By Father John P. Cush
I had the opportunity this past June to study at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. I was enrolled in a program for seminary faculty members, sponsored by the Institute for Priestly Formation, based out of Creighton. To be honest, Omaha was not what I expected. I was thinking corn fields, and instead found a modern, gentrified city, bustling with activity from the College World Series and the U.S. Olympic Swimming try-outs. I also did not expect the oppressive heat!
One day, I took a long walk around campus and found an impressive monument, appropriate for a Jesuit university: a perpetual flame with an inscription of the words of the founder of the Society of Jesus, St. Ignatius Loyola: “Ite Inflammate Omnia,” “Go, set the world ablaze.” These words, of course, were inspired by the words of the Lord Jesus taken from today’s Gospel: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!”
Being inflamed with the love of the Lord should be the goal of each and every Christian. By our words and actions, we need to set the Earth on fire. We have the Good News! We share in the Eternal Life that is our Lord, Jesus Christ. We are washed clean in the Precious Blood of the Lamb of God who has come to take our sins away. We are made in Christ a new creation. We should be on fire with the message, the basic kerygma, as we said in the former translation of the Mass in English: “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.”
And yet, if we were to go to some parishes on a Sunday, being on fire for the Lord would be the last thing of which we as Catholics would be accused.
We have Jesus Christ, fully present sacramentally in the Eucharistic species! The Lord is present and we have the honor to receive Him, have Him enter into our bodies and souls in the Eucharist, becoming our food, becoming our nourishment. He allows Himself to be transformed and become part of us. And yet, at the elevation of the Most Blessed Sacrament, the Real Presence of Christ is welcomed not with the ringing of Sanctus bells or with the private evocation of “My Lord and My God,” but with a yawn!
Three Elements
How can we reignite the fire with which the Lord has blessed us? May I suggest a way, coming from an old axiom from St. Augustine of Hippo: “You cannot love what you do not know.” Let’s apply this to the entire congregation of the average Church on a Sunday, breaking it into three elements: the priest, the People of God and the Eucharist.
First, the priest. What’s the biggest crisis facing the priesthood today? It’s not broken ordination promises, necessarily; it’s not clerical sexual abuse; at its essence, the biggest issue is the lack of a true and real priestly identity. It’s about knowing who a priest is supposed to be. If a priest doesn’t understand who he is and what he is supposed to be, then how can he lead the people of God? How can he inspire vocations to the priesthood?
The priest is not a functionary. The priest is not mainly a facilitator of the ministries of others in the community. This idea is one of the basic messages of the program that I attended this summer. The priest must reorder his entire being and worldview around the idea of relationship with God, then identity in Christ and then mission. Many problems, particularly burn-out, resentment of his mission and an overfunctionality, occur when the priest gets the order confused. For myself at times (and dare I say for many of my brother priests), I have reversed the order, placing mission first at the expense of relationship and identity.
The relationship for the priest that has to come first is the one he shares with God. He must realize that he is a beloved son of the Father and has to assure, by becoming an active contemplative, that this relationship is primary. All one needs to do is to take time daily for real, substantial prayer, preferably before the Blessed Sacrament.
From this relationship flows his identity, which is, by his ordination, configured to Christ, and he is ontologically, at the root of his being, changed. The priest is called to be the chaste spouse to the Church, who gives life to his people through loving service and by feeding them with the Eucharist. He is called to be the divine physician, healing his flock through the sacraments. He is called to be head and shepherd, leading and guiding his flock even when the times get tough.
Second, the People of God. They are a priestly people, different than the ordained, ministerial priesthood, but in the primary sacrament of initiation, namely baptism, they share in that priesthood. They offer, as the old morning offering prayer goes, their “prayers, works, joys, and sufferings in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world.” They’re to be the presence of Christ in their homes, families, workplaces. They are to be actively engaged, not only in the liturgy, but also and primarily through apostolic charitable works. It is their task to bring the Jesus whom the priest consecrates on the altar to the world, acting as agents of God’s saving justice to everyone.
Third, the Eucharist. It is not a sign or symbol, not just a nice thing to do, a sharing of food and fellowship. No, it is Jesus. It is He who is fully God and fully man, sacramentally present to us under the form of bread that is no longer bread, but His Precious Body, and wine, that is no longer wine but His Precious Blood. At the Mass, on that altar, Heaven and Earth kiss and we are transformed!
When we gather for Mass, we are involved in the greatest adventure this side of Heaven. Understanding this, how could all of us, priests and people alike, not want to set the world ablaze?
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Readings for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jeremiah 38: 4-6, 8-10
Psalm 40: 2, 3, 4, 18
Hebrews 12: 1-4
Luke 12: 49-53
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Father John P. Cush, a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn, is the academic dean of the Pontifical North American College, Vatican City State and a professor of U.S. Church history.