The Priest's Struggle For Sanctity
Without the achievement of personal sanctity the ministry of a priest is likely to bear little fruit, and his life to be irksome and unhappy. His mission is to lift souls from the morass of sin to the solid ground of the friendship and love of God. But unless the shepherd of souls possesses sure footing in solid virtue, he cannot well lift others from the quicksands. "Physician, heal thyself!" is the inevitable reaction of people to the doctor who prescribes a remedy for others but fails to apply it to himself. "I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection," said the great Apostle to the Gentiles, "lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway."[1] Holiness of life is the first and the most indispensable requisite for the successful discharge of the duties of the priestly ministry. The priest's whole life should be, therefore, a constant struggle for sanctity—a struggle against crafty foes and insidious dangers that ends only at death.
The very nature of the sacerdotal life gives rise to distinctive dangers and temptations. The layman can find the satisfaction of much of his human yearnings through the establishment of a home and family and a normal social life. The building up of his business offers a legitimate means of gratification for his acquisitive instincts. The priest, however, is deprived of these natural means for the satisfaction of those driving urges which shake the framework of every human being, as volcanic forces shake the structure of a mountain range. Denied these external means of satisfying inborn human yearnings the priest is thrown back upon himself. He experiences a void, an emptiness, a loneliness that is peculiar to the lot of one who is in the world and yet not of it. It is a life which, without supernatural aid, is impossible, because it goes directly against the grain of human nature and runs against the current of instinctive life which has grown powerful and almost irresistible through long centuries of operation and growth.
As a consequence, the life of a priest much more than that of the layman is in very truth a constant warfare. "The flesh lusteth against the spirit," says St. Paul, "and the spirit against the flesh." Indeed, it is not too much to say that the whole spiritual life of man, and especially of the priest, consists of a struggle between the spirit and the flesh for the mastery of human life and conduct. Shall I follow the law in my members or the law in my mind? is the old question which confronts every man born into this world today as truly as it confronted and perplexed the Apostle to the Gentiles and his first father, Adam.
If priests are to gain a victory for mind and conscience in this struggle with the flesh and its concupiscence, they must plan their warfare in a careful scientific manner. In modern warfare the effort is always made to ascertain the chief fortress of the enemy. For if the main stronghold of the enemy can be conquered, the enemy will have been dealt a crushing blow and the remaining minor fortresses will be easy to overcome.
Some miles east of Rheims in France there rises out of the level countryside a modest hill that was the scene of some of the most desperate fighting in the World War. It is known as Hill 101. Because it offered a splendid place of vantage for the heavy guns trained on Rheims it was fought for desperately by the soldiers of Hindenburg. Realizing that if the Germans could be dislodged from this strategic location, their artillery would not reach Rheims, the French under Foch fought with equal vigor for the hill. More than half a dozen times it passed from the possession of the Germans into the French and back again. When finally forced to withdraw, Hindenburg had huge quantities of explosives set off in a last desperate attempt to destroy the elevation. The grim scars on the mutilated hill still visible to the traveller bear mute witness to the importance which these two great generals attached to the conquest of a strategic stronghold of the enemy.
What is the chief stronghold of the enemy which the priest must overcome? What in other words is his predominant passion? What that is, each priest is to determine for himself. With some it may be the passion of anger; with others, the passion of avarice; with others, the passion of drink. But it may be safe to say that for the majority of priests, as for the generality of mankind, the predominant passion is that of lust. For this is not only the most universal passion, but, rooted deep in the biological history of the race, it fights for its gratification most fiercely and with a persistence that ceases only with death. "There was given me a sting of the flesh, an angel of Satan to buffet me," are words which can be uttered by every human being born into this world as truly as they were uttered by St. Paul nineteen hundred years ago in distant Palestine.
For the priest it is an especially insidious enemy. It dogs his footsteps at every turn. It tracks him down even in the divinely appointed task of pardoning sins. For in the confessional he has to expose his ear to frequent accusations of sins of lust. Here the confessor should bear in mind the wise counsel of St. Alphonsus: " It is better to have a deficiency of detail concerning sins de sexto than to have an overabundance." If the priest is indolent, thoughts of a lustful character, never very distant in the background of the mind, rush forward to claim the center of the stage. If it is conceded even a few crumbs, it develops the appetite of a gourmand. It is said that if wild beasts once taste human flesh and blood they develop an insatiable appetite and can never be trusted again. So it is with the passion of lust. The more it is yielded to, the more rapacious and insatiable becomes its appetite.
