Benedict XVI - The Priest, a Bridge to God: Inspiration and Encouragement for Priest and Seminarians

The Priest

A Bridge to God

All quotations from Pope Benedict XVI are copyright 2012 by Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Scripture citations contained in this work are taken from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (RSV), copyright 1965 and 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Copyright 2012 by Our Sunday Visitor. Published 2012.

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All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts for critical reviews, no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without permission in writing from the publisher. Contact: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 200 Noll Plaza, Huntington, IN 46750; ; 1-800-348-2440.

ISBN: 978-1-59276-248-4 (Inventory No. T1195)
eISBN: 978-1-61278-212-6
LCCN: 2012932027

Interior design by M. Urgo
Cover design by Rebecca J. Heaston
Cover photo by Stefano Spaziani

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Contents

Foreword

We call him Pope Benedict XVI our Pontiff, from the Latin word Pontifex, which means bridge builder. The bishop of Rome, the Successor of Saint Peter, the Servant of the Servants of God, the visible shepherd of the Church Universal, has as his job description the building of a bridge between the Creator and His creatures.

A rather awesome and intimidating portfolio! This bridge building has of course already been done, with infinite efficacy, by the One whose cross that afternoon we strangely call good carried us across the bridge from earth to heaven, from sin to grace, from death to life. Jesus is the Pontiff; we really need no other except to reflect and remind us of Jesus. The Master was a shrewd teacher, the best educational psychologist ever, and he knew he would need reminders, signs, sacraments here on this side of the bridge to hint at the other side.

One such sign is the one whom we Catholics sometimes call the Sovereign Pontiff, our Holy Father.

Lord knows that he has surely been a very effective vicar of the essential bridge builder, the carpenters son from Nazareth. In his words, writings, teachings, travels, and gentle presence, Pope Benedict XVI has helped us bridge the gap between Creator and creature.

Now he offers us priests and future priests the high compliment of calling us bridges as well.

Blessed John Paul II, in his renowned exhortation on priestly formation, Pastores Dabo Vobis, reminded priests and seminarians that our personality, our humanity, our temperament can either bring people closer to God and His Church or drive them away.

In other words, we can be a bridge, or a wall.

My beloved priests, Pope Benedict exhorts, tear down this wall!

Let your ministry, your own nature, your very personality, remind people of the tender, gentle, loving mercy of Jesus!

Thank you, Our Sunday Visitor. A hundred years after that great priest and bishop, John Francis Noll, founded this providential publishing endeavor, you continue to feed the sheep.

And, in this elegant and timely book, you feed the shepherds as well.

Timothy Cardinal Dolan
Archbishop of New York
February 22, 2012
Feast of the Chair of St. Peter

ONE

It Does Make Sense

It does make sense to become a priest, Pope Benedict XVI assures us. Thats sometimes hard to remember when it seems like the whole world is telling you that it doesnt make sense. Our secular culture laughs at priests or, even worse, fears and denounces them. At best, it dismisses them as rather old-fashioned. Is there really any room in the modern world for the priesthood?

The Holy Father has a startling answer for the naysayers. We need priests now more than ever, he says. Its not the priesthood thats passing away, but the secular culture. The priest is the man of the future. When every memory of modern popular culture has passed away, the priesthood will endure.

Joseph Ratzinger grew up in Nazi Germany under a regime that was fanatically hostile to Catholic Christianity. Over and over he was told that his silly notion of becoming a priest was absurd, useless, outdated, impossible. There would be no priests in the perfect new world of National Socialism.

Yet the Catholic Church is still here, whereas the Nazis have been swept into the dustbin. His long life has given the Holy Father an important historical perspective. He has watched firsthand as the dominant secular philosophies of the twentieth century fascism and communism have been swept away, while the Catholic Church has remained the dominant force in the worlds thought.

There will be times when reading what Pope Benedict has to say takes a little bit of work. When the Holy Father speaks, he does not water down the truth. He trusts us to be able to understand anything he understands if we put our minds to it. And youll find that his trust is seldom misplaced, because he expresses complex ideas precisely and clearly.

But more often we hear a voice thats surprisingly down-to-earth. He knows what his fellow priests are going through hes gone through it, too, and probably worse. He knows what works for a priest: what encourages him, what motivates him, what keeps him going when its all too tempting to give up.

And thats the encouragement every priest and seminarian needs. It does make sense to become a priest, because the priest is the man of the future. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever (1 John 2:17).

It does make sense to become a priest

When in December 1944 I was drafted for military service, the company commander asked each of us what we planned to do in the future. I answered that I wanted to become a Catholic priest. The lieutenant replied: Then you ought to look for something else. In the new Germany priests are no longer needed. I knew that this new Germany was already coming to an end, and that, after the enormous devastation that madness had brought upon the country, priests would be needed more than ever. Today the situation is completely changed. In different ways, though, many people nowadays also think that the Catholic priesthood is not a job for the future, but one that belongs more to the past. You, dear friends, have decided to enter the seminary and to prepare for priestly ministry in the Catholic Church in spite of such opinions and objections. You have done a good thing. Because people will always have need of God, even in an age marked by technical mastery of the world and globalization: they will always need the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, the God who gathers us together in the universal Church in order to learn with him and through him lifes true meaning and in order to uphold and apply the standards of true humanity God is alive, and he needs people to serve him and bring him to others. It does make sense to become a priest: the world needs priests, pastors, today, tomorrow, and always, until the end of time.