`
the
Harvest
Introduction
Before Mass last Sunday,
someone handed me an article from the The Economist Magazine, June 30th,
2001, entitled These days, too few heed the call. The title immediately connects with the words of the gospel
today: “Pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest.” The
article is about the call to priesthood and religious life. I don’t know how
that person knew that that would be the subject of today’s homily. Not even I
knew it at the time.
The article says a number of things: that
these are good days for Roman Catholicism in America: 172, 000 adults joined
the church last year; that in politics Catholics are the most important swing
group in the nation; that much of the social infrastructure in the poorest part
of any city in America is held together by priests and nuns; that the Jesuit
order has done arguably more to help the poor than any other non-governmental
organization; that in many poor areas, Catholic schools provide the only decent
education.
But a crisis casts a
gloomy shadow over this bright picture: the shortage of priests. The
number of parishes without priests has risen fivefold since 1965. What’s the problem? The article answers: It
might be that the rule of celibacy is closing people’s ears to the call, or
that people think the Catholic view on contraception and divorce is outmoded.
Some point a finger at the rash of sexual scandals in the Roman Catholic
Church.
There is a crisis in
priesthood today. It is a crisis of
shortage not only of numbers but also of meaning. The shortage of
numbers has forced us to ask a pared-down, bare-boned, forthright question:
What does it mean to be a priest?
In Peter’s first letter
we read, “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God own
people…” (I Peter 2:9). We, all of us,
are a priestly body, and a priestly body needs a priestly head. Question: When we, the priestly body, go in search for
a priestly head, what should we be looking for? Answer: We, the priestly body, should be looking for
what we need in a priestly head. Not very enlightening but it's a start. What
is it that we need in a priestly head? Do we need an administrator (one who gets things done)? Do we need a "doctrinist"
(one who reminds us of church teaching)? Or a legalist (one who reminds us of church law)? Do we need a celibate (one who reminds us of the superiority of
"non-sex" over sex)? Do we
need a male (one who reminds us that
this is a man's world)?
Or do we need a priest
who is a priest? Again, not very enlightening. What is a priest in the first
place? That’s a question of meaning. Sometimes questions about profound
realities are better left unasked. But
the crisis at hand constrains us now to ask the question of priesthood, despite
the risks that the answer might be too vague and elusive or too innovative and
untraditional for some of us.
Despite the risks, let’s
try anyway. As a start, a priest is one who is good at transcendence.
Transcendence is what we experience in certain moments of our lives – moments
which seem to take us to the edges of our human existence and point to the
Beyond. Those experiences might be wrapped up in the amazing goodness of some
human being we meet, or in some breath-taking panoramic scene, or in the birth
of one’s child. By what the priest says
and how he says it and how he moves about, he gives evidence of such “edge-experiences” in his own personal life,
and also evidence that he is in touch with those transcendent
experiences. That makes him effective when he invites the assembly to their own
experience of transcendence and the Beyond.
See what I mean when I said it might be too vague? But too clear, especially in profound matters,
is even worse.
Or let’s try saying it in
another way: a priest is one who is
good at mystery. Mystery is the “more-here-than-meets-the-eyes,” which
we meet every now and then in certain wonderful things and people around us.
The priest’s knack at mystery peaks at the Elevation of the Mass when he raises
the Bread on high and makes the claim “there’s much more here than meets the
eye.” (We remind ourselves right along that what we are aiming to end up
talking about is not “priest” but “shortage.”)
The priest, as one who is
good at mystery, is just what we all need when we come to the Sunday Assembly,
for whether we are aware of it or not, we come here weekly for Sabbath Rest -- for rest from the non-mystery
that plagues our lives all week long and wears us down with its constant chant,
"What you see is all there is, is all there is, is all there is."
Now when you're good at mystery
("the-more-here-than-meets-the-eye") you're also good at poetry (for poetry is "the-more-here-than-meets-the-ear).
A priest is one who is good at poetry. Poetry is the language of mystery. Years ago, as a young priest, I read the
words of Karl Rahner: "The perfect priest is perfect poet." I liked
what he said but, at that time, I didn't know what it meant. I do now. He's absolutely correct: a priest is good at
poetry:
In the name
of the Assembly he gives thanks in Spring for the sun “that warms our
mother the earth and calls forth the bloom from the tomb of winter.” In Summer
he gives thanks for the sun “that
lengthens the summer day, and tans our mother the earth with rolling field of
hay. “ In Fall he gives thanks
for the apple and the pumpkin, “God bounty gathered into bins against the long
winter night. “ In Winter he gives thanks to the Father for the Son born
for us “so that we might wildly know that mercy blankets all the land more surely than the snow.”
A priest is one who is
good at revelation.
"Revelation" comes from the Latin "revelare." "To lift
the veil," "to draw back the curtain." And when the curtain is
drawn back, we get a glimpse at the other side with its glory. And with the
glimpse of glory comes ecstasy. The
priest, in fact, is good at ecstasy.
He helps the Sunday Assembly to rise to the highs of Mt. Tabor. That’s the
mountain of the Transfiguration, which has Peter, James, and John crying out in
elation, "Oh how good it is for us
to be here! Let’s dig in and stay here forever.” “Oh how good it is for us to
be here in the Sunday Assembly!” And while we cannot dig in but must get off
that mountain, and go back down there into the valley and into the work-week
ahead, the priest (who’s good at ecstasy) has us determined, by gum, to come
back next week, and even bring someone along.
Finally, a priest is one
who is particularly good at the tragic
dimension of human existence with all its cruel disasters and atrocities
like the bombing of the Federal
Buildings in Oklahoma City or the school massacre at Columbine High in
Littleton, Colorado, or simply like the long and painful illnesses that
diminish us or someone we love very much. In tragedy the priest is good neither with fake words that try to excuse
the inexcusable God nor with pretentious words that try to explain away the
"unexplainable" God. Rather
the priest is good simply at wordlessly walking us through the tragic. The
priest is good at the consolation that does not take our grief away but simply
stands beside it.
Back
to shortage
That is what the priestly body needs and looks
for in its priestly head. And since we are talking about shortage, it is upon that that we should be expending the
energies of our search (and not upon "celibate" nor upon
"male" nor upon anything else).
And once we find our
candidate for ordained priesthood and lay our hands upon him or her, his or her
task is not to gobble up the priesthood of the priestly people but rather to
call you to your priesthood: to call you to be good at transcendence,
good at mystery, good at poetry, good at revelation, good at tragedy.
My dear people, there is
no shortage of candidates out there who are good at what good priests are good
at. If shortage there is, it's man-made, like those gas and fuel shortages that
mysteriously come and go. Not only is
there a rich and abundant harvest out there to be gathered into bins; there is
also a rich and abundant supply of
harvesters as well. And not only is it a waste to neglect to reap the
harvest; it is also a waste to neglect to reap the harvesters (the reapers).
There is no shortage of supply out there.
Nor is there a shortage
of demand. The times seem to say that nobody needs a priest anymore; that in
an age of technology priesthood, like poetry itself, survives with difficulty
and dies with ease. That's not true. It's not priesthood that's dying! It's the
world out there that's dying, and it is dying from it own
“non-mystery” that chants to it all week long, "What you see is all there
is, is all there is." It's the
world out there that’s “dying for" someone who's good at mystery,
at the “more here than meets the eye.” And good also at ecstasy, good at
lifting us up to the elation of Mt. Tabor, which cries out, “Oh how good it is for us to be here in the
Sunday Assembly.”