Witnesses for God
Editorial
by Giovanni Maria Gian
Translated from
the 6/19/09 issue of
The permanent necessity of reforming the Church is the root and the background of the letter the Pope has written to all his priests at the start of the Year for Priests, which comes as the Pauline Year is coming to an end.
And precisely because
Ecclesia semper reformanda - the Church is always in reform - according to ancient Christian tradition, Catholic priests themselves must continually renew themselves interiorly.
Towards this, Benedict XVI's text to all the priests of the world intends to contribute, as a brother to his brothers.
He does so by recalling 150 years after his death the spiritual itinerary of St. Jean-Marie Vianney, the Curate of Ars, who was proclaimed 80 years ago the patron of parish priests by Pius XI, who had canonized him four years earlier. He remains for most Catholics the ideal priest, although his image may have faded somewhat with time.
That young country priest spent his whole life in a France which had been shaken up by the revolutionary storm of the late 18th century and then spiritually desertified by anti-Christian aversion.
As the Pope's letter recalls, his bishop told Vianney when he sent him on an assignment which was as difficult as it was touching : "“There is little love of God in that parish; you will be the one to put it there”.
And this is what continues to be essential, as Benedict XVI reminds priests insistently.
One hears it said that priests are not in fashion today, at least not in the secularized societies of well-being, and that their work is not exactly popular. Perhaps it is true, as are the disconsolate reflections on practical materialism and on the spreading de-Christianization in countries that were traditionally Christian. But when was the situation really substantially different?
Even from the viewpoint of Catholic religious practice, times have always been difficult, as indicated in the Pope's letter - "confession was no more easy or frequent [in Vianney's time] than in our own day".
Notwithstanding all this, Benedict XVI speaks of the priesthood with affectionate acknowledgment of the labors of all the priests who are 'friends of Christ', and says he still carries in his heart the memory of the first parish priest alongside whom he worked.
Certainly the resounding faithlessness of some priests that has been much in the news in the past two decades is a shameful burden to the Church, but infinitely less important than the myriad priests who day after day - although perhaps suffering and misunderstood, often insulted and hindered or outright persecuted and even killed - are in the world as witnesses for Christ along with all their brothers in the religious orders and the lay faithful.
They are witnesses of the incarnate God who continue to impress and even fascinate contemporary man - probably because they are the symbols of a different world.