Pope writes to Seminarians: You have done a good thing
Pope Benedict XVI has written a letter of support and encouragement to seminarians
around the world. In ceremonies concluding the Year for Priests, the Pope had expressed
his desire to speak directly to the tens of thousands of men preparing for priestly
ministry. In his seven point letter, he tackles issues including priestly formation,
the relevance of celibacy and the scandal of abuse.
The Holy Father begins
his letter to seminarians on a very personal note, taking them back to 1944, when
a young Joseph Ratzinger was drafted for military service. He writes: “the company
commander asked each of us what we planned to do in the future. I answered that I
wanted to become a Catholic priest. The lieutenant replied: “Then you ought to look
for something else. In the new Germany priests are no longer needed”.
Pope
Benedict says even then he knew that this “new Germany” was coming to an end, and
that, after the enormous devastation which that madness had brought upon the country,
priests would be needed more than ever. Today, he continues, the situation is completely
changed yet the vast majority also think that the Catholic priesthood is not a “job”
for the future, but one that belongs more to the past”. But Pope Benedict writes it
does makes sense to become a priest, because God is alive, and he needs people to
serve him and bring him to others.
In the letter Pope Benedict goes on to
list important elements to help men on their journey towards priesthood: “Anyone who
wishes to become a priest must be first and foremost a “man of God””, centred in Christ,
who prays constantly, growing in intimacy with the Lord.
Secondly, the centrality
of the sacraments in the life of a priest, above all others, the proper celebration
of the Eucharist. “For us God is not simply Word”, writes the Pope. Directly connected
the importance of the sacrament of penance, which “leads to humility”, “in the grateful
awareness that God forgives us ever anew”.
The Pope cautions priests against
dismissing popular piety, even when it tends towards the irrational or superficial.
He describes it as “one of the Church’s great treasures” because often it has been
the conduit through which the faith has entered human hearts and community life.
“The
Christian faith has an essentially rational and intellectual dimension”, continues
the Pope in point number five, urging seminarians above all to see their time as one
of study. It is important he writes, that future priests have a firm grasp of Scripture,
Church history, Catholic social teaching and Canon law so they can “move beyond the
changing questions of the moment in order to grasp the real questions, and so to understand
how the answers are real answers”.
In point number six Pope Benedict addresses
the issue of human maturity and sexuality. He writes that it is important for the
priest who is called to accompany others on life’s journey, to have the “right balance”.
“ Sexuality is a gift of the Creator”, he continues, but when it is not integrated
within the person, it becomes banal and destructive.
On this note Pope Benedict
continues, “recently we have seen with great dismay that some priests disfigured their
ministry by sexually abusing children and young people….their abusive behaviour caused
great damage for which we feel profound shame and regret”. He says that as a result
many people ask whether the choice of celibacy “makes any sense”. Yet, he continues
“even the most reprehensible abuse cannot discredit the priestly mission, which remains
great and pure”.
Finally Pope Benedict writes that today vocations “often
live on very different spiritual continents”, born in families, parishes, movements
and new communities. “For this very reason, the seminary is important as a community
which advances above and beyond differences”, to become a “school of tolerance, mutual
understanding and acceptance” united in the body of Christ.
Full text:
LETTER
TO SEMINARIANS
Dear Seminarians, When in December 1944 I was drafted
for military service, the company commander asked each of us what we planned to do
in the future. I answered that I wanted to become a Catholic priest. The lieutenant
replied: “Then you ought to look for something else. In the new Germany priests are
no longer needed”. I knew that this “new Germany” was already coming to an end, and
that, after the enormous devastation which that madness had brought upon the country,
priests would be needed more than ever. Today the situation is completely changed.
In different ways, though, many people nowadays also think that the Catholic priesthood
is not a “job” for the future, but one that belongs more to the past. You, dear friends,
have decided to enter the seminary and to prepare for priestly ministry in the Catholic
Church in spite of such opinions and objections. You have done a good thing. Because
people will always have need of God, even in an age marked by technical mastery of
the world and globalization: they will always need the God who has revealed himself
in Jesus Christ, the God who gathers us together in the universal Church in order
to learn with him and through him life’s true meaning and in order to uphold and apply
the standards of true humanity. Where people no longer perceive God, life grows empty;
nothing is ever enough. People then seek escape in euphoria and violence; these are
the very things that increasingly threaten young people. God is alive. He has created
every one of us and he knows us all. He is so great that he has time for the little
things in our lives: “Every hair of your head is numbered”. God is alive, and he
needs people to serve him and bring him to others. It does makes sense to become
a priest: the world needs priests, pastors, today, tomorrow and always, until the
end of time.
The seminary is a community journeying towards priestly ministry.
I have said something very important here: one does not become a priest on one’s own.
The “community of disciples” is essential, the fellowship of those who desire to serve
the greater Church. In this letter I would like to point out – thinking back to my
own time in the seminary – several elements which I consider important for these years
of your journeying.
