"Where there are no validly ordained priests there can be no Church, no Eucharist, no mission"

VATICAN - WORDS OF DOCTRINE: Rev Nicola Bux and Rev Salvatore Vitiello - 

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Year of the Priesthood: identity and mission

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - On 19 June, solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Holy Father Benedict XVI inaugurated, with Vespers in St Peter's Basilica, the Year of the Priesthood. A whole year dedicated to priests and to their sanctification through the prayers of the people of God, called to rediscover the greatness of the gift received from the Lord, indispensable for the very constitution of the Church. The bond between Eucharist and the Church and the bond between the Eucharist and the Priesthood, are the foundation for the bond between the priesthood and the Church: where there are no validly ordained priests there can be no Church, but simply ecclesial communities, whose existence fills us with joy, to the extent in which they safeguard the memory of the Lord and wait for his coming, but which, in actual fact, do not and cannot possess the Lord's sacramental that is, real, presence.
The Holy Father, in his charity as universal Shepherd, addressed a splendid Letter to the Catholic clergy of the world (see Fides 19/6/2009), a letter which every priest should make the object of meditation. A Letter which reveals extraordinary love for Christ and for the Church, which reveals an intimacy with the Mystery which should be proper to every authentically priestly heart .
The occasion for the indiction of the Year of the Priesthood was offered by the 150th anniversary of the death of St Jean Baptist Marie Vianney, the Cure of Ars, patron saint of parish priests and who, during the year, will be declared patron saint of all priests. A figure, when understood, of unimaginable modernity: living in post-Revolution anti-clerical France, parish priest of a rural parish "poor in faith", poor himself in cultural tools and in "structures" and "pastoral plans ", the Curate was able to literally transform the situation around him, with his prayer, with his fidelity to the ministry, with 

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his radical offering of self to Christ.
The Holy Father's Letter identifies the key to Vianney's holiness, in the word "identity-mission". In fact every priest is called to progressive identification with Christ which guarantees the fidelity and the fecundity of witness. Identifying oneself with Christ, which has its root in the objective fact of ontological-sacramental configuration, received in the Sacrament of Holy Orders, is also a progressive path of the priest's soul and psyche. Performing the actions of his Lord, repeating His words, growing in love for others, learning day by day to offer his life to the Father, aware of how the Lord works in the reality and the powerful signs which he places, the Priest lives real transparency of the Mystery which has "grasped him" and in which he shares.
Therefore the identity of the priest is not only an objective fact to be sacramentally recognised, it actually becomes, progressively, evidence, both for the holy people of God, which recognises these priests with supernatural intuition, and for the minister himself who affirms, simply and in fidelity to his existence: " I do not live, Christ lives in me"  (Gal 2,20). 
Weariness of mission depends often on weak priestly identity: proper rejection of clericalism should never become surrender to secularism, proper promotion of the laity, should not dilute the indispensability and specificity of the priestly ministry without which there can be no Eucharist and without the Eucharist there can be no Church and therefore no mission. 

(Agenzia Fides 25/6/2009; righe 38, parole 528)

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