INTRODUCTION
“Beware
of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are
ravenous wolves”(Matthew 7:15). Many of today’s prophets are part
of those Jesus is warning against. Jesus warned that even though these
preachers appeared spiritual, they were secretly driven by an insatiable desire
for money. However the catholic priest as a prophetic preacher should never
make himself a part of this category that Jesus warns about. “The life and
ministry of priests always develop within a particular historical context, at
times replete with new problems and unforeseen changes, in which the pilgrim
church live”.[1]
Nevertheless, the priest at every circumstance is a prophet and a preacher and
is expected to keep the fire of his ministry blazing.
The catholic priest is involved in
the well-being of the faith community and in the larger secular community of
which he is a part. The priest is prophetic because he is acting in the name of
God and the faith community. Prophets are those who see and speak the truth,
and do so with a purpose. This paper is focused on the catholic priest as a
prophetic preacher. It would be appropriate to examine the ideas of priesthood
by way of conceptual clarification.
PRIESTHOOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
In
the Old Testament, two forms of priesthood may be distinguished. According to
the first, possibly unique to Israel, in virtue of a covenant that God made
with the whole people of Israel on Mount Sinai, the entire Jewish nation was
believed to be “a kingdom of priests” (Ex 19:5-6), invested with a priesthood
that is not tied up with worship or cult but a mission. The second is the
concept of cultic priesthood that the Jews shared with their neghbouring
nations.[2]
CATHOLIC IDEA OF PRIESTHOOD
“You
shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Ex 19:6), “you are a
chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that
you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his
marvelous light” (1 Pet 2:9). The church still uphold these biblical teachings
of the priesthood. All the members of the church, by their baptism, participate
in the priesthood of Jesus Christ. However, the church underscores the
relationship as well as the distinction between the common priesthood of all
the baptized and the ministerial priesthood of the members of the hierarchy.
THE PRIEST: A PROPHETIC PREACHER
The
vocation of the priest is to preach by word and to teach by example those
committed to their care. The entire proclamation of the Christian revelation
is, in a wide sense of the word, preaching. More precisely, preaching may be
defined as the public proposal of the word of God in the name of the church,[3] the
office of the priest is essentially prophetic. St. Albert the great observes
that preaching is “a kind of prophesying or exposing of prophecies”. St. Thomas
calls it “quasi prophetare”. To this regard, Abbe Moeller writes: “preaching in
the strict sense pertains to the prophetic mission of the church. The preacher
is a witness and interpreter of God, just as were the prophets of old”.[4]
The prophet, however, is one who speaks in obedience to a call, or mission,
received from God. He acts not on his own initiative, but as moved by God,
whose envoy he is. His mission includes not simply his original designation,
but the divine afflatus which is upon him when he speaks. Thus the prophet is a
living, conscious and rational instrument of God, who speaks in and through
him.[5] To
this particular regard, the catholic priest does not just generate a message to
sooth his purpose or to his advantage, but he preaches prophetically the
message of the gospel.
Vocation to the catholic priesthood
is a prophetic ministry; the priest is a prophet. The prophet is someone who is
on fire for justice, hypersensitive to the suffering of others, especially the
weak, the vulnerable, the fatherless, motherless etc. a prophetic person tells
the truth, exposes lies, and bears witness.[6]
Therefore the catholic priest as prophetic preacher nurtures, nourishes, and
evokes a consciousness, and perception alternative to the consciousness and
perception of the dominant culture around the society. Thus, prophetic ministry
has to do, not primarily with addressing specific public crisis but, with
addressing, in season and out of season the dominant crisis that is enduring
and resilient, of having our alternative vocation co-opted and domesticated”.[7]
“Prophetic preaching is the call for
renewal and transformation in the quest to resist empire and establish
alternative spheres of peace, justice, reconciliation, hope and redemption in
the world. It is a theology of difference rooted in the prophetic call for
justice and reconciliation in the church and society”.[8]
The words of a catholic priest have a divine fecundity surpassing that of
merely human eloquence. They are not empty speech but events of the
supernatural order. They are, according to many theologians, always
efficacious, either unto justification or unto judgment, depending on the
response of the hearer.[9]
Whoever should pretend to preach without being sent by God would be in a class
with false prophets of whom God said to Jeremiah: “I did not send them, yet
they ran” (Jer 23:21).
The catholic priest is a prophetic
preacher according to his pastoral call. The spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to
proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set
at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” (Luke
4: 18-19). The written records of the prophets portray them as normal people
preaching to diverse audiences, in a wide variety of settings. Each fulfilled
God’s calling by communicating a life-transforming message that required a
re-evaluation of the way their audiences conceived the phenomena in the world.
This reordering impacted the dominant socially defined ways of understanding
God, themselves, nature, economic and political life, their relationship to
God, and their relationships to others.[10]
In prophetic preaching the
counteraction between two imaginations are made manifest: the dominant and
alternative imaginations in the assurance of the transforming and liberating
power of the scripture itself, through the conceptualization of imagination and
the work of the Holy Spirit. In the vigorous discourse of prophetic preaching
in contemporary society, the catholic priest has a great influence. The place
of priests in society is not always appreciated by a modern audience. There is
an interrelationship between imagination and the work of the Holy Spirit in prophetic
preaching. Prophetic preaching itself should achieve the following aim: to be a
presentation of God’s voice, spoken to the preacher and the listeners with the
subjective help of the Holy Spirit’s working in message transformation.
