Permanent Consecration: Anchor Of Priestly Sanctity

by Fr. Vincent P. Miceli, S.J.

At some time in his life every priest has seen a vision. The look of Christ has flooded his fantasy. His call to communion has reverberated in his soul: "Come, follow me." The charm of Christ's infinitely gracious person has suffused his soul, his memory. The knock of Christ on the door of his heart has driven his spirit to sally forth so as to abide with him, to share his fortunes and his fate. The Master's incredible invocation to the priest to enter the promised land of intimate communion with himself reveals the stupendously gratuitous love of the Redeemer that strives to fulfill the infinitely voracious hunger in the creature for a life of total, mutual self-donation to God and with God.

When the priest said "Yes," freely, generously in word and deed, to the appeal of the Incarnate Emmanuel, to the Christ who is God-with-us, he engaged his whole being, his whole person, his "I" actively and permanently in the Person and fortunes of the God-Man "Thou." This acceptance of total, permanent commitment to Christ who has totally immolated himself for man, lifted the priest from the dull anonymity of being a mere individual, unconscious of divine realities and sublime moral values to becoming a person, a man of God, awakened to the Presence of God and eager to grow up in Jesus Christ.

But the life of intimate communion with Christ has to be won by the violence of faith and only the generously, the violently, faithful carry it away. When the Apostles, James and John, sought, through their mother's intercession, to sit on either side of their Lord when he reigned from his throne of glory, their Divine Master challenged them thus: "You do not know what you are asking for. Can you drink the cup of which I am about to drink, to be baptized with the baptism with which I am to be baptized?" Since James and John coveted ardently to sit in his company on his throne of Glory, they replied: "We can."¹ They answer their Lord's challenge with the willingness to venture their whole lives for his company in his Kingdom, even though, while as yet untried in the highest virtues, untaught in the holiest truths, and unpracticed in the deepest wisdom, they have no absolute certainty of success in their venture.

Marveling at this unconditioned generosity, Cardinal Newman analyzes the full commitment of James and John to Jesus thus:

Success and reward everlasting they will have, who persevere unto the end. We cannot doubt that the ventures of all Christ's servants must be returned to them at the Last Day with abundant increase. This is a true saying: "He returns far more than we lend to Him, and without fail. But I am speaking of individuals, of ourselves one by one. Not one among us knows for certain that he himself will persevere; yet everyone among us, to give himself even a chance of success, must make a venture. As regards individuals, then, it is quite true that all of us must for certain make ventures for heaven, yet without the certainty of success through them. This, indeed, is the very meaning of the word 'venture'; for that is a strange venture which has nothing in it of fear, risk, danger, anxiety, uncertainty. Yes, so it certainly is; and in this consists the excellence and nobleness of faith; this is the very reason why faith is singled out from other graces, and honored as the special means of our justification, because its presence implies that we have the heart to make a venture.²

St. Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews clearly explains the nature of the venture made by those fully committed to follow the vision of faith. He first exhorts the imitators of Christ not to lose heart in the following of their Master. "Do not, therefore, lose your confidence which has a great reward. For you have need of patience that, doing the will of God, you may receive the promise. For a very little while and he who is to come will come and will not delay." Then comes Paul's famous scriptural quotation: "Now my just man lives by faith. But if he draws back, he will not please my soul." The Apostle then closes with a note of praise and encouragement for his fellow-Christians: "We, however, are not of those who draw back unto destruction, but of those who have faith unto the saving of the soul."³

Faith Is The Ground Of Proof

To make sure that his readers understand the nature of the full commitment to God and Christ that faith entails, St. Paul enters into the heart of the definition of faith. "Now faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that are not seen."⁴ Thus faith is the living realization of things promised by God to his followers; it is the ground of proof, the evidence of these realities which are not yet seen. For faith makes present here and now the unseen realities of God in such a manner that the believer acts on the mere prospect of these realities as if he already possessed them. Thus, the man who lives by faith stakes today his present worldly possessions, ease, wealth, happiness upon the chance of having fulfilled in the future the promises made to him by God. And in order to emphasize the reality of this truth, St. Paul presents a cloud of Old Testament witnesses who attained God's approval because, in the full commitment of their faith to him, "they kept looking for that city with fixed foundations, of which city the architect and builder is God."⁵ "For without faith it is impossible to please God,"⁶ the Apostle insisted, as he exhorted the Christian Hebrews "to put away every encumbrance and the sin entangling us, and run with patience to the fight set before us, looking towards the author and finisher of our faith, Jesus, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame . . . "⁷

