Well, today is a banner day in Madonna House.
Today, in a few short hours, one of our men, Michael Weitl, will be ordained to
the priesthood of Jesus Christ. It is a day of joy, of awe, of great gratitude
and celebration for us, for Michael’s family and in truth for the whole Church,
for every ordination is a gift for the whole Church.
I happen to be Michael’s spiritual director,
which adds a special level of joy and awe for me. It also makes it hard for me
to say much about the whole thing. There are moments in life which transcend
the capacity of human beings to put words around them.
I thought I would share, then, one of our
classic MH teachings on the priesthood, from Catherine Doherty, from April
1974. It is long, but well worth the read—her sense of the priesthood was
profoundly mystical, a faith vision that far supercedes the human failures and
frailities of the men who are ordained in it, while never for one minute losing
sight of that human weakness. So here it is, below the break:
Today is Holy Thursday. Today is priesthood
day, for that is what Jesus Christ did - he brought forth the priesthood.
You know, there is a moment here in
which a human heart pauses and begins to realize dimly—because it is such an
infinite mystery that it cannot even be fathomed, it can only be approached at
the edges—God went to his Father after his Resurrection. He even chided his
apostles that they weren’t too happy to see him go to his Father....
I don’t know the answers, but this
is the meditation that can keep me awake or praying, or meditating.... Can you
imagine that he didn’t want to leave us! I am not talking about the theological
fact that God is with us. No, that is another story. He didn’t want to leave
us, and so we have the priesthood!
In his immense love, he chose men
who had his hands and his feet, in whom he could walk, in whom he could forgive
sins, who could lift him up, who could give us the Sacrament of the Most Holy
Eucharist, who could give us the bread, the wine, which he said makes for life
everlasting! He gave us the pure waters that he could have given the woman in
Samaria. And again, the incredible love of God is visible to us.
We talked about the Bread and the
Wine, for this is also the day of the Eucharist and the Passover and many things
together - but you wonder why in Madonna House we have this tremendous love and
respect for priests. Because when a priest walks into this house, if you have
an ounce of faith - a tenth of an ounce of faith - you will know that Christ
walked in.
Ordination! An ordinary guy,
probably with a lot of sinful background, and who can commit sin any day, steps
up three steps to an altar. Another man, older, puts his hands on the young
one, the man ordained, there are prayers, and eventually the man descends. Has
anyone touched the mystery of this strange act?
I was in Rome, at the Jesuits, and
they were telling me that one of their bishops had through underground means
gotten to Moscow and had ordained three men in the john. You don’t have to have
an altar. You don’t have to have three steps. You don’t have to have anything!
You just have to have a bishop and a man who desires to be a priest, and in the
fullness of the power of Christ the bishop ordains a man in a john of a
factory!
Go into this, on your knees, in the
mystery of God’s love for us, he didn’t want to leave us orphans. He wanted to
give us someone in whom we shall see his resemblance. I do not mean his
physical resemblance, but that which he really was: the Lover, the Tender One,
the Forgiving One, the Servant who would do what he did - wash the feet of
humanity while by a simple gesture of his hands and a few words, he also washed
their souls, because he didn’t - Christ did!
So Christ comes to us in such a
tremendous simplicity of love that your breath is taken away!
What of the
priest who is sinful? Unholy? Jumped over the wall? Married when he shouldn’t,
etc., etc., etc.? It is because you have been so sheltered in this country [ed.
note: this was true in 1974, but of course no longer] that you have not
realized that he upon whom the seal of the priesthood has been etched in the
fire of the Spirit, and with the touch of the Father’s hand, can never lose it.
In Russia when the last priest [to whom we
had access] died, he was killed in front of my very eyes, if there had been a
priest who I knew had committed seven mortal sins, and who perhaps was living
in the house of his mistress, I would have crawled on my belly to him.
I couldn’t care about his mistresses, his
sinfulness, his this, his that, his anything - because FAITH tears it all
apart! And that which is the body suddenly shines, for on their ordination day
in a strange, incredible fashion which nobody can explain, into that man
entered God and that man has the power, sinner or no sinner.... If you are in a
state like we were - death any minute - they could kill us - any minute!
I would crawl to that man and I would say,
“Father, hear my confession. There is still the Blessed Sacrament in the
nearest Church, but give it to me as the Viaticum.” Viaticum is the word that
we use when we take the Blessed Sacrament before death. And I wouldn’t worry
about the man, because the eyes of Faith see Christ!
You see, you ask so many questions about
priests, all of them irrelevant, in a manner of speaking.... relevant, yes, but
fundamentally irrelevant.