Furthermore, it is crafty and insidious in its approach. Explorers from Africa tell us that in certain parts of the jungle they have to be on their guard against certain large insects which attack people as they sleep. Before piercing the flesh they deposit a secretion which acts as an anesthetic, so that the person feels no pain while his blood is being sucked away. So it is with lust. It captivates and dulls the moral sensibility with the anesthetic of instinctive gratification. It is not until later that the gnawings of remorse make themselves felt in the fulness of their anguish.
"Be ye clean," said the prophet Isaiah, "you that carry the vessel of the Lord."[2] "If this obligation applied even to the priests of the Old Law, how much more strictly does it bind those of the New Law whose lips and tongue are daily purpled with the blood of the God-man, Jesus Christ. How chaste should be the conversation and speech of the minister of Christ! Gluttony and intemperance pave the way to sins of lust. They beget a spirit of self-indulgence, so that when the driving urge of lust is felt, the priest undisciplined in self-restraint and mortification falls a rather easy victim. "Take heed to yourselves," warned our Blessed Lord, "lest perhaps your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness."[3] Mortification and self-denial are indispensable requisites for the discipleship of Christ. It was this truth which our Divine Saviour expressed when he said: " If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me."[4] These words of the great High Priest every pastor is called upon to make the lodestar of his ministry and the rule of his daily life.
"Chastity," it has been said, "is a fragrant flower that blooms only among the thorns of self-denial." St. Matthew records that when our Lord had expelled the evil spirit from the body of the possessed man, the disciples inquired why they were unable to exercise the same power. Our Saviour made the significant reply: "This kind is not cast out but by prayer and fasting."[5] "If pastors cannot exorcise the demon of impurity from others save by prayer and mortification, it is obvious that they cannot fortify themselves against the onslaughts of this demon save by prayer and self-denial. When they prostrated themselves before the bishop on the eventful day of their ordination, he uttered a warning to them that they should always carry in mind: "As you expel demons from the bodies of others, so will you endeavor to ward off all uncleanness and iniquity from your mind and body, lest you succumb to those whom you put to flight by your ministry."[6]
Priests of the active ministry must be especially steeled and fortified against this vice. For they meet it in the confessional, on the sick-call, in the daily search for the wayward and lost sheep. Cardinal Mercier relates the case of a seminarian who, while possessing much piety and many virtues, did not evince quite the solid strength of character required for the pastoral ministry. Accordingly, the authorities of the seminary kindly advised the young man to go into the religious life where he would be more protected and sheltered from the onslaughts of temptation to which the priest out on the firing-line is daily exposed.
No amount of intellectual brilliance, no charm of personality can substitute for sanctity in the life of a priest. If he lacks holiness of life, his ministry is without zeal or relish, hollow and empty, a mockery and a sham. "But if the salt shall lose its savor, wherewith shall it be seasoned? It is neither profitable for the land nor for the dunghill, but shall be cast out."[7] What disaster in the whole range of human life can compare with the fall of a priest from the state of sacerdotal chastity to that of the moral leper—coated in mind, heart and soul with the leprosy of sin. Since the fall of Lucifer from heaven there has been no fall so great, so tragic as the fall of a priest into confirmed and unrepentant habits of mortal sin, the leprosy of the soul.
What is the safeguard and the remedy? Our Divine Master has prescribed it for us: "Watch ye and pray that ye enter not into temptation." First, there 'must be ceaseless vigilance against the approach of the temptation. Here as elsewhere eternal vigilance is the price of victory. As sentinels along the dykes of Holland keep ceaseless vigil to detect any crevice in the walls which would speedily enlarge and allow the waters of the tumultuous sea to flood the lowlands of the country, so pastors must exercise a ceaseless vigilance over the senses through which temptations enter, bringing ruin and destruction to their spiritual life.
"Resist the beginnings," warned Thomas a Kempis; "after remedies come too late." Priests must shepherd their thoughts and imaginations that no wolf in sheep's clothing be permitted to enter surreptitiously to work havoc and ruin when they are off guard. Priestly sanctity is safeguarded by the avoidance of unnecessary dangers. "He that loveth danger," says Holy Writ, "shall perish in it." No man can play continually with fire and not be burnt. Pastors who can see that many of the sins of their penitents are directly traceable to their failure to avoid the near occasions, ought to perceive with a more penetrating insight than the lay person the dire tragedies that result from negligence in complying with this divine admonition.
They ought, therefore, to be scrupulously on their guard against occasions which have proved dangerous to them in the past. It is probably not too much to say that the malice of most sins consists not so much in the act itself when the passions are aroused and the will weakened as in the antecedents of the act, namely, the conscious, deliberate refusal to avoid the occasion which experience has proved to be gravely dangerous for us.