1. Anyone who wishes to become a priest must be first and
foremost a “man of God”, to use the expression of Saint Paul (1 Tim 6:11). For us
God is not some abstract hypothesis; he is not some stranger who left the scene after
the “big bang”. God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. In the face of Jesus Christ
we see the face of God. In his words we hear God himself speaking to us. It follows
that the most important thing in our path towards priesthood and during the whole
of our priestly lives is our personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ. The
priest is not the leader of a sort of association whose membership he tries to maintain
and expand. He is God’s messenger to his people. He wants to lead them to God and
in this way to foster authentic communion between all men and women. That is why
it is so important, dear friends, that you learn to live in constant intimacy with
God. When the Lord tells us to “pray constantly”, he is obviously not asking us to
recite endless prayers, but urging us never to lose our inner closeness to God. Praying
means growing in this intimacy. So it is important that our day should begin and
end with prayer; that we listen to God as the Scriptures are read; that we share with
him our desires and our hopes, our joys and our troubles, our failures and our thanks
for all his blessings, and thus keep him ever before us as the point of reference
for our lives. In this way we grow aware of our failings and learn to improve, but
we also come to appreciate all the beauty and goodness which we daily take for granted
and so we grow in gratitude. With gratitude comes joy for the fact that God is close
to us and that we can serve him.
2. For us God is not simply Word. In the
sacraments he gives himself to us in person, through physical realities. At the heart
of our relationship with God and our way of life is the Eucharist. Celebrating it
devoutly, and thus encountering Christ personally, should be the centre of all our
days. In Saint Cyprian’s interpretation of the Gospel prayer, “Give us this day our
daily bread”, he says among other things that “our” bread – the bread which we receive
as Christians in the Church – is the Eucharistic Lord himself. In this petition of
the Our Father, then, we pray that he may daily give us “our” bread; and that it may
always nourish our lives; that the Risen Christ, who gives himself to us in the Eucharist,
may truly shape the whole of our lives by the radiance of his divine love. The proper
celebration of the Eucharist involves knowing, understanding and loving the Church’s
liturgy in its concrete form. In the liturgy we pray with the faithful of every age
– the past, the present and the future are joined in one great chorus of prayer.
As I can state from personal experience, it is inspiring to learn how it all developed,
what a great experience of faith is reflected in the structure of the Mass, and how
it has been shaped by the prayer of many generations.
3. The sacrament of Penance
is also important. It teaches me to see myself as God sees me, and it forces me to
be honest with myself. It leads me to humility. The Curé of Ars once said: “You
think it makes no sense to be absolved today, because you know that tomorrow you will
commit the same sins over again. Yet,” he continues, “God instantly forgets tomorrow’s
sins in order to give you his grace today.” Even when we have to struggle continually
with the same failings, it is important to resist the coarsening of our souls and
the indifference which would simply accept that this is the way we are. It is important
to keep pressing forward, without scrupulosity, in the grateful awareness that God
forgives us ever anew – yet also without the indifference that might lead us to abandon
altogether the struggle for holiness and self-improvement. Moreover, by letting
myself be forgiven, I learn to forgive others. In recognizing my own weakness, I
grow more tolerant and understanding of the failings of my neighbour.
4. I
urge you to retain an appreciation for popular piety, which is different in every
culture yet always remains very similar, for the human heart is ultimately one and
the same. Certainly, popular piety tends towards the irrational, and can at times
be somewhat superficial. Yet it would be quite wrong to dismiss it. Through that
piety, the faith has entered human hearts and become part of the common patrimony
of sentiments and customs, shaping the life and emotions of the community. Popular
piety is thus one of the Church’s great treasures. The faith has taken on flesh and
blood. Certainly popular piety always needs to be purified and refocused, yet it
is worthy of our love and it truly makes us into the “People of God”.
5. Above
all, your time in the seminary is also a time of study. The Christian faith has an
essentially rational and intellectual dimension. Were it to lack that dimension,
it would not be itself. Paul speaks of a “standard of teaching” to which we were
entrusted in Baptism (Rom 6:17). All of you know the words of Saint Peter which the
medieval theologians saw as the justification for a rational and scientific theology:
“Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an ‘accounting’
(logos) for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15). Learning how to make such a defence
is one of the primary responsibilities of your years in the seminary. I can only
plead with you: Be committed to your studies! Take advantage of your years of study!
You will not regret it. Certainly, the subjects which you are studying can often
seem far removed from the practice of the Christian life and the pastoral ministry.
Yet it is completely mistaken to start questioning their practical value by asking:
Will this be helpful to me in the future? Will it be practically or pastorally useful?
