The Formation of Candidates for the
Ministry of the New Evangelization
What is most needed in candidates for the priesthood today, men who will be on the front lines harvesting the abundance of the ‘Springtime of evangelization” so often described by Pope John Paul II, but men who will also have to face the forces of the “culture of death” which will confront them with temptations, harassment, and at times even persecution? What virtues are most needed? What traits must seminaries assiduously cultivate and foster?
Our first inclination is to respond that the promotion of the human, natural, and pastoral characteristics is most pressing. Indeed they are. As Pope John Paul II forcefully teaches in Pastores Dabo Vobis, the task of human formation leading to an ardent pastoral charity is of paramount importance in priestly formation. Thus, talents such as preaching, teaching, counseling, and organization are rightly emphasized in any seminary serious about the new evangelization. The development of ministerial skills and apostolic sensitivity are correctly accented, for our priests of the third Christian millennium need all the human and pastoral skills necessary to reach a people hungry for the “Bread of Life.”
However, this laudable stress on the human, active, and pastoral dimension – while ever a component of the formation given candidates for the new evangelization – is, in my mind, second to something far more fundamental. To borrow from the Scholastics, agere sequitur essere. A successful formation program for priests today must give pride of place to the fostering of a vibrant, durable, and sustaining interior life! The pastoral, ministerial, active, human skills will then flow from this reservoir. Without a vibrant, durable, and sustaining interior life, the ministry of a priest becomes dry, routine, hollow, and, eventually, discouraging. So, first things first: seminaries must reclaim their classical mission of forming men whose relationship with Jesus Christ, daily renewed in prayer and the Eucharist, is the essential, defining characteristic of their life. Nemo dat quod non habet: what the people of today expect from their priests is holiness, contact with the Divine. If our men do not have it, they cannot give it. Thus must we again reclaim the superiority of being, and of identity, over doing. A man is a priest before he ministers as one.
In the Church’s wisdom, a candidate is given the minimum of four years (usually more) in a seminary to cultivate this interior life. He will have a lifetime to refine his pastoral talents. But never again will he have the luxury of time to give to the nurturing of his interior life. Likewise will he learn the utter necessity of fostering the life of the soul for the rest of his days, and develop the disciplined regimen of life to do so.
When I say the interior life, I intend the broad definition used by the great authorities such as Blessed Columba Marmion, Dom J.B. Chautard, and Sertellanges; namely, the sphere of both the soul and the mind. Thus, to respond directly to the topic proposed, the number one priority in the formation of candidates for the priesthood for the ministry of the new evangelization is the development of a vibrant, durable, and sustaining spiritual and intellectual life.
I. “Duc in Altum!”
The Life of the Soul and the Call to Perfection
I propose that Jesus is giving His priests, deacons, and seminarians, the same exact imperative He gave to St. Peter: Duc in altum! “Cast out to the deep!”
Classically, this command has been interpreted spiritually as Our Lord’s exhortation to perfection. All who wish to follow Him, especially all who desire to serve Him as priests in His mission of “catching men,” must be willing to “cast out to the deep,” to set aside human constraints and frustrations and pursue perfection. Jesus is urging us to the depths of union with Him, to sanctity, to heroic virtue! There can be nothing shallow, superficial, or halfway about our commitment to Him. It is profound, daring, and total.
Duc in altum!
Recently I was reading a bishop’s reflections on priests. Says he, I need priests so badly! But I must concentrate on depth, not numbers, quality, not quantity. Give me one man of prayer, zeal, and virtue rather than a dozen lazy, wavering, faithless functionaries. I would rather no priests than bad ones! This bishop’s name was John Carroll, the first in the United States of America, and he wrote them over two centuries ago from Baltimore, but do they ever apply today! As the quantity goes down, our quality has to go up! As the scandals increase, our sins better decrease! As vice becomes more prominent, our virtue best become pre-eminent! As the world gets shallower in its thought and commitment, we had best “cast out to the deep!”
Jesus and His Church expect from priests depth, sanctity, heroic virtue, and the pursuit of perfection.
I remember once seeing the late Cardinal John O’Connor of New York surrounded by the reporters hammering him with questions about his opposition to widespread distribution of condoms. “Cardinal O’Connor, you’re expecting a lot from people in thinking they can control themselves. That’s an awfully high standard. Isn’t it better just to admit that most people can’t live up to this, so they have to take precautions?” Replies the cardinal, “The whole world is saying ‘Be good but, if you can’t be good, at least be careful!’ For God’s sake, someone has to say, ‘Be good – and you can be’, and that has to be me.”
That’s what we say as priests; that’s how we are as priests. Jesus and His Church – and, come to think of it, the world . . . expects from us depth, sanctity, heroic virtue, and the pursuit of perfection. Duc in altum!
This call to perfection is almost “unnatural.” Fulton Sheen, in his magnificent Life of Christ, reflects on our Lord’s promise that, “When I am lifted up [on the cross] I will draw all things to myself.” As Bishop Sheen remarks, that violates the law of nature, the law of gravity, to be precise, because in nature all falls down, all is forced down to the earth. Jesus says, “I will draw all things up to myself.” To be drawn up to Jesus – through sanctity, the pursuit of perfection, and heroic virtue – goes against all the heavy force of nature which is to drag us down.
While Jesus is beckoning us upward, the world drags us downward …
Perhaps in an even more pointed way, Jesus, His Church, and the world expect from priests today a depth, a sanctity, a heroic virtue, a pursuit of perfection. Duc in altum!
Now I want to get specific and propose practical areas where the imperative to “cast out to the deep” must be obeyed.
And the first, to the surprise of no one, is prayer. The Fathers of the Church have often interpreted Our Lord’s injunction to Peter, Duc in Altum, as the summons to foster the interior life by plummeting the depths and richness of Christ. That is the call to sanctity, the invitation to know and love Jesus at the depth of our being. Thus do I say again that the task of developing a durable, sustaining interior life, a rich, personal relationship with Jesus, which can only come from daily conversation with Him in prayer, is the primary duty of every seminarian. “If you are wise,” writes St. Bernard to priests, “you will be reservoirs, not channels.” We cultivate within us such a deep interior relationship with Jesus that we can serve as channels of His life to our people. But the reservoir must never dry up! In the office for the feast of the Beloved Disciple we read, “Reclining on the breast of the Lord, he drank in from the sacred fountain itself, of the Heart of the Lord, the fluency of his Gospel, and he spread the grace of the Word of God over the whole world.” To keep the reservoir of our soul always filled with life-giving water is our life insurance policy as a priest, and the price of that insurance policy is daily prayer.
Thus, it is clear that everyone in formation must devote a portion of everyday to some quiet prayer with the Lord, keeping in mind St. Theresa of Jesus’ description of prayer as “nothing but a friendly conversation in which the soul speaks heart-to-heart with the One who we know loves us;” that all would participate in the greatest of all prayers, the Eucharist, daily, and spend some time each day before His Real Presence.
Thus every two weeks all would literally “bare our soul” to one’s spiritual director, allowing him to assist us in the cultivation of this interior life.
It was only after St. Peter “cast out to the deep” that he caught the miraculous draught of fish. It is only after today’s candidates tend to their interior life by plummeting the depths of the Heart of Christ that they can be zealous priests. That can only be done by daily, disciplined, trusting, and persevering prayer.
A second practical goal in fostering the interior life of the soul is the creation of an atmosphere conducive to spiritual growth. Two things can happen in a seminary: you can have either the “highest common denominator,” where the momentum of the house is to seek virtue, to encourage one another, to hold one another to high standards, and to support one another by good example; or, you can have a “least common denominator” seminary, where a spirit of cynicism prevails, where men get away with the minimum, where imperfection and mediocrity are the norm, and where a man who seeks perfection, heroic virtue, and sanctity is snickered at. The goal is obviously the first!
Now, I mention the tone, the atmosphere of a community because priests in the new evangelization will be called upon to set the tone in the parish or the community they serve. Wise commentators observe that the atmosphere of a parish is very dependent upon the virtue, sanctity, and pursuit of perfection evident in its priests. Listen to Dom Chautard in The Soul of the Apostolate:
If the priest is a saint, the people will be fervent; if the priest is pious, the people will at least be decent. But if the priest is only decent, the people will be godless. The spiritual generation is always one degree less intense in its life than those who beget it in Christ.
We must strive to be saints for the sake of our people because we set the tone! Duc in altum!
As St. Paul wrote to some other Romans:
Your love must be sincere. Detest what is evil, cling to what is good. Love one another with the affection of brothers. Anticipate each other in showing respect. Do not grow slack but be fervent in spirit. He whom you serve is the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient under trial, persevere in prayer.
A third practical concern for those of us who strive for perfection: a horror for all sin – obviously mortal but even venial – striving to cleanse it from our lives. To this day do I recall the story of St. Dominic Savio I first heard in second grade, and his motto, “Death rather than sin.” The one who takes seriously Our Lord’s call to perfection daily strives to fight sin, is always at work on a particular one, and frequently examines his conscience to let the light of God’s grace show the streaks in his soul.
Before the canonization of Mother Katharine Drexel, a journalist at home called and interviewed me. “Father, all these beatifications and canonizations . . . isn’t all this goodness, holiness, and virtue unrealistic and impossible today?” “The Pope’s point,” I countered, “is just the opposite, namely, that such goodness, holiness, and virtue are possible, and, not only possible, but expected in those who claim to follow Christ.” The horror of sin never discourages us but inspires us more to sanctity, and we never give up in our fight against it. “Where sin abounds, grace abounds the more.”
A fourth area where a candidate for priesthood senses the Master’s summons to perfection is in suffering. Suffering is the classroom of sanctity, the professor of perfection, the arena of heroic virtue. “I saw the river over which every soul must pass to reach the Kingdom of heaven, and the name of that river was ‘suffering’,” writes St. John of the Cross.
Sooner or later it will come to priests, whether it be illness or loneliness, temptation or desolation, a rough assignment or a struggle within, watching someone you love suffer or losing a parent, or so close to your people who are hurting that, like the Good Shepherd, you at times just “sigh” from the heart – sooner or later it will come. And, when suffering does come, it can either drive you to despair or purge you to perfection. Thus the agents of the new evangelization must be ready for suffering! As the Soul of the Apostolate recommends:
In time of trial or spiritual dryness, when you are completely barren and powerless to make any acts or to have any thoughts, abandon yourself to the suffering, without anxiety, and without making any effort to avoid it, making no other acts except this self-abandonment into the hands of God. Unite your prayer with Our Lord’s agony in the Garden, and His desolation on the cross. See yourself attached to the cross with the Savior.
Duc in altum! “Let us attempt to be equal to God in sanctity, in order that whoever sees the priest at the altar may revere God in Him,” as exhorted St. Ambrose.
Jesus and His Church expect us to be on the road to sanctity, in pursuit of perfection, heroic in our virtue.
II. “Consecrated Study”
Seminaries must become houses of intense immersion into God’s Word, the truth of Revelation as handed on by the Church’s magisterium, and of rigorous study of her rich theological tradition. It is not enough for seminaries to be “ministerial schools,” where candidates are given the tools, the skills for a profession. Thus, the second element of the interior life is the cultivation of the mind.