Our vigilance can cease only with death. For neither length of years, great learning, nor eminent sanctity is proof against a fall. As Cardinal Gibbons points out: "We are neither stronger than Samson, nor holier than David, nor wiser than Solomon, and yet all these three yielded to the slippery path of lust. It was in his old age that the heart of Solomon became depraved."[8] "Believe me," says St. Augustine, "I speak the truth in Christ. I lie not. I have seen the cedars of Libanus, and the leaders of the flock fall, whose ruins I no more expected than I would that of Gregory Nazianen or of Ambrose."
The second safeguard against temptation is prayer. " Watch ye and pray," said our Divine Master to the Apostles whom He brought with Him to the Garden of Gethsemane. The result of their failure to do so is shown vividly in their desertion of the Master in the crisis that was then approaching. When St. Paul cried out for deliverance from the concupiscence and the weakness of the flesh, God answered him with the assuring words: "My grace is sufficient for thee, O Paul, for power is made perfect in infirmity." This is the assurance that Christ gives to every priest who has recourse to this divinely appointed safeguard against temptation: "Whatsoever you shall ask the Father in my name it shall be given unto you. Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you."
While the priest is deprived of many of the natural auxiliaries to virtue which the layman possesses in the form of a home and family, with the natural incentives to industry and goodness which spring from such a responsibility, this lack is more than counterbalanced by the abundance of the appointed means for priestly sanctity. First, there is the meditation with which he begins each day. Meditation is a form of prayer. No human being can review in his mind day by day those divinely revealed truths which disclose to us the ultimate destiny of the human soul and the supernatural means established to attain it without being profoundly influenced by such truths. It is the heavenly manna which the busy layman scarcely tastes. "With desolation is all the land made desolate," said the prophet, " because there is no one who thinketh in his heart." Daily meditation gives us a grip on the great eternal verities and enables us to perceive the transiency and fugitiveness of all the allurements of this world and to set our hearts upon the heavenly prize that abideth forever: "Remember thy last end and thou shalt never sin."
Secondly there is the daily Mass. What a divine privilege it is for priests to bring Jesus down from heaven, to hold Him in their hands, and to offer Him anew as the eternal Victim for the sins of the world. With what care should they prepare themselves by prayer and meditation beforehand for the devout performance of this sublime office! How great should be their reverence, their absorption, their devotion, when alone of all mankind they are privileged to hold in their hands the Author of all grace and the Source of all good! It is the Mass which is their daily tonic, the divinely appointed means for their priestly sanctification, strengthening them to withstand the temptations of their own nature and of the world.
Thirdly, there is the daily recitation of the Divine Office, the great universal prayer of the Church that rains down the blessings of God upon the ministry of His priests. It is conducive to reciting the holy office digne, attente ac devote to break it up into parts instead of saying it at one sitting where it might take on the appearance of a burden and prompt one to speed and heedlessness in its recitation. In addition, there should be the private visit of the priest to the Blessed Sacrament at an appointed time each day. This should be made with unfailing regularity. It rekindles the flame of love burning in the heart of the priest. It renews his zeal for his sacred ministry and makes Jesus the invisible companion throughout all the day —"closer to us than breathing, nearer than hands or feet".
Fourthly and lastly, there is mortification. "If any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me," was the condition for discipleship laid down by our Divine Master nineteen hundred years ago and never revoked. By daily discipline and daily self-denial alone pastors attain that vigor and robustness of priestly character which will stand like a rock of adamant against the storms of all the passions that blow within the human heart.
God does not command the impossible. That which would be impossible by nature alone comes easily within our range through the abundant torrents of supernatural grace which Almighty God never fails to pour upon his priests who hearken to His divine admonition: "Watch ye and pray that ye enter not into temptation." The assurance of unfailing assistance from prayer is given to us in the words of our great High Priest, Jesus Christ: "Whatsoever you ask the Father in my name it shall be given unto you." Through the steady and persistent utilization of these appointed means of grace the priest can look forward with confidence in the promises of our Divine Redeemer of the successful issue of his life-long struggle for sanctity and closer union with the heart of Christ in an abiding and deathless love.
John A. O'Brien
Champaign, Illinois
ENDNOTES
1 I Cor. 9: 27.
2 Isaiah 52:11.
3 Luke 21:34.
4 Luke 9:23.
5 Matt. 27:20.
6 In Ordin. Exorcist.
7 Luke 14:34.
8 Cardinal Gibbons, The Ambassador of Christ; John Murphy Co., Baltimore; p. 140.
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