The poor priests, all of them wanting to be
relevant, to be psychologists, they want to be psychiatrists, they want to be
married, they want to be this, that... That is the humanness of them! But in
them is Christ .. always Christ. They can bind him if they want to, for they
are men like you and I - human beings. We bind Christ through our sins, but
there is one thing about them that if anyone else needs Christ, he becomes
unbound in one flat second!
Those Twelve, of whom one left, were pretty
ordinary guys. Why do we seek in priests either great knowledge, lots of
‘savvy’; some of us will go to a priest who is good looking, others to one who
isn’t.... that is all horseshit - positive and utter!
Sanctity shines from people and so does
Christ, the Holy One. Look at a priest and say, “Thanks be to God that he is
here!” I still don’t understand why Madonna House has almost 15 priests when
thousands of parishes haven’t got them throughout the world. The Lord has his
own ways.
Approach a priest because he has God in him
in a very special manner, through the sacrament of ordination. Approach him as
you would approach Christ, simply, without any falderol, without any curlers on
your head or in your heart. And you who are women, hold your heart, your mind,
your self in a profound purity. The pure of heart shall see God. If a man
jumped over the wall to marry some nun or somebody else, the nun and the
somebody else is also responsible. We all carry ourselves in a vessel of clay,
but the woman has to carry her vessel wrapped in clay and perhaps in the towel
that Veronica wiped Christ’s face with. It might be a legend or it might not be
a legend, but it is a good thing for us to remember that our heart is wrapped
in the face of Christ before the priesthood.
Just saying that word is like balm on your
heart. You want to criticize him? What for? Why don’t we criticize each other?
And then, why do we criticize anybody? Because God said, “Judge not and you
shall not be judged.”
In Madonna House we get up when a priest
comes in. We have to repeat that almost every day because we always have some
new guests who forget about it, or don’t know about it. Why? Why do we get up
for a young man? Why do we get up for a middle-aged man? Why do we get up for
an older man? We don’t get up for a man! We get up for him who is Christ.
He is a human being and nobody says that he
ain’t! But this human being you can kneel before him and he can wash your sins
away. And what is more, he can give you the Bread and the Wine of God, that God
gave us to live by, so that we have life everlasting. We can survive without
the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist. Thousands and millions of people have
survived, but it is the love letter of God - every priest is a love letter of
God, for me and for you!
The way to treat a priest is with respectful
informality and the accented word is ‘respectful’. He might be a bum. I
remember one time a priest arriving here under the aegis of some Superior, he
was a religious. He was drunk as a lord and I won’t go into what else
happened... so I put him in.... where I live now, in those days it was empty,
and let him sleep off his drunkenness and so forth, and then I brought him some
coffee in the morning and before I gave him the coffee he was bleary-eyed, I
said, “Father, will you please bless me?” He said, “What do you mean, bless
you? Do you know who I am and what I did?” I said, “Yes, but it is utterly
immaterial as to your blessing.” And he blessed me and started to cry.
When
I was twelve, or perhaps younger, maybe eleven, I went to Poland with my family
and I was walking down the road and here in the mire, full of water and dirt,
lay Monsignor, the parish priest of this village! Well, I had been brought up
in the love and honor of priests and this just about shattered my little heart
whtttt! into smithereens. I ran away from that priest
like a devil was pursuing me and I ran to my mother and I said, “There is
Monsignor. He is drunk, drunk, drunk. A priest is drunk! I could smell his
vodka!”
So Mother said, “Yes? Let’s go!” and her very tone of voice, which was
quite peaceful, stopped me. So holding my hand we went back. She said,
“Catherine, you are a big girl. Help me to lift him up.” But before we lifted
him up she kissed his dirty hand that was in the mire. Then I helped her lift
him up and we carried him to the presbytery which was about as far as the
dispensary... Still silently we handed him over to the girl who was in charge.
Still
silently, Mother and I walked back home. We had a lovely garden there and
Mother said, “Go into the baby’s room and bring his potty, and wash it out
well, and fill it with water but bring it here.” So I followed this, but in the
meantime Mother had collected a bunch of white lilies.. beautiful white
lilies.. so she said, “Sit down.” And she put the lilies in the pot. She said,
“Look well at that. You see the lily doesn’t change because it is in a potty.
That is a priest. Christ in him never changes. He might be a potty, but the
Christ in him is still just like those lilies. Never in your life make that
mistake of mixing the two together.” And I don’t think I have.
…This is Holy Thursday and the priest, as we
understand him, was born this Holy Thursday, and the Eucharist was there for
him, henceforth to give us. The Last Supper became the daily supper, so that
you and I can live and the relevance to our lay world is to offer first and
foremost and last, that sacrifice.
I know that when I try to say
something about the priesthood I just am all thumbs as far as my tongue is
concerned. There is nothing I can say, because what can one say about the love
of God in the shape of man?
