Come, Follow Me

Foundations for the Christian Vocations of Ordained Ministry and Consecrated Life

Excerpt from the address by Rev. Donald Senior, C.P.
Third Continental Congress on Vocations April 19, 2002

Following a discussion of the “call stories” of the New Testament and an exposition of the biblical roots of vocation, Father Senior offered the following reflections on priesthood, religious life and vocation ministry today in this time of severe crisis for our church.
 
Has there ever been a time in our collective memory when the need for the vocation of the priest in the church has been more urgent? To draw a diverse and sometimes fractious community into the unity of prayer and faith, to preach the gospel with power and clarity, to live an exemplary gospel life that inspires the people of God, to work with skill and sensitivity with lay co-workers in building up the community, to be a source of unity and not division, to publicly represent the mission and purpose of the church with integrity. These are some of the functions of the priesthood and they are desperately needed for the church to be healthy and alive in our time.

Or has there been a time in our memory when the need for consecrated life was more urgent? To demonstrate in a world filled with violence and with increasing chasms of hostility between cultures and races and ideologies, that it is possible for people to live together in harmony and love, that human and Christian community is possible through God’s grace? To witness in a public way for a whole generation that thirsts for authentic spirituality that a life of holiness is indeed possible in our time? To be willing to take up the missions that so often governments and private agencies are tempted to abandon: working with victims of AIDS, feeding the hungry, throwing one’s lot with the homeless and abandoned, demonstrating for peace? To represent in the life of the church that charismatic dimension of God’s spirit that must not be suppressed? These are some of the reasons the church desperately needs vocations to the consecrated life.

And none of this diminishes in the least the flowering of the lay vocation in the church today, something that is a blessing of God in our times. As Pope John Paul recently noted, the more the laity become involved in the life of the church, the more we will need good priests and religious. The more abundant the life of the church, the more the need for pastoral leadership and the witness of holiness.

But all of this might seem a bit abstract as we gather at this time. We are gathered to encourage vocations to priesthood and consecrated life, and the headlines everyday are filled with stories that shame and embarrass and even indict the church and its leadership. I have been a priest for 35 years and a religious for more than 40. Never in my life have I experienced a time like this when there has been so much anger and confusion and pain in the church and among people of good will outside the church.

What do we do at a time like this? First of all, I think this is a time for us to view all of this from the deepest wellsprings of our faith. We can and should debate for a long time the causes of this scandal and its remedies. But at the same time we have to dig deep into our heritage and lift up again for ourselves and for the people we serve the most noble and sacred ideals of our Christian faith. We must remember with accuracy and intensity the beauty of the gospel and the highest ideals of our call as priests and religious on behalf of God’s people. We are called to holiness and purity of heart, nothing less. We are to proclaim the gospel with conviction and passion, nothing less. We are to serve not to be served, nothing less.

And something else we must remember (is) the deepest and defining wisdom of the gospel - the paschal mystery. The church has been suffering a long diminishment of priesthood and religious life in North America and now a scandal so terrible and so repugnant to our people that it threatens the moral credibility of the church and its ministry.

I think of the lonely passion of Jesus and the terrible, crushing failure of His disciples. I think of the sadder but wiser community that gathered in the upper room and on the road to Emmaus and by the sea and in the garden and on the mountaintop in the wake of the resurrection of Jesus. The community that peered into an empty tomb and wondered what had happened. They had failed but the grace of God was stronger than death. The Risen Christ who came to them with a message of peace and reconciliation still bore the marks of the wounds but His body was radiant with new life. The Easter lesson is that paradoxically from death can come life. The anxiety many religious communities feel as their numbers decline and their membership ages, the exhaustion and frustration some priests and bishops experience as they try to maintain parishes with too few ordained ministers to serve, the anger and pain experienced by many women of faith at feeling excluded or unrecognized for their vital role in the church’s ministry, and now the anger, embarrassment and sense of betrayal felt by many of the church’s most loyal members. This indeed is the season of the passion for the church.

But if it is the passion then our faith also tells us that new life can and must come. A renewed priesthood, new forms of consecrated life, new possibilities of collaboration and mutual respect between ordained and lay, more transparent accountability at all levels of the church.

In a strange and compelling way, those entrusted with fostering vocations to priesthood and religious life at this moment in the life of the church in North America must be sacraments of hope for a wounded church. Only if we passionately believe in the church and its ministry, only if we believe with all our hearts that God will not abandon us and that God will call us to life, only if this faith and this hope is alive in us will we be able to speak without embarrassment or hesitation to young Christians who feel called by God to bring the gospel to the world. Only when we summon up our own best ideals and deepest faith, we will be worthy of this new generation of Christians who seek a life of holiness.
If for a time the church seems confused or forgetful about the ideals and beauty of its mission, or the character of its priesthood, or the meaning of the call to consecrated life, our work, like the devoted caregiver, is to continue to bring forward to best of the church’s ideals and to invite God’s people to respond.

God will not forget us, even now. This is the source of our hope and our peace as we continue our work on behalf of the church.

Father Senior, a New Testament scholar, is President of the Catholic Theological Union, Chicago IL.

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