The Pope's letter to priests for Holy Thursday 1991
Venerable and dear Brothers
in Christ’s ministerial priesthood
1. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me" (Lk 4:18; cf. Is 61:1).
As we gather round the bishop in the cathedrals of our dioceses for the liturgy of the Chrism Mass, we hear these words which Christ spoke in the synagogue at Nazareth. Standing for the first time before the people of his native village, Jesus reads from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah the words foretelling the coming of the Messiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; because he has anointed me... He has sent me" (Lk 4:18). In their immediate setting these words point to the prophetic mission of the Lord as the one who proclaims the Gospel. But we can also apply them to the manifold grace which he communicates to us.
The renewal of priestly promises on Holy Thursday is linked to the rite of the blessing of the holy oils which in some of the Church’s sacraments express that anointing with the Holy Spirit which comes from the fullness which is in Christ. The anointing with the Holy Spirit first brings about the supernatural gift of sanctifying grace, by which we become, in Christ, sharers in the divine nature and in the life of the Most Holy Trinity. In each of us, this gift is the interior source of our Christian vocation and of every vocation within the community of the Church, as the People of God of the New Covenant.
Today, then, we look to Christ who is the fullness, the source and the model of all vocations, and in particular of the vocation to priestly service as a special sharing, through the priestly character of Holy Orders, in his own priesthood.
In Christ alone is the fullness of anointing, the fullness of the gift a fullness destined to one and all, an inexhaustible fullness. At the beginning of the sacred triduum, when the whole Church, through the liturgy, enters in a special way into Christ’s paschal mystery, we see before us the depth of our vocation to be ministers, avocation which must be lived according to the example of the Master who before the Last Supper washed the feet of the apostles.
During this supper, from the fullness of the Father’s gift — which is in Christ and which, through him, is bestowed upon mankind — Jesus will institute the Sacrament of his Body and Blood under the appearances of bread and wine. He will place it — the Sacrament of the Eucharist in the hands of the apostles and, through them, in the hands of the Church, for all time, until his final coming in glory.
In the power of the Holy Spirit, at. work in the Church since the day of Pentecost, this sacrament, passed down through generation after generation of. priests, has been entrusted also to us in the present moment of human and world history, which in Christ has become once and for all the history of salvation.
Today each one of us, dear brothers, retraces in his mind and heart the path. which brought him to the priesthood, and then, his own path in the priesthood, a path of life and service which has come down to us from the Upper Room. All of us recall the day and the hour, when, after we recited together the Litany of the Saints as we lay prostrate on the floor of the church, the bishop imposed hands on each of us in profound silence. Since the time of the apostles, the imposition of hands has been the sign of the, bestowal of the Holy Spirit, who is the supreme author of the sacred power of the priesthood:. sacramental and ministerial authority. The entire liturgy of the Sacred Triduum brings us nearer to the paschal mystery, from which this authority takes its’ origin, in order to become service and mission. We can apply here the words of the Book of Isaiah (cf. Is 61:1), read by Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me... He has sent me".
2. Venerable and dear brothers: in my letter to you last Holy Thursday I sought to direct your attention to the meeting of the Synod of Bishops which was to be devoted to the subject of priestly formation. The meeting took place last October, and we are currently preparing, together with the Council of, the General Secretariat of the Synod, the document which will present its results. But today, even before that document is published, I wish to. tell you that the synod itself was a great blessing. For the Church, every synod is always a blessing, because the collegiality of the bishops of the whole Church is expressed in a special way. This time, the experience was particularly enriching, for at the synodal assembly we heard the voices of bishops from countries where the Church has only recently emerged, so .to speak,’ from the catacombs.
Another grace of the synod was a new maturity in the way of looking at priestly service in the Church: a maturity which keeps pace with the times in which our mission is being carried out. This maturity finds expression in a more profound interpretation of the very essence of the sacramental priesthood, and thus also of the personal life of each and every priest, that is to say, of each priest’s participation in the saving mystery of Christ: "Sacerdos alter Christus". This is an expression which indicates how necessary it is that Christ be the starting point for interpreting the reality of the priesthood. Only in this way can we do full justice to the truth about the priest, who, having been "chosen from among men, is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God" (Heb 5:1). The human dimension of priestly service, in order to be fully authentic, must be rooted in God. Indeed, m every way that this service is "on behalf of men", it is also "in relation to ‘God": it serves the manifold richness of this relationship:. Without an effort to respond fully to that ."anointing with the Spirit of the Lord" which establishes him in the ministerial priesthood, the priest cannot fulfil the expectations that people — the Church and the world — rightly place in him.
All of this is closely connected with the question of priestly identity. It is difficult to say why in the period following the council the awareness of this identity has in some quarters become less sure. The fact could depend on an incorrect reading of the Church’s Conciliar Magisterium in the context of certain ideological premises inapplicable to the Church and of certain trends coming from the cultural environment. It appears that lately — even though the same premises and the same trends continue to operate — a significant transformation in the ecclesial communities themselves is taking place. Lay people are seeing the indispensable need for priests as a condition for their own authentic Christian life and their own apostolate. Likewise, this need is becoming obvious, and indeed in many situation is becoming urgent, by reason of the lack or insufficient number of ministers of the divine mysteries. From an other point of view, this need for priests is also felt in those countries where the Gospel is being proclaimed for the first time, as was pointed out in the recent encyclical on the missions.
