DOMINICAN VOCATIONS
PROVINCE OF THE ASSUMPTION
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DOMINICAN VOCATIONS PROVINCE OF THE ASSUMPTION |
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The Priesthood in Catherine of Siena | |
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Although she was only a young woman, she knew, with that clearsightedness that was one of the gifts bestowed on her by the Lord, the sorry situation of the contemporary clergy, and, as a loving mother, she did everything in her power to help the Lord's anointed. In the Dialogue and Letters, she draws an impressive picture of the abandonment and abjection into which a large part of the clergy had fallen, and, in the midst of invectives and reminders, she dictates advice and norms such as can form a complete treatise on priestly life. Among her familiars were many priests, and especially many religious priests. Her teaching, made effective by the inspiring example of her life and the incandescent fire of her love for Christ, formed the souls of the young men, helping them to perceive the divine initiative to priestly vocation and driving them towards it; for Catherine, not only in her life but also after her death, induced many disciples to embrace priesthood, never depriving them of her maternal assistance and her firm guidance along the difficult path to the heights of perfection. In so many episodes narrated by her principal biographer, Blessed Raimondo da Capua, she appears to us as the efficacious protectress of ecclesiastical vocations and the collaborator of the Pastors responsible for guiding the faithful. In the ten letters that have reached us, written by her to priests of the secular clergy, we note first of all her reverence for each of the addressees, although she knew perfectly well that more than one of them was living scandalously in mortal sin. The reason for her respect is clearly indicated in the formular with which she begins the letter: “Beloved Father, out of reverence for that Sacrament which you have to administer...”. The one who has had from God authority to consecrate the Body of the Lord is worthy, always, of the highest veneration; the human person, with all his weaknesses and his wretchedness, disappears, struck down by the dazzling light of the Eucharist, the centre and root of priestly life. It was no mere chance that Christ institituted the two sacraments together, at the Last Supper. As Pope Paul VI recalled at the Mass of the Lord's Supper one Holy Thursday: “the sacrament of sacred Orders, as the custody, the source of the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, was instituted together with the latter, on that unique evening...”; and Christ instituted them both with the same exhortation: “Do this in memory of me.” In her theological precision, Catherine sees in all the other sacraments converging in the liturgical-eucharistical celebration of the paschal mystery of Christ, as well as all the works of apostolate and the very preaching of the Gospel, the priest's main task. In love with Christ and therefore hungry for heavenly bread, she wraps the figure of the priest in the warm light reflected on him from the Sun, whose minister he is: “I have elected my ministers for your salvation, in order that the Blood of the humble and immaculate Lamb, my Only-begotten Son, may be administered to your through them,” God said to Catherine in the Dialogue: “He has given them the Sun to administer, giving them the light of science, the warmth of divine charity and the colour, together with the heat and the light, that is, the Blood and Body of my Son. His Body is a Sun because it forms one with me, the real Sun. And such is the unity that cannot be separated from the other, nor cut, like the Sun, whose heat cannot be divided from its light, nor its light from its heat, such is the perfection of union. This Sun ... gives light to the whole world and to whomsoever wishes to be he heated by it; and no dirt can stain this Sun ... I am that eternal God Sun from whom the Son and the Holy Spirit came (Il Dialogo, edited by G. Davalini, Ed. Cater. Roma 1968, p286). These clear words of Catherine's, rather radiant with that light that Dante had already shone on Paradise as he imagined it, place before our eyes the vision of consecrated hands, raised to heaven as they offer the divine host; of the mystical Sun, whose rays disperse all darkness. That definition of the priest that is still being sought today, had been luminously summed up by Catherine so many centuries ago in her concise and forceful style: the priest is the Minister of the Sun; and, as such, he must necessarily be adorned with all virtues, particularly the virtue of purity: “I let you know, beloved daughter,” God says to Catherine in the Dialogue, “that I demand such purity from him in this sacrament as is possible for a man to have in this life ... so that if it were possible that angelic nature could be purified, it would have to be purified at this mystery.” The Saint condemns in burning terms the priest who thinks he can continue to be such while leading a life immersed in the world, the one who “bride is not the breviary, but a wretched she-devil living with him in filth ... and whose books are his brigade of children.” God, indignant, reproves him: “Oh, wretched man, what have you come to? Be ashamed of yourself ... but you, oh, demon incarnate, are not ashamed because you have lost my holy, true light and, like the prostitute who is shameless, you will boast of living in style in the world and having a fine family” (Il Dialogo, p357). It is indispensable that the priest should lead a holy life, because it is for him, true “gardener uprooting the thorns of mortal sins and planting the fragrant shoots of virtues,” to correct the faults of his sheep “reproving them manfully and without fear.” (Il Dialogo, p290). The pastor who, out of interest or for the sake of ease, pretends not to see, and does not correct or scold his sheep when they are led astray by anger or madness, is guilty of an act of injustice and instead of being, like Christ, the Good Shepherd, becomes a mercenary, a blindman leading the blind, and hastens the ruin of the flock entrusted to him, whose angelic guardian and sure guide he should be. He who is elect of Christ (who, as St Mark says, called “those whom it pleased him”), and has answered the divine vocation by becoming a witness to Christ, must reveal Christ in himself, be his authentic image, the legible sign: he must take Christ Crucified as his model and like him carry out justice through obedience, even if it is painful. He will have to obey God and his representative on earth, because Jesus has given to his Vicar the keys that open the “cell of Blood,” he has given him the power to set every priest to administering that glorious Blood, the Church's greatest treasure. The priests' union with their Bishop is understood by Catherine in an even more sublime way, as the union of all priests in the Bishop of the Universal Church, in the Vicar of that Christ who is the only, sovereign and eternal priest. Then, too, as today, refusal of obedience to the magisterium was spreading among the ranks of the clergy, over whose heads was suspended the condemnation of the “Protest”. Catherine, on the contrary, indicated obedience as the indispensable key by means of which, on crossing the Bridge of Jesus Crucified, the gate of heaven may be opened. But the sad situation of the clergy of the fourteenth century is not, for the Saint, a motive of contempt or condemnation. Whatever their faults may be, priests are always the Ministers of the Sun: “the virtue of this Sacrament does not diminish as a result of their defects, and therefore I do not wish reverence for them to be diminished.” God himself wants us to pray to him for the holiness of his ministers: “It is necessary to dislike and hate their faults, but without setting yourselves up as their judges, because they are my Christs ... you must endeavour to clothe them with loving affection and holy prayer, to wash away their filth with your tears, that is to offer them to me with tears and a great desire that I should clothe them with the garment of charity.” (Il Dialogo, p300). God has placed the “administrators” of himself, the true Sun, like candles in the candlestick, giving them a dignity greater than that of the angels (Letter 59, p447 Epist., ed. Paoline 1966, vol. III). Woe to those priests who do not respond to such abundance of divine grace, who, treading underfoot their lofty dignity, faith in that holiness that God expects of them: “conscience, in the horrible aspect of the devil, will take hold of them.” (Il Dialogo, p359). The demon, whom Catherine, in a noble concept, imagines concealed and personified, as it were, in the sinner's conscience, that demon whose temple the unworthy priest has become, will torment the wretch already in this life and become his absolute master in the next life. The corruption of the clergy, the crisis of the priesthood, the decadence of the Church, are for Catherine a reason and a duty for suffering and loving more. With words, action, prayer, she is, at every moment of her life, near the priest whom she assists with motherly affection and filial humility. She, a laywoman, urges all the Christian laity to feel they are sharers in, and jointly responsible for, the priestly mission. The whole community ahs the duty to support him who, expressed by it, in the midst of it, “makes present, sacramentally, the priestly authority of Christ.” Cahterine who, as she was dying, offered herself as the victim for the salvation of the Church, which she salways considered in its hierarchical reality, never failed to give the Bride of Christ, even at the darkest moments, the “two-fold gift, generous and warm-hearted, of confidence and of fidelity,” a fidelity that was in her – as it must be for us - “cohesion, coherence, defence and collaboration.” (Pope Paul VI to the Italian Episcopal Conference, 1970). She, teacher and Doctor of the Church, unites, as she did so often during her earthly life, her exhortation with that of the Sovereign Pontiff and invites us to have confidence in Church. Instead of criticising and inveighing, let us invoke God to send numerous workers for his harvest and give them the grace to be holy. Let us pray to God, as Catherine prayed to him single-mindedly and ardently whenever she received, from the hands of one of his ministers, the sweek Sacrament of Holy Eucharist: Receive, Eternal Father, him who communicated to me the precious Body and Blood of our Son. Strip him of himself and release him from himself, and clothe him in thy enternal will. Bind him to thee with a knot that will never be loosened, so that he may be a fragrant plant in the garden of Holy Church. - Prayer of 1379 in Preghiere ed elevaz by P.I.
Taurisano, O.P., ed. Ferrari, 1932, Roma, p120.
From a pamphlet The Priesthood in Catherine of Siena produced by the Monastery of Our Lady of the Rosary, Summit, NJ. |
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