Thursday, June 02, 2005
Priests in the World: Set Apart, not Separated
(P)riests, while engaging in prayer and adoration, or preaching the word, or offering the Eucharistic Sacrifice and administering the other sacraments, or performing other works of the ministry for men, devote all this energy to the increase of the glory of God and to man's progress in the divine life.
Progress! What a beautiful word.
Presbyterorum Ordinis continues to outline values: priests live among us as "brothers," modelling Jesus' kenosis, setting aside divine glory and living among us in the flesh. This was the apostolic example as well. Priests cannot be of service ... if they remain strangers to the life and conditions of men.
They say it again: Their ministry itself, by a special title, forbids that they be conformed to this world; yet at the same time it requires that they live in this world among men.
How to live in the balance? Ideally, this is the lay call as well: living the baptismal life, providing witness to others, yet being clearly not of the world.
