I Will Give My Life for the Salvation of Souls
by Archbishop José H. Gomez, S.T.D.
"For you, I am a bishop. But with you, I am a Christian." — St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo
The Second Vatican Council quotes these beautiful words to describe the bishop's unique office of charity in the Church. A Christian among Christians, the bishop is yet a man chosen and set apart from his brothers and sisters in Christ — placed above them in order to be their servant ("Lumen Gentium," No. 32).
The office of bishop, first and foremost, is an office of love, service and self-sacrifice. The bishop gives his life for the salvation of souls.
Since the earliest days of the Church, this often has been literally true. As almost all of the apostles drank the cup our Lord drank, many of the Church's first bishops were also martyred.
In our own day and age, we think of the heroic bishops of Latin America and communist Asia, all those who toiled in the last century behind the Iron Curtain, and those brother bishops currently under house arrest or locked in labor camps in China.
As the council says, the bishop is stamped with "a sacred character." From that moment forward, the bishop, "in a resplendent and visible manner, takes the place of Christ himself, teacher, shepherd and priest, and acts as his representative" (LG, Nos. 20-21; cf. "Catechism of the Catholic Church," No. 1549).
The bishop can serve in this distinguished way because he has inherited the grace and office given by Jesus to his apostles.
In the vision of the council, in the vision of Jesus, the bishop's ministry is Christ's ministry continued until the end of time. His ministry is not "like" Christ's. It is Christ's. It is truly a work of God in our midst. Through the bishop, Jesus continues to preach his Gospel, to seek the lost, to feed his people with word and sacrament, to shepherd them toward the green meadows of eternal beatitude and life.
Among the divine tasks given to the bishop, preaching the Good News and making disciples should take "pride of place," according to the council (LG, No. 25).
In a culture saturated with words that entertain and words that sell, the bishop speaks the Word that can save and set people free. This Word is not a philosophy or another ideology, but a person. The bishop brings men and women to Jesus. In a culture where every authority is questioned, where every ancient truth is assailed, the bishop must preach this Word without compromise.
Nor can the bishop allow the Church or the Gospel to be bullied out of the public square. His apostolic mission requires him to bring the Church's 2,000-year-old tradition to bear on all the issues of the day, especially, the issues of human life and dignity, the sanctity of the family, poverty, social injustice and war (LG, No. 12).
It's the bishop's task to exhort Catholics to remember that their faith is not some generic commitment to say prayers, be nice, play by the rules and go to church on Sunday. The bishop must proclaim to them that the Church's teachings are "destined to inform their thinking and direct their conduct" — in the home, at work, in the marketplace and in their civic duty (LG, No. 25).
Along these lines, the bishop must ensure that what's taught in the name of the Church by everyone is truly what the Church teaches. In everything, the bishop must be mindful of his mission to lead men and women to Jesus, to make them children of God by faith and baptism, and to nourish and strengthen, heal and sanctify them through the sacraments.
Catholics experience the sacraments almost entirely through the ministry of priests. But it is the bishop who ordains the priests. Only through the ministry of the bishop and the priests he ordains do we have access to the life-giving Spirit of Christ, poured out in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist.
The bishop has to promote and safeguard the dignity and mystery of the Church's celebration of the Eucharist and the sacraments. But more than that, the council says, the bishop must teach people to understand the mystery that they are taking part in. The bishop must help them to see how the sacraments are to make them holy and lead them to eternal life ("Christus Dominus," No. 15).
The bishop, finally, is called by the council to be "a true father." He must be a father who knows his children well. The bishop needs to know his people, their hopes and dreams, their questions and assumptions. The bishop should be a friend, a fellow Christian on the way to salvation.
As the council reminds us, the bishop must regard everyone in his care as "his very own children." And he is "destined to render an account for their souls to God" (LG, No. 27). This is what Augustine meant when he said that it frightened him to be a bishop, that it was a grave "danger." To be bishop, he knew, means having to answer for the souls of the people entrusted to him.
The bishop, in the eyes of the council, is ultimately a servant, imitating his Master, the Lord of Lords. As the apostles did, the bishop leaves everything behind to follow Christ, to devote his life to bringing others to Christ. He gives his very life for the salvation of souls.
Let us then turn to Mary, who Jesus entrusted to his beloved apostle with the words: "Behold your Mother" (see John 19:26-27). Let us pray for our bishops, and ask God to grant them the faith and courage to give themselves ever more willingly to the Lord, as Mary did.
This item 6012 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