If, then, faith is the essence of priestly life, it follows that the fully committed priest will permanently risk, in following Christ, what he now has or could possess for what he is promised by Our Divine Lord. And the priest does this in a noble and generous way, not at all rashly or lightly. Even so the priest surrenders to Christ without knowing in every detail what he gives up, nor again the total reality of what he shall gain. And the priest does this even though still uncertain about victory in this lifelong struggle of self-donation, even though still uncertain about all that has to be suffered in his self-sacrifice until death. For in all trials and eventualities the priest leans, waits upon Christ, trusting him to fulfill his promises, trusting him to enable him as priest to fulfill faithfully his vows. And thus the priest always progresses in intimate communion with Christ without excessive fear or anxiety about the future. Abraham, trusting in God completely, went out from his native land, not knowing where he was going. He and many of the ancient saintly patriarchs, prophets and judges with the Chosen People died not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off. Yet they were convinced of their reality, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Every priest who accepts the call of Christ is daily saying in effect to Our Divine Lord: "Yes, we are able, we are willing to drink of your cup, to be baptized with your Baptism." Every priest pledges himself, as the Apostles James and John did, to go all the way in this life with Christ even unto the baptism of martyrdom, if such be God's Holy Will. With Thomas, the Apostle called the Twin, the priest in order to remain with Christ willingly cries out: "Let us also go with him to Jerusalem — where they are seeking to stone him — that we may also die with him."⁸

We Lose The Sense Of Vocation

We are living in an era in which the priestly vocation is disintegrating and permanent commitment to God is slowly vanishing. It does no good to ignore or gloss over this tragedy. Now the disease that is attacking priestly life in its very essence is the madness for change, a fever that rises from metaphysical instability. Behind the plague of instability lies the loss of a sense of vocation. Now a vocation consists in hearing the call to follow Christ and a consciousness of the correct route to get to him so as to live in communion with him and accomplish the great designs he plans for our lives. But in this age in which the awareness of God is fast fading and being replaced with a waxing awareness, if not obsession with man, it follows that the consciousness that every life involves a special call from God for a special work willed by God tends to be obliterated from the mind and memory of man. Thus, when the primacy of God is substituted for by the primacy of man, then the providence of man supplants the providence of God and, of course, the only account of his stewardship that man has to render is the account he gives himself and his fellowmen of his mission in life. Thus the basic sense of vocation has succumbed to the assaults of a practical atheism that, through a philosophy of life that is a secularistic humanism, finds its only God in the face, functions and fortunes of totally liberated man. With the demotion of his God from the divine to the human, the mission of the priest will be likewise degraded. Whereas previously the mission of the priest had been to cooperate with Christ, the God-Man, in liberating mankind from Satan, sin and death, thereby restoring men to a life of sonship with God, now the humanistic mission aims at liberating humanity from ignorance, hunger, underdevelopment, political and economic oppression. The mission of the priest is no longer to sanctify and divinize, but to make or direct progress and to humanize. It is in order to get rid of doing God's will that the "new-styled" priest has concentrated his efforts on making humanitarian progress; he shields himself from the challenge of the cross by plunging into the delirium for change.

