INTRODUCTION

by

His Eminence the Most Reverend Cardinal

DARÍO CASTRILLÓN HOYOS

Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy

PRIESTLY VOCATIONS

"The word of the LORD came to me thus: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you".

God’s words to the prophet Jeremiah are addressed to each man, called upon to discover that life is vocation and that he is the receiver of God’s plan of love and mercy, conceived for him by eternity, called the Christian vocation.

The transcendent and vocational dimension of human life, and in particular common baptismal vocation of people, called upon to be cristo-foroi, bearers of Christ in the world, allows one to understand the extraordinary meaning of a vocation for the ordained ministry, the priestly vocation.

It is a gift and a mystery, the gift of divine predilection and the mystery of gratuitous election by He who calls because He loves in the fullness of His freedom. It is, as the Holy Father wrote for his priestly jubilee, "the mystery of a wonderful exchange – admirabile commercium – between God and man. Man gives Christ his humanity that He may use it as an instrument of redemption, almost making this man another self. If one does not understand the mystery of this exchange, one cannot understand how it can happen that a young man hearing the words "follow me!" can give up everything for Christ, certain that along this path his human personality will be totally fulfilled" (John Paul II, Gift and Mystery, Ed. L.E.V., The Vatican City 1996, p. 84).

This is what we shall discuss in today’s twenty eighth theological international videoconference the subject of which is: "Vocations to priesthood".

The words spoken by the Theologians will emphasise the need for a great faith in he who is called, faith that is above all listening and docility in welcoming the divine initiative, according to the Pauline statement addressed at Timothy: "He saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began" (2 Tim 1,9). In fact, the history of each priestly vocation is "the history of an inexpressible dialogue between God and man, between the love of a God who calls and the freedom of individuals who respond lovingly to Him", as one reads in John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Pastores dabo vobis, that dedicates an entire chapter to priestly vocations in the Church’s pastoral ministry (no. 36).

We shall discover that the Lord’s words: Come and follow me (see Mt 19,21), contain and reveal the inseparable bond between divine grace and the human answer. In this sense the aphorism by the philosopher Cornelio Fabro is emblematic, reciting: "Choosing God is the God of man’s choice" (Cornelio Fabro, Book on the existence and vagabond freedom, Ed. Piemme, Casale Monferrato, in the year 2000, Aphorism no. 961)

The speakers allow us to understand that the candidate to priesthood’s obedience of the faith is made manifest in joy, in gratitude and in humility: called upon to bear witness to the sanctity of the ordained ministry, he will experience that that gratuitousness of divine love is the path to the creation of his true and full human freedom, the path to a complete gift of himself, rooted in the disinterested love of Christ Crucified and Risen. He will discover that the priestly vocation is always a future placed in God’s powerful and loving hands, God who ontologically through the Sacrament of Holy Orders, will represent him as His Only Son, Christ, the Supreme and Eternal Priest.

I often in contrast think of that incisive observation made by Romano Guardini, who referring to Hegel’s alienating god and the arbitrary lordship of Nietzsche’s lord-master, writes: "To think of, to feel God as Another, immense and overbearing, is above all a mistake made by intelligence and a deformation of feelings" (Le monde et la persone, Seuil, Paris 1959, p. 43).

Of course, with a mistaken and deformed vision of God, man cannot even acknowledge the truth about himself, hence a vocation cannot be perceived, or experienced in its authentic value: It can only be experienced as an unbearable burden (see John Paul II, Es. ap. Pastores dabo vobis, no. 37).

Some of the papers, and in particular those from Madrid, Bogotá and Moscow, emphasise the responsibility of all the members of the Church to play an active role in the pastoral care of vocations. Each of the faithful must look after the birth and growth of priestly vocations which are a fundamental and irreplaceable gift for each ecclesial community: without priesthood there is no Church!

We will understand that the priestly ministry acquires its authentic meaning and fulfils its own full truthfulness in serving and increasing the Christian community and the common priesthood of the faithful (see Dogmatic Constitution. Lumen gentium, no. 10; Decree Presbyterorum ordinis, no. 12).Christ needs holy priests because the world, today just like yesterday, demands to meet transparent witnesses of Christ and of His Gospel (see Decree Presbyterorum ordinis, no. 4). Contemporary man has only one great expectation as regards to a priest: to see and recognize Christ in him.

As always thanking all those invited, I remind you that as always they will be speaking ‘live’ from ten nations in the five continents. Meditations will be held from Rome, from the Seat of the Congregation for the Clergy, by Professor Jean Galot, by Professor Antonio Miralles and by Professor Paolo Scarafoni.

There will also be speeches from New York by Professor Michael Hull, from Manila by Professor José Vidamor Yu; from Taiwan by Professor Louis Aldrich; from Johannesburg by Professor Stuart Bate; from Bogotá by Professor Silvio Cajiao; from Regensburg H.E. Professor Gerhard Ludwig Müller; from Sydney by H..E. Professor Julian Porteous; from Madrid by Prof. Alfonso Carrasco Rouco and from Moscow by Professor Ivan Kowalewsky. I hope you all enjoy the conference.