Prophetic preaching is desperately
needed for helping the church to recover the present wider dimension of justice
and righteousness. However in many instances in our contemporary society we can
easily point out that “we have lost our will to preach prophetically because we
have lost the prophetic vision that comes from being intimately connected with God,
with God’s word, and with God’s people”.[11]
Prophetic preaching connects what people don’t understand about the gospel to
what they do understand. It trusts God to unleash “trans-rational” signs to go
to work on hearts that are obstinate and minds that are skeptical.[12]
THE PROPHETIC CHARISM OF A CATHOLIC
PRIEST AS A PREACHER
The
word “prophet” comes from the Greek, Prophemi,
which means “to speak forth”. They are charged with making the divine
agenda the human agenda. This vocation can beget marginalization, unpopularity,
rejection, misunderstanding and loneliness. Prophetic preaching implies a
profound sense of mission. The catholic priest as a prophetic preacher is to
lead the people out of the misery and shackles of a godless modernity. He must
preach a convincing message, first of all being convinced himself. Sometimes he
shall be called upon to exhibit “tough love”, speaking the truth very bluntly;
the catholic priest should not be timid about challenging someone to change
course, never afraid to speak the truth of Christ. Just be sure that is done
out of love and in a loving way. This is not simply a matter of truth-telling;
it is the ultimate act of Christian charity.
No interior urge to preach the
gospel, no sense of a divine call, no sacred order or religious profession can
make up for the lack of proper authorization. As a duly sent, the priest
announces the truth of the faith in order that men might be moved to believe
and do what is necessary to be saved. God does not send men books but
messengers, and by the fact that He chooses individual men for this ministry,
He institutes the priestly office. Not every Christian is called to preach. A
preacher is not a reporter who narrates his own experiences, but the deputy of
a superior, whose will he loudly and clearly proclaims. Preaching without
vocation and mission is an absurdity, even a fraud; for it simulates what is
not present. If there is no mission, preaching about Christ is only propaganda,
not apostolate”.[13]
A special mission from God is not
simply a property of a priest’s own preaching but a permanent attribute of the
prophetic vocation. The priest shares in the ministry and mission of Christ.
The prophetic notion of preaching is eminently verified in Jesus’ proclamation
of the Kingdom of God, as described in the gospels. His public mission begins
with the descent of the Holy Spirit upon him in his baptism. He preaches in
virtue of this mission, inasmuch as “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (Luke 4:18).
He says nothing on his own authority, “but He who sent me, the Father, has
commanded me what I should say and what I should declare. The things,
therefore, that a priest speaks, he speaks as the Father has bidden him”. (Jn
12:49-50; cf. 8:28).[14]
As a prophetic preacher, the priest
is to accompany the people of God in their Christian journey. Genuine
accompaniment means providing guidance and direction; correcting
misunderstanding and bringing to the truth. Accompaniment, however, does not
mean silence in the face of bad or misguided thought or behavior. The priest as
a prophetic preacher should not avoid conflicts under the guise of being
“prudent”. To this regards, Ratzinger says “The words of the Bible and of the
church fathers rang in my ears, those sharp condemnations of shepherds who are
like mute dogs; in order to avoid conflicts, they let the poison spread. Peace
is not the first civic duty, and a bishop whose only concern is not to have any
problem and to gloss over as many conflicts as possible is an image I find
repulsive”.[15]
CONCLUSION
Truth be told, the fundamental
problem is that while priestly formation ought to be raising shepherds, the
process often turns out sheep, afraid of their own shadow, terrified of
expressing an opinion. A common maxim that solidifies this attitude is: “keep
your mouth shut until yours stole hangs straight”. A wholesome formation
program should encourage young men to express their opinions, if for no other
reason than that they learn to have their opinions either corrected or
reinforced.[16]
The prophetic charism requires a ‘fire in the belly’. We should not wait to say
“I have arrived”
[2] Carroll
W, Tagesor “priesthood as career and
life-style”, Willis Bartlett (ed.), Evolving Religious careers, Washington:
Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 1970, 168-171
[3] Avery
Dulles, SJ. The Protestant Preacher and
the Prophetic Mission, Woodstock College, http://cdn.theologicalstudies.net/21/21.4/21.4.2.pdf, 2.
[4] ibid
[5] ibid
[7] Ibid, 5.
[8] Ibid, 4.
[9] Avery
Dulles, SJ. The Protestant Preacher and
the Prophetic Mission, Woodstock College, http://cdn.theologicalstudies.net/21/21.4/21.4.2.pdf, 3.
[10] Gary V.
Smith, An Introduction to the Hebrew
Prophets: The Prophets as Preachers , broadman & Holman publishers,
Nashville 1994, 278.
[11]
Fred Kammer, SJ Prophetic Ministry
in a New Century, https://www.chausa.org/docs/default-source/health-progress/prophetic-ministry-in-a-new-century-pdf.pdf?sfvrsn=2,
11.
[12] Sean
Smith, Prophetic
Evangelism: Empowering A Generation To Seize Their Day, Destiny Image® Publishers, Inc.,
Shippensburg 2004, 176.
[13] Avery
Dulles, SJ. The Protestant Preacher and
the Prophetic Mission, 4.
[14] Ibid, 4.
[15] Salt of the Earth, San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1997, 82.
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