Being a fully committed priest has become a hazardous vocation today. Yet the attack on priestly life, strangely enough, does not come primarily from external enemies; it comes from priests themselves who have decided to live their own lives in their own fashions. Many priests are following the wisdom of the world and forgetting the wisdom of God. They run their lives as if they were merely secular careers, seeking in their activities security and efficiency instead of availability and sanctity. They have faltered in their faith in God. St. James, in two graphic analogies, describes the evil effects of faltering faith. "For he who hesitates is like a wave of the sea, driven and carried about by the wind. Therefore, let not such a one think that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways."⁹

Then too priests have forgotten who they are and must be — other Christs, totally consecrated to achieving the Holy Will of God in themselves and in the faithful through a life of humble prayer and self-sacrificing service. They have too often become merely hearers of the word, but doers of the wisdom of the world. Hence a delusionary, schizophrenic attitude toward God and the priestly life has been adopted, an attitude that creates a severe identity crisis in priests and so disorients them that thousands of priests — in America alone 10,000 in the last 10 years — have abandoned their consecration to God to the detriment of their own souls and the souls of millions of the faithful.

What Kind Of Men Are We?

St. James, describing those who take religion lightly or make promises to God they are likely to break, writes these trenchant words: "Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror: for he looks at himself and goes away, and presently forgets what kind of a man he is. But he who has looked carefully into the perfect law of liberty and has remained in it, not becoming a forgetful hearer but a doer of the word, shall be blessed in his deed."¹⁰ Now permanent priestly commitment is a way of life which embodies "the perfect law of liberty," for "to serve God is to reign." Such a commitment of total consecration can only be lived up to when the priest adheres not to his own will, but solely to the Holy Will of God. Listen to the wisdom of Cardinal Newman on this matter: "Be our mind as heavenly as it may be, most loving, most holy, most zealous, most energetic, most peaceful, yet if we look off from Him (Christ and His Church) for a moment, and look to ourselves, at once these excellent tempers fall into some extreme or mistake. Charity becomes over-easiness, holiness is tainted with spiritual pride, zeal degenerates into fierceness, activity eats up the spirit of prayer, hope is heightened into presumption. We cannot guide ourselves. God's revealed word is our sovereign rule of conduct: and, therefore, among other reasons, is faith so principal a grace, for it is the directing power which receives the commands of Christ and applies them to the heart."¹¹

Now perhaps the most important virtue which is basic for a permanent, fruitful priestly life with God is the habitual attitude of faithfulness forever. Here, of course, we are speaking of fidelity to God through the consecration of one's whole life to him by means of the priestly promises and the evangelical perfection they call for. Here we are speaking of fidelity to Christ the High Priest who shares his priesthood and its sanctifying services to mankind with all priests. But priests are human beings like the rest of us and, like us, they differ vastly in levels of spiritual depth. Alas, some of them are a bundle of disparate impressions, of confused, interlocking experiences. They live in the moment without a deep, reverent memory capable of connecting harmoniously past with present and of projecting both into a divine future. They lack the holy capacity for Christ-like continuity, the continuity of the Divine Plan for the sanctification and glorification of themselves and all men. Too many priests, aping their secularistic brethren, live in the moment; the present fashion is all-powerful, overwhelming for them. Rudderless, such priests are like butterflies, always on the move emotionally, winging their way from fragile flower to fragile flower, concerned with feeding only on the bright, fragrant, sweet blossoms of life. In the words of one of the distinguished philosophers of our day, Dietrich von Hildebrand, which we read in his book The Art of Living, such priests are like a sieve through which everything runs. Though they can be good, kindly and honest, yet they cleave to a childish, unconscious position; they have no depth. They elude one's grasp; they are incapable of having deep relationships with other people because they are incapable of permanent relationships with anything. They do not know responsibility because they know no lasting bond, because with them one day does not reach into the next one. Even though their impressions are strong, they do not penetrate down to the deepest level in which we find those attitudes, which are over and above the changes of the moment. These people honestly promise something one moment and in the next it has completely disappeared from their memory. They make resolutions under a strong impression, but the next impression blows them away . . . For these people weight and bale are not the preponderant factors determining their interest in life or things, but only the liveliness of the impression created by the actual presence of things. What makes an impression upon them is the general advantage of liveliness which present impressions or situations have over those of the past.¹²

Unfortunately, such fickle priests never experience the holy paradox experienced by the psalmist who prayed with joy to God: "With you, O Lord, one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as one day."

Many Abandoned First Loves

Now often enough the unstable priest is a person of deep feelings, even convictions. The core of such a priest is not void of serious spiritual aspirations and commitments, as witness how many of such priests have remained many years in consecrated life prior to abandoning it. Nevertheless, the novelty, the excitement, the thrill or the storm of a fresh situation or movement suffocated their deeper aspirations and commitments. While the glow or gloom of the new events was asserting its powerful magnetism of attraction or repulsion, such inconstant priests moved to abandon their first loves, to dismiss from their hearts their original commitments. They became traitors to themselves, to others, to God. For them the new situation changed everything and they presented this new situation as reason for their breaking off their former bonds, sacred promises and vows. It was only then that it became apparent that their spiritual temple was built on sand, the quicksand that collapses before every trial, doubt, difficulty or worldly enticement. If such priests really loved God and his Son unconditionally, they would have gone on in their consecrated lives in spite of opposition or worldly allurements. As it is, because of their infidelity such priests have been blown away like chaff from the corn gathered in the divine granary. Convinced that every exciting change was a forward march to an improved priestly life, such fickle priests, like reeds shaken by the wind, abandoned their permanent center, Jesus Christ and, hypnotized by the charm of the very latest, of the most advanced, marched, under the spell of the tyranny of fashion, straight off the mountain of prayer and holiness into the wilderness Of the world where their tremendous potential for serving and saving souls was forever lost, to the glee of the enemy of mankind, the Devil.

The Will Is Divided

The more sublime a reality is, the greater is the danger it implies. Now the superb gift of freedom implies the risk of infidelity to God. For all men are tempted to fall back upon themselves as an autonomous center, asserting claims to things from others or breaking off intimate friendships with others. Now priestly communion and community with Christ is a precious gift from God. No mere human effort can achieve this masterpiece of grace. Plato tells us that "People grow wings when they fall in love." And, as we saw in the beginning of this essay, priests who caught the vision of Christ left all things and flew after him. But as the trials of life beset us priests, we seem to get used to this indescribable gift.

One of the weaknesses of the "We" community is that it is bodiless, without any organs proper to it. The community only catches hold of us and thrives, as it were, across the spiritual space, the mysterious presence that exists between the "I" and the "Thou," the "Thou" of Christ and our fellow priests in Christ. But there always exists the temptation to deny the "We" community in Christ. As St. Paul reminds us, we all suffer from the ambiguity of the divided will. This disjointed articulation of the will is a central mystery in man, tearing him simultaneously in opposite directions, towards self-isolation or communion. Now the press of everyday preoccupations, changes, and events tends to engross us in what we call "real, practical life." Little by little we get wrapped up in our work, likes, dislikes, aspirations, failures, successes, in a word, in our selfish selves. Shakespeare expressed this fall from communion thus: "Men are April when they woo, December when they wed."¹³ Our Divine Lord expressed this fall from faith and faithfulness in the Parable of the Sower, indicating the fickle who fall back into spiritual slumber, "choked by the cares and deceits of this world." Now priestly life in the community of the Church, when dulled by habit or shaken by sufferings, disillusionments and bitterness, may tempt priests to flee back into themselves, to save themselves by abandoning what they see to be a collapsing society. This flight into mediocrity, of course, will wear the garments of reasonableness. "I can serve God better in the world, closer to people, uncluttered with the obsession of my own sanctification. Besides, the Council has counselled letting down the bars and walls of the rectory or monastery. And anyway, I have a right to happiness and, thus, need not remain in this bitterness and disillusionment." Judas is an example of one who jumped a sinking ship and went on to self-destruction, though he was convinced at the time that he was saving himself.

Peter Denied Jesus

But we ought to analyze an historical example that will truly strengthen us. We have in the situation of St. Peter, confronted by the servant girl over his tie with Christ, an elucidation concerning the ontological role of permanent fidelity. "You also were with Jesus the Galilean!"¹⁴ As a matter of fact, Peter was with Jesus in the richest, most spiritual and intimate priestly meanings that can be wrung from this intersubjective expression of communion and community. Yet Peter fled; he denied the bonds of knowledge, of co-presence, of collaboration, of natural and supernatural priestly communal living that had been mutually enjoyed by him in the company of Christ. Peter swore he did not know the man. Formerly these bonds had riveted the two — Jesus and Peter — to each other in a communion of marvelous love. Now Christ, Peter's friend, needed Peter more than ever, for Christ was abandoned by all and on his way to death. But Peter, seeking to save himself from a similar death, flees back into himself: "I do not know the man!" Fidelity on Peter's part called for his public avowal of his tie with Christ. Permanent faithfulness demanded his public prolongation of the presence of his friend in himself. Indeed, it urged the open defense of his friend and the promulgation of his friend's many benefactions to himself and others. Had Peter performed, which he was to do in an heroic degree in the future, these acts of permanent loyalty and fidelity, had he defended his friend faithfully and courageously in this trial, Peter would have participated in the very faithfulness of the Son of God, who was gladly giving himself up to death in order to obey and glorify his Father. Peter's fidelity would have creatively multiplied and deepened within himself, while testifying before others to the unfathomable goodness of his friend, the presence and goodness of the Holy One who had chosen him on the day he left family, friends, nets and boats to enlist and elope with Christ. For Peter's priestly communion with Christ, his ardent re-assertion of his "We" fellowship with Christ, originally rested on the first instant he crossed over to Christ. This intimate communion could only survive and wax strong on the instant to instant renewal of his confessing Christ before God and men under fair or foul circumstances."¹⁵

For total consecration and permanent commitment is founded and developed on the determination to deflate one's ego while glorifying God's goodness. All permanent faithfulness is a deeply felt commitment to indefectibility. Come what may, God must increase in the life of a good priest and he himself, like John the Baptist, must decrease. Even though priests know their own feebleness and even though they realize that others often enough increase this weakness by their own defections, for this very reason the faithful priest maintains the vows and promises of his total consecration with the aid of constant prayer for strength. Would that Peter had heeded the Lord's exhortation: "Pray, lest you enter into temptation!" Nor will the priest of permanent consecration allow the apparent extinction of death tempt him to infidelity to his vowed obligations. Many flee priestly life for a fling with the world in their middle years, fearing that approaching death when it arrives will put an end to all. But as Gabriel Marcel has testified, the faithful person is fearless in the face of death and perseveres beyond its portals. He writes: "Fidelity asserts herself never more truly than when she is challenging, defying, confronting an absence, when she is triumphing over this absence and, in particular, when she is conquering that absence that presents itself to us, doubtless falsely, as absolute absence — the absence known as death."¹⁶

Let us now briefly review the basic condition of man, the realization of which should lead one to pray daily for the gift of perseverance in his total consecration of himself to God in the way of priestly and evangelical sanctity. Viewed in his own nature without any reference to grace, man is weak, capricious, wayward, irritable, irrepressible, wavering, carried off in all directions. God, in order to stabilize him for the fulfillment of his mission, in order to direct him to himself as to his destiny, fixed man's mind and heart on a love outside himself, on his helpmate, his wife. For God saw it was not good for man to be alone, to be occupied solely with doing his own will. Thus even Holy Church, following her Master's will, has raised his matrimony to the dignity of being a sacrament. Thus their mutual affection in marriage tended to render spouses faithful to each other even unto death, despite the ill-fortunes and sufferings that worked to destroy their permanent love. One mind, one aim, one course, one love in one flesh, one happiness between them formed the fountainhead of human society. For a sane and loving society can only be founded on total commitment to conjugal love, duty, fidelity.

Now when viewed in his nature under the dispensation of grace, with the God-Man in his family as the Son of Man, the family of man is seen to be transformed and raised by the higher law of redemption, by a higher law of love, a law which does not obliterate the old natural dispensation of matrimony but divinizes and completes the family rooted in matrimony by introducing it into the family of God which is rooted in consecrated virginity. Thus the priests and spouses of Christ in this new family are like the angels of heaven. They neither marry nor are given in marriage. They give themselves in the spousal of consecrated virginity. Theirs is the marriage with Christ signified in the words of St. Paul: "I have espoused you to one husband, so that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ."¹⁷ Notice, this is not a state of independence, or of dreary pride, or of barren indolence or of notorious careerism or of crushed affections, but the sublime and surprising love of God which draws men and women to rival the angels in their spousal love without ceasing to be men.

Just as the very idea of matrimony is possession — permanent, total possession — so too is the priestly life of consecration like a life of marriage to Jesus. It means to possess Christ totally forever with an indissoluble bond. It means to be his while he is ours, to go wherever the Lamb goes, to be marked with his sign, to wear his ring, to sing his special canticle, to be clothed in his spotless wedding garment. It means to participate in that wonderful sacrament which united him to his blessed Mother. "I am my Beloved's and my Beloved is mine; he pastures his flock among the lilies." What a towering condescension! That the Son of God should stoop to us priests in the tenderest, most endearing, intimate way! Christ the High Priest has become ours to love, ours to consult, ours to converse with, ours to suffer with, to die with, to reign with, ours so fully that it is as if he had none to think of but each one of us personally.¹⁸

In a life that is doomed to death, separation and bereavement, we priests permanently consecrated to Jesus are assured by our faith that the day of the solemnity of our eternal marriage to the Son of God is not far off. Now is the time to persevere in faithful love and permanent service. In a little while the Bridegroom will come, and then the wise priests, like the wise virgins, will light their lamps to go forward to meet him. They will ascend with him to the everlasting banquet where the Mother of Jesus will be the steward of the inexhaustible flagons of celestial wine and the angels will sing joyfully: "Blessed are they who are called to the wedding supper of the Lamb."

Let us close with Cardinal Newman's words of wisdom to those who would consecrate themselves irrevocably to God until death:

We cannot change ourselves; this we know full well, or, at least, a very little experience will teach us. God alone can give us the desires, affections, principles, views and tastes, which a change implies; this too we know . . . What then is it that we who profess (a priestly) religion lack? I repeat, this: a willingness to be changed, a willingness to suffer, to suffer Almighty God to change us . . . But when a man comes to God to be saved, then, I say, the essence of true conversion is a surrender of himself, an unreserved, unconditional surrender. And this is a saying, which most men who come to God cannot receive. They wish to be saved, but in their own way; they wish (as it were) to capitulate upon terms, to carry off their goods with them; whereas the true spirit of faith leads a man to look off from self to God, to think nothing of his own wishes, his present habits, his importance or dignity, his rights, his opinions, but to say: "I put myself into Thy hands, O Lord, Make me what you will. I forget myself; I divorce myself from myself; I am dead to myself; I will follow you (wherever you lead)." Here is the very voice of self-surrender: "What will you have me do? Take our own way with me; whatever it may be, pleasant or painful, I will do it."¹⁹

Notes

1. Matt: 20:22

2. Realizations, Newman's own Selection of His Sermons, edited by Vincent Ferrer Blehl, S. J., (London, Darton, Longman & Dodd), 1964, pp. 46, 47.

3. Paul: Hebrews 10:35-39.

4. Paul: Hebrews 11:1.

5. Paul: Hebrews 11:9.

6. Paul: Hebrews 11:6.

7. Paul: Hebrews 12:1-2.

8. John 11:16.

9. James 1:6-8.

10. James 1:22-26.

11. John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 2, pp. 278-9.

12. Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Art of Living, (Chicago. Franciscan Herald Press), 1965, pp. 13-14,

13. Alice von Hildebrand, The Art of Living (Chicago, Franciscan Herald Press), 1965, pp. 56, 57.

14. John 18:17. 25. 27.

15. Vincent P. Miceli, S. J., Ascent to Being, (N.Y., Desclee & Co.), 1965, pp. 122-124.

16. Gabriel Marcel, Du refus a l'invocation, (Paris, Gallimard), 1940, p. 199.

17. 2 Cor 11:2.

18. Placid Murray, O. S. B., Newman the Oratorian, (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan Ltd.), 1969, p. 277.

19. John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 5, pp. 241-2.

© Catholic Polls, Inc. 1977.

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