by Father John P. Cush, STD
I had the opportunity in the summer of 2016 to study at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. I was enrolled for the three and a half week program for seminary faculty members sponsored by the Institute for Priestly Formation, which is based out of Creighton. To be honest, Omaha was not quite what I expected. I was thinking corn field upon corn field and instead found a busy, 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!
When I first arrived at Creighton, the air-conditioning in the room where I was staying was not functioning and it was about 100 degrees outside. The kind staff of the university quickly remedied the situation, but it was still oppressively hot. One day, I took a walk around the campus and found an impressive monument — 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 from the evangelist Luke: “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 our actions, we need to set the earth on fire. 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. Some parishes can seem dull, lifeless, joyless. We have Jesus, fully present sacramentally in the Eucharistic species. And yet, at the elevation of the Most Blessed Sacrament, the real presence of Christ is welcomed not with the ringing of the sanctus bells or with the private evocation of “My Lord and My God,” but with a yawn.
How can we reignite the fire? How can we set fire to the word by our thoughts, words, and actions as Christians? May I suggest a way, coming from an old axiom, taken from St. Augustine of Hippo: “You cannot love what you do not know.”
First, the priest: What’s really 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. And 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 and religious life?
The priest is not a functionary. The priest is not mainly a facilitator of the ministries of others in the community. One of the basic messages of the program that I attended at Creighton this summer, the Institute for Priestly Formation, is this idea. The priest must reorder his entire being, his entire worldview around the idea of relationship with God, then identity in Christ, and then his mission. Many problems, particularly burn-out, resentment of his mission, and an over functionality, 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, getting the job done, at the expense of relationship and identity.
The relationship for the priest that has to be primary is with God. He must realize that he is a beloved son of the Father and has to assure, through the formation of a “monasticism of the heart,” becoming an active contemplative, that this relationship is primary. In the midst of a busy schedule, with all of its demands, I can understand how many of my brother priests could scoff at the concept of being an active contemplative. All one needs to do to be an active contemplative is to take the time daily for real, substantial prayer, preferably before the Blessed Sacrament.
The priest is called to be the chaste spouse to the Church, married, if you will, to the Church, the bride of Christ. He is called to be the spiritual father, the one who gives life to his people through his loving service, like any father to a family and by feeding them with the Eucharist. He is called to be head and shepherd, leading and guiding his flock even when the times get tough. What a noble role! What an honorable task! How could a priest with this understanding not be excited and want to set the world ablaze?
Second, the people of God: What’s their identity? They are, by baptism, a priestly people, different than the ordained, ministerial priesthood, but in the primary sacrament of initiation, 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 are to be leaven in the world — to be the very presence of Christ in their homes, their families, their workplaces. They are to be actively engaged, not only in the liturgy, not only in their liturgical functions, but primarily through their apostolic charitable works. It is their task to bring the Jesus whom the priest consecrates on the altar to the world, not only if they happen to serve as an extraordinary minister of holy Communion, but mostly in how they act as agents of God’s saving justice to everyone whom they encounter.
Third, the Eucharist: What is it? Or rather who is it? It is not a sign, not a symbol, not just a nice thing to do, a sharing of food and fellowship. No, it is Jesus, he who is fully God and fully man, sacramentally present to us under the form of bread which is no longer bread, but his precious body, and wine, which is no longer wine but his precious blood. On that altar, heaven and Earth kiss and we are transformed! With this understanding, how could all of us not be excited.
When we gather to celebrate Mass, we are involved in the most noble task, the greatest adventure this side of heaven. Once we recall who we are and what we are meant to be, we can recognize again this adventure. May we never lose sight of how our Sunday Eucharist can set us ablaze!
Father John P. Cush, STD, is professor of fundamental and dogmatic theology at St. Joseph’s Seminary and College (Dunwoodie), Yonkers, New York.