The point is not simply to learn evidently useful things, but to understand and appreciate
the internal structure of the faith as a whole, so that it can become a response to
people’s questions, which on the surface change from one generation to another yet
ultimately remain the same. For this reason it is important to move beyond the changing
questions of the moment in order to grasp the real questions, and so to understand
how the answers are real answers. It is important to have a thorough knowledge of
sacred Scripture as a whole, in its unity as the Old and the New Testaments: the shaping
of texts, their literary characteristics, the process by which they came to form the
canon of sacred books, their dynamic inner unity, a unity which may not be immediately
apparent but which in fact gives the individual texts their full meaning. It is important
to be familiar with the Fathers and the great Councils in which the Church appropriated,
through faith-filled reflection, the essential statements of Scripture. I could easily
go on. What we call dogmatic theology is the understanding of the individual contents
of the faith in their unity, indeed, in their ultimate simplicity: each single element
is, in the end, only an unfolding of our faith in the one God who has revealed himself
to us and continues to do so. I do not need to point out the importance of knowing
the essential issues of moral theology and Catholic social teaching. The importance
nowadays of ecumenical theology, and of a knowledge of the different Christian communities,
is obvious; as is the need for a basic introduction to the great religions, to say
nothing of philosophy: the understanding of that human process of questioning and
searching to which faith seeks to respond. But you should also learn to understand
and – dare I say it – to love canon law, appreciating how necessary it is and valuing
its practical applications: a society without law would be a society without rights.
Law is the condition of love. I will not go on with this list, but I simply say once
more: love the study of theology and carry it out in the clear realization that theology
is anchored in the living community of the Church, which, with her authority, is not
the antithesis of theological science but its presupposition. Cut off from the believing
Church, theology would cease to be itself and instead it would become a medley of
different disciplines lacking inner unity.
6. Your years in the seminary should
also be a time of growth towards human maturity. It is important for the priest,
who is called to accompany others through the journey of life up to the threshold
of death, to have the right balance of heart and mind, reason and feeling, body and
soul, and to be humanly integrated. To the theological virtues the Christian tradition
has always joined the cardinal virtues derived from human experience and philosophy,
and, more generally, from the sound ethical tradition of humanity. Paul makes this
point this very clearly to the Philippians: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true,
whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing,
whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy
of praise, think about these things” (4:8). This also involves the integration of
sexuality into the whole personality. Sexuality is a gift of the Creator yet it is
also a task which relates to a person’s growth towards human maturity. When it is
not integrated within the person, sexuality becomes banal and destructive. Today
we can see many examples of this in our society. Recently we have seen with great
dismay that some priests disfigured their ministry by sexually abusing children and
young people. Instead of guiding people to greater human maturity and setting them
an example, their abusive behaviour caused great damage for which we feel profound
shame and regret. As a result of all this, many people, perhaps even some of you,
might ask whether it is good to become a priest; whether the choice of celibacy makes
any sense as a truly human way of life. Yet even the most reprehensible abuse cannot
discredit the priestly mission, which remains great and pure. Thank God, all of us
know exemplary priests, men shaped by their faith, who bear witness that one can attain
to an authentic, pure and mature humanity in this state and specifically in the life
of celibacy. Admittedly, what has happened should make us all the more watchful and
attentive, precisely in order to examine ourselves earnestly, before God, as we make
our way towards priesthood, so as to understand whether this is his will for me.
It is the responsibility of your confessor and your superiors to accompany you and
help you along this path of discernment. It is an essential part of your journey
to practise the fundamental human virtues, with your gaze fixed on the God who has
revealed himself in Christ, and to let yourselves be purified by him ever anew.
7. The
origins of a priestly vocation are nowadays more varied and disparate than in the
past. Today the decision to become a priest often takes shape after one has already
entered upon a secular profession. Often it grows within the Communities, particularly
within the Movements, which favour a communal encounter with Christ and his Church,
spiritual experiences and joy in the service of the faith. It also matures in very
personal encounters with the nobility and the wretchedness of human existence. As
a result, candidates for the priesthood often live on very different spiritual continents.
It can be difficult to recognize the common elements of one’s future mandate and its
spiritual path. For this very reason, the seminary is important as a community which
advances above and beyond differences of spirituality. The Movements are a magnificent
thing. You know how much I esteem them and love them as a gift of the Holy Spirit
to the Church. Yet they must be evaluated by their openness to what is truly Catholic,
to the life of the whole Church of Christ, which for all her variety still remains
one. The seminary is a time when you learn with one another and from one another.
In community life, which can at times be difficult, you should learn generosity and
tolerance, not only bearing with, but also enriching one another, so that each of
you will be able to contribute his own gifts to the whole, even as all serve the same
Church, the same Lord. This school of tolerance, indeed, of mutual acceptance and
mutual understanding in the unity of Christ’s Body, is an important part of your years
in the seminary.
Dear seminarians, with these few lines I have wanted to let
you know how often I think of you, especially in these difficult times, and how close
I am to you in prayer. Please pray for me, that I may exercise my ministry well,
as long as the Lord may wish. I entrust your journey of preparation for priesthood
to the maternal protection of Mary Most Holy, whose home was a school of goodness
and of grace. May Almighty God bless you all, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
From
the Vatican, 18 October 2010, the Feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist.