Rev José Mario O Mandía
jmom.honlam.org
What are the effects of the Sacrament of Holy Orders? The CCCC (no 335) sums it up as follows: “This sacrament yields [1] a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit which configures the recipient to Christ in his triple office as Priest, Prophet, and King, according to the respective degrees of the sacrament. Ordination confers [2] an indelible spiritual character and therefore cannot be repeated or conferred for a limited time.”
We have discussed the first effect. The second effect reminds us of baptism and confirmation, two sacraments that also leave an “indelible spiritual character.”
Does that mean that a priest cannot become a layman again? The CCC (no 1583) explains: “It is true that someone validly ordained can, for grave reasons, be discharged from the obligations and functions linked to ordination, or can be forbidden to exercise them; but he cannot become a layman again in the strict sense [cf Code of Canon Law, cann. 290-293; 1336 # 1 3, 5; 1338 # 2; Council of Trent DS 1774], because the character imprinted by ordination is for ever. The vocation and mission received on the day of his ordination mark him permanently.”
Configuration to Christ is the greatest privilege a man can ever have. The CCC (no 1589) says: “Before the grandeur of the priestly grace and office, the holy doctors felt an urgent call to conversion in order to conform their whole lives to him whose sacrament had made them ministers. Thus St Gregory of Nazianzus, as a very young priest, exclaimed: ‘We must begin by purifying ourselves before purifying others; we must be instructed to be able to instruct, become light to illuminate, draw close to God to bring him close to others, be sanctified to sanctify, lead by the hand and counsel prudently. I know whose ministers we are, where we find ourselves and to where we strive. I know God’s greatness and man’s weakness, but also his potential. [Who then is the priest? He is] the defender of truth, who stands with angels, gives glory with archangels, causes sacrifices to rise to the altar on high, shares Christ’s priesthood, refashions creation, restores it in God’s image, recreates it for the world on high and, even greater, is divinised and divinises’ (St Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 2, 71, 74, 73).
“And the holy Cure of Ars: ‘The priest continues the work of redemption on earth…. If we really understood the priest on earth, we would die not of fright but of love…. The Priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus’ (St John Vianney, quoted in B. Nodet, Jean-Marie Vianney, Cure d’ Ars, 100].”
Finally, let us not forget those words of St John Paul II, in the first of the yearly Holy Thursday Letters to priests that he wrote: “Dear Brothers: you who have borne ‘the burden of the day and the heat’ (Mt 20:12), who have put your hand to the plough and do not turn back (cf. Lk 9:62), and perhaps even more those of you who are doubtful of the meaning of your vocation or of the value of your service: think of the places where people anxiously await a Priest, and where for many years; feeling the lack of such a Priest, they do not cease to hope for his presence. And sometimes it happens that they meet in an abandoned shrine, and place on the altar a stole which they still keep, and recite all the prayers of the Eucharistic liturgy; and then, at the moment that corresponds to the transubstantiation a deep silence comes down upon them, a silence sometimes broken by a sob… so ardently do they desire to hear the words that only the lips of a Priest can efficaciously utter. So much do they desire Eucharistic Communion, in which they can share only through the ministry of a priest, just as they also so eagerly wait to hear the divine words of pardon: Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis! So deeply do they feel the absence of a Priest among them!… Such places are not lacking in the world. So if one of you doubts the meaning of his priesthood, if he thinks it is ‘socially’ fruitless or useless, reflect on this!” (St John Paul II, Holy Thursday Letter to Priests, 1979).
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