This need for priests — in some ways a growing phenomenon — should help to overcome the crisis of priestly identity. The experience of recent decades shows ever more clearly how much the priest is needed both in the Church and in the world, not in some "laicized" form, but in the form which is drawn from the Gospel and from the rich Tradition, of the Church. The teaching of the Second Vatican Council is the expression and confirmation of this Tradition, in the sense of a timely renewal ("accommodata renovatio"). This was the general tenor of the statements made by the bishops at the last synod and also by those who had been invited ‘from different parts of the world to represent their fellow priests.
The gradual revival of priestly vocations only partially compensates for the shortage of priests. Even if this process is positive on a worldwide scale, nevertheless there are imbalances between different parts of the Church community throughout the world. The picture is very diversified.
During the synod this picture was analyzed in great detail, not only for statistical purposes but also with a view to a possible ‘exchange of gifts’, that is to say, mutual assistance. The appropriateness of this kind of assistance is self-evident, since it is well-known that there are places with one priest for several hundred Catholics, and others where there is one priest for ten thousand Catholics or even more.
In this regard, I wish to recall a statement of the Second Vatican Council’s decree on "The Ministry and Life of Priests": "The spiritual gift that priests have received in ordination prepares them not for any narrow and limited mission, but for the most universal and all-embracing mission of salvation ‘to the end of the earth’ (Acts 1:8)... Priests, then, should hear in mind that they ought to care for all the Churches" (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 10). Today, the disturbing shortage of priests in some areas makes these words of the Council more timely than ever. It is my hope that they will be meditated upon and implemented as generously as possible, particularly in dioceses with a relatively large number of clergy.
In any event, what is needed everywhere is to pray "the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest" (Mt 9:38). This is a prayer for vocations and likewise a prayer that each priest will attain ever greater maturity in his vocation: in his life and in his service. This maturity contributes in a special way to an increase of vocations. We simply need to love our priesthood, to give ourselves completely to it, so that the truth about the ministerial priesthood may thus become attractive to others. In the life of each one of us, people should be able to discern the mystery of Christ, the mystery from which originates the reality of the sacerdos as alter Christus.
3. Taking leave of the apostles in the Upper Room, Christ promised them the Paraclete, another Counsellor, the Holy Spirit "who proceeds from the Father and the Son". In fact he said: "It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you" (Jn 16:7). These words give particular emphasis to the relationship existing between the Last Supper and Pentecost, At the cost of his "departure" through the sacrifice of the cross on Calvary (even before his "departure" to the Father on the fortieth day after the Resurrection) Christ remains in the Church: he remains in the power of the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, who "gives life" (Jn 6:63). It is the Holy Spirit who "gives" this divine life: a life which revealed itself in Christ’s paschal mystery as stronger than death, a life which entered human history with Christ’s Resurrection.
The priesthood is completely at the service of this life: it bears witness to it through the service of the Word; it generates it; it regenerates it and spreads it abroad through the service of the sacraments. Before all else the priest himself lives this life, which is the deepest source of his maturity and also the guarantee of the spiritual fruitfulness of his whole service! The Sacrament of Order imprints on the soul of the priest a special character which, once it has been: received remains in him as a source of sacramental grace, and of all the gifts and charisms which correspond to the vocation to priestly service in the Church.
The Liturgy of Holy Thursday is a special moment during the year, in which we can and must renew and rekindle in ourselves the sacramental grace of the priesthood. We do this in union with the bishop and the entire presbyterate, with the mystery of the Upper Room before our eyes: the Upper Room of both Holy Thursday and the day of Pentecost. Entering deeply into the divine mystery of Christ’s sacrifice, we open ourselves at the same time to the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, whose gift to us is our special participation in the one priesthood of Christ the Eternal Priest. It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we are able to act "in persona Christi", in the celebration of the Eucharist and in our entire sacramental service for the salvation of others.
Our witness to Christ is often very imperfect and deficient. How consoling it is for us to have the assurance that it is primarily he. the Spirit of truth, who bears witness to Christ (cf. Jn 15:26)! May our human witness be open above all to his witness! For it is the Spirit himself who searches.., the depths of God" (1 Cor 2:10), and alone can bring these "depths", these "mighty works of God" (Acts 2:11) to the minds and hearts of those to whom we are sent as servants of the Gospel, of salvation. The more over whelmed we feel by our mission, the more open we must be to the action of the Holy Spirit, especially when the resistance of: minds and hearts, the resistance of a culture begotten under the influence of "the spirit of the world" (1 Cor 2: l2), becomes particularly obvious and powerful.
"The Spirit helps us in our weakness..., and intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words" (Rom 8:26). Despite the resistance of minds and hearts and of a culture steeped in "the spirit, of the world", there nevertheless persists in all of creation, the "longing" spoken of by Saint Paul in the Letter to the Romans: "The whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now" (Rom 8:22),. that it may "obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God" (ibid. 8:21). May this vision of Saint Paul not fade from our priestly, consciousness, and may it support us in our life and service! Then we shall better understand why the priest is necessary for the world and for mankind.
4. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me". Venerable and dear Brothers in the ministerial priesthood: before we receive the post-synodal exhortation on the theme of priestly formation, please accept this letter for Holy Thursday. May it be the sign and expression of the communion which unites all of us — bishops, priests and deacons as well — in a sacramental bond. May it help us, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to follow Jesus Christ, "the pioneer and perfecter of our faith" (Heb 12:2).
With my Apostolic Blessing.
From the Vatican, on 10 March, the Fourth Sunday of Lent, in the year 1991, the thirteenth of my Pontificate.