization on those who have the investment of Sacred Orders and the mission to represent and live Christ in themselves. Paul VI came to reaffirm that the priest is moreover a minister of Christ before being a man. If this would not be so even celibacy would not have enough arguments to keep its fullness and integrity, in its Angelic splendor and transfiguration that renders it again to be lived today by the Latin clergy.²⁸

Let us go to our days now in the discourse to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005 in relationship to Vatican II, Pope Benedict XVI has denounced with fervor the hermeneutic that produced a break between the pre and post consiliar times; it’s necessary to see the council from the perspective of reformation and continuity.²⁹ One of the results (and of the symptoms) of the hermeneutic of discontinuity is without doubt – especially in the academic, theological, catechetical and homiletic dimensions- is the doctrinal and bibliographical deprecation (or even refusal) of the magisterial preconsiliar texts; just like doctrine intending that the doctrine is no longer valid or no longer has any relationship with the church or the men of today. The dismissal of the past and the repulsion to tradition are other signs of the strangling secularization that is present even in the Church. Which is a phenomenon that even recently Pope Benedict XVI has denounced.³⁰

There is a need to note that certainly in many priests, the secularization – preferred of some theologies that have been very influential in the last 40 years³¹- has weakened or even destroyed completely the self consciousness of their own identity and the sacredness by which the priest has to be in an existential and social sense “a man for others” whom even more in the very sensitive topics of conjugal and sexual morality prefers to abstain from the common worldly (carnal) sense and he opts for the truth of Christ and of the Church. A priest who is so deep in the “secularization,” in a more or less conscious way, has the tendency to conceive the liturgical code in a simple, social, personal, understanding and not from the communitarian way that it should be. What can be said of the priest who loves to dress in a secular way and who in the celebration of Holy Mass expresses a very weak sense of sacredness (for example they have difficulty folding their hands in prayer and they don’t show special care for the Eucharistic fragments)? On the other hand some modern architecture, typical of new churches has an inability to express the sense of Catholic sacredness; they express more a new sense of “sacredness,” some gnostic or new age sense.

Obviously, not everything is rotten in the Church – and it never will be! The Holy Spirit is always at work in the Church, the Bride of Christ, raising up and strengthening the seeds of authentic priestly life, which is necessary for their own salvation and sanctification and that of others.

What can the actual figure of St. Francis teach or reaffirm for us priests?

In the Angelus of Sunday June 17, 2007 from the lower square of the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, Pope Benedict XVI said among other things: “Francis of Assisi is a great teacher of our faith and worship.”³² Yes, Francis is able to educate even us priests towards the perfect our adhesion to the faith of the Roman Church and our worship in the liturgical prayer, even more in the Holy Mass. Only let us see some of the actual teachings that the saint gives to us priests and on which the Magisterium of the Church has corroborated.

1. Our priestly identity

We are ministers of Jesus Christ, God-Man and ministers of the Church. Only if we are conscious of the grace and the truth of Christ in the Church we can be authentic servants of men by means of the Diakonia of truth and charity. We have the need to cultivate an interior life: an examen of conscience, meditation. Moreover we priests have to pray to help others to pray. How beautiful and real are these words of Blessed Pope John XXIII: to priests (1959): “First, then together with all other worries of pastoral techniques and applications of new resources to reach the different categories of the faithful, one must take special care of his own soul.[…]The pure, and ardent soul of a priest is a mystery of life, grace and love. The Angels in Heaven admire this soul and see in it the reflection of the divine Majesty. Happy is the priest that fulfills with faithful care the daily duties of prayer: who loves the silence of the temple and of the house: who makes the substance of his preaching the Sacred Book: who in judgment, in words, follows the example of our Lord, his Mother and the Saints: he does not put excessive trust in human resources. Because holiness is necessary for the salvation of his soul and the efficaciousness of his apostolate, every priest must take maximum care of trying to be faithful to the sacrament of penance, using all the resources that all experience suggests and the Church approves.”³³

2. Love for the Eucharistic Jesus. Meditate, celebrate and live the sacrifice of the Mass.

The priest is not a simple minister of a written word on a piece of paper, but he is the minister of the Word of God, in other words of the Word made flesh and the Eucharist. The privileged place of the Word of God is first in the Sacred Scripture in the Eucharist! In each consecrated host and in any fragment there is completely present the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Word and the Wisdom of the Father. We must – in the footsteps of St. Francis- adore this living and personal presence that comes into our midst in the Eucharistic sacrifice which is the same sacrifice of Calvary. In these last years in different theological environments there has been much discussion about the concept of presbyter who (most of all) ministers the Word and Eucharist in the banquet or Lord’s supper devaluing in a certain way the sacrificial essence of the Mass. Some consequence of this is a “very communitarian” (or “popular”) ars celebrandi with very little sacredness; with very scarce attention to the Eucharistic fragments; a devaluation of Eucharistic adoration outside of the Mass… I have observed all of this not only “in books” but also in my direct experience of ten years of priestly ministry as well.

In reality the perennial Magisterium testifies to this: the real Presence of Jesus in the consecrated bread and wine; The Mass is that which perpetuates the bloodless sacrifice of the Cross. It draws from the great Mysterium Fidei which we cannot pretend to “measure out” with our reason or reduce to the level of the secularized world.

Even the actual Supreme Pontiff has revalidated recently these ideas, moreover to us priests: The institution of the Eucharist is an anticipation of the bloody sacrifice consummated by Jesus on Good Friday; the sacrificial sense of the Eucharist; our duty of becoming Eucharist is to unite ourselves to the Eucharistic sacrifice with the sacrifice of our daily lives.³⁴

And we should be particularly grateful to Pope Benedict XVI also, because – as has been said by Cardinal Antonio Canizares, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of Sacraments- with the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum (2007) the Pope has opened to all priests and faithful the liturgical treasures of the Church.³⁵ Who write that after ten years of priesthood and Mass (celebrated with devotion and attention according to the Novus Ordo Missae) he had the grace to discover and celebrate the Holy Mass according to Vetus Ordo Missae. Personally, I can say that the Extraordinary form of the Roman Rite (with the orientation of the priest towards the cross, Latin language, inclinations, genuflections, the sign of the cross, the recitation the Roman Canon in a low voice) is helping me to perceive in a better way- even visibly- the sacredness of the Divine Liturgy and the sacrificial essence of the Holy Mass. And obviously, there are so many other young priests, religious and seculars who have had a similar experience.

3. Love for the Blessed Virgin Mary

In the footsteps of St. Francis, the humble restorer and of the Church, who made the Virgin Mary the Advocate of the Order of Friars Minor³⁶ we can see the one who is the “Mother and teacher of our priesthood.”³⁷ The dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium teaches us that Mary, the new Eve has cooperated in a singular way with Christ in the restoration of the supernatural life of human beings (cf. LG 61). The whole Church (clergy, religious and lay faithful) has to imitate her sublime model. From the text of the council we can understand even more the clergy as privileged cooperators in Divine grace, for the regeneration of human beings, they must be vitalized by the maternal love of the most Holy Mary (cf. LG 65). Pope John Paul II recommended to us priests that we are called “To grow in a solid and tender devotion to the Virgin Mary, which must be witnessed with virtues and frequent prayer.”³⁸ And even now Pope John Paul II has taught us clearly that during the celebration of Holy Mass which is the sacrifice of Calvary, Our Lady is present next to our altars to become the “Mediatrix” of the graces which come from the Eucharistic Sacrifice.³⁹ As such as already on Calvary, so also in the Mass, Mary continues to act as “Mediatrix of all graces,”⁴⁰ above all for us priests.

4. Love for the celibate priesthood.

Already at the time of the Second Vatican Council a mass media campaign against the celibate priesthood was beginning. There were reactions of solidarity from various bishops in defense of sacred celibacy. Later, after the Council, there came a true, wild, anti-celibacy storm, unfortunately from sectors also inside the Church. Even today, in various ecclesiastical environments in the West- also “higher up”- it may be seen in a married clergy, the only solution for precarious and “desperate” priestly and pastoral situations…It is evident that a similar reasoning is not built upon theological hope, but upon, the grace of God, prayer, welded adhesion to the Deposit of Faith, Eucharistic and Marian devotion, a serene, sober and prudent Christian asceticism and priestly consent to maintain fidelity to celibacy and to obtain from Heaven to gift of a new vocation. More prayer, more integrated fidelity to catholic doctrine, penitential sobriety of life and the seminaries and convents will turn towards repopulating themselves. Might this not be when seminaries and institutes of consecrated life start becoming particularly sensible to the authentic tradition of the Church and the correct hermeneutic of Vatican II? The celibate priesthood is and will always be one of the great gifts of Christ to the Church.⁴¹

5. Love for the ecclesiastical habit.

St. Francis vested in the religious habit, in the form of a cross hailed the Blessed Virgin Mary as “garment”⁴² of Christ, because in her the Word had “covered” human nature, becoming our Brother. St. Francis can teach the priest love for the ecclesiastical habit and the cassock,⁴³ such is the sign of a new creature in Christ. The words of Blessed John XXIII to priests are also valid: “The faithful do not enjoy to see you immersed in worldly affairs, as if you must resolve everything in the space of a generation: it is not significant if the priest shows himself too warmly or partial. It is agreeable to know how to carry everywhere and with great dignity the cassock, nobly and distinctly: an image of the tunic of Christ. Christus sacerdotum tunica, a resplendent sign of the interior robe of grace.”⁴⁴

Therefore let us listen to the voices of Saints and Popes, “let us cover ourselves” always better in our lives and in our pastoral ministries with such precious realities of Heaven; thus we may be humble operators, good servants and faithful in the vineyard of the Lord and bear fruit at an opportune time for the Church and in the Church. Laus Deo et Mariae!