Edited by Phyllis Graham

ALL peoples of the earth have each had a religion, a worship and ministers set apart to discharge its functions. All peoples have regarded the priesthood as the highest dignity to which mortal man could be raised, and even kings were never encompassed with greater respect or regarded with more profound veneration than when they united in their persons the sanctity of the priesthood and the majesty of empire.

But what was the priesthood of the pagans, what was even the priesthood of the Jews, as compared with the Priesthood of Christ?

The Fathers of the Church cannot speak except in terms of admiration and transport, of the surpassing greatness and magnificence of the priesthood of the New Law. Their language will not seem extravagant once we have attentively considered the extraordinary prerogatives of the Catholic priest and the exalted position he occupies in the world.

All communication between earth and heaven had been broken off by sin. To bring about a reconciliation, a Man-God was necessary. The only Son of the Most High came down from heaven and, clad in our humanity, dwelt as one of them among the sons of men. He wrought a holy and admirable work, taking upon Himself the fruits which an ungrateful world produced, namely, humiliations, sufferings and death, and giving in exchange goods beyond price, namely, grave, salvation and everlasting life.

Since His Ascension in glory, His visible presence is no longer with us; the Church, however, being a visible society, needs a visible priesthood and visible sacraments. This is why the Saviour has chosen from among men certain co-workers who are to perpetuate in a visible and sensible way the ministry which He Himself exercised during His mortal life. The work of priests in the Catholic Church is therefore none other than the work of continuing the functions of the Priesthood of Jesus Christ, Who, as St. Thomas says, uses them as instruments: Instrumentum Dei tamquam principalis agentis. They are the tools of God. He is the Master-Worker. This is why the Council of Trent calls them the vicars of Christ. The priest as such is then another Jesus Christ. The priest as such is then another Jesus Christ.

Follow the priest in the exercise of his functions. The priest discharges the office of teacher, but when he teaches from the chair of truth, it is Jesus Christ who speaks through his mouth: God exhorting through him, as St. Paul says. The priest administers the sacraments, but it is Jesus Christ who by his hand unseals the fountains of grace and floods the soul. The priest sits in the tribunal of penance and it is Jesus Christ, dwelling in him, who passes judgment upon the conflict of justice and mercy. At the altar in Holy Mass it is Jesus Christ who offers gifts, changes the bread and wine into His own Body and Blood, and immolates the victim. The man disappears in this august mystery and his personality is converted into that of the Man-God, who gives him power to say at the moment of consecration: This is My Body.

A priest sets out for a distant mission; you marvel at his zeal, his charity and his sacrifice, but it is Jesus Christ who works in him that which unaided nature could never accomplish.

Observe those fearless messengers of the divine word, who, at the peril of their lives, hasten into every land upon which the sun shines and traverse every highway of the sea, having only one thought, that of gaining souls to God. So great is their zeal that it encompasses the earth. No one can escape its influence: There is no one that can hide himself from his heat. To save men whom they know not they are prepared to endure the severest privations and the most toilsome fatigues. Nothing affrights them, neither the length of the journey, the perils of the ocean, the ferocity of barbarians, nor the anticipation of torture and death. Does such heroism come from themselves, and is it to be sought in their natural strength of character? By no means: it is the grace of the priesthood which buoys them up and sustains them; it is the spirit of Jesus Christ which urges them on, animates, and inflames them.

After the excessive corruptions of paganism the world was overwhelmed with the disasters growing out of them, and scourged with the hollow systems of philosophy which they naturally produced. The priest took that dying pagan society in his arms, lifted it up to heaven in order that he might bring it nearer to God and consecrate it to Him, and then he restored it to earth full of new life and productive vigor.

This is what the priest did sixteen centuries ago, and he is called upon to exercise the same beneficent influence in our own day. The leading men of the age set themselves to invent new political systems and to change and modify in a thousand ways forms of government, but the happiness of mankind cannot be brought about by such means. The crime and misfortune of modern society consist in this, that it has severed its relations with God, and hence it has been visited by disaster after disaster and is daily sinking to lower depths. If it will not perish, it must return to the great and only liberator whom God has given to the human race, namely, to the priesthood established by Jesus Christ to continue His work and perpetuate its beneficent fruits.

Yes, in the Catholic priest are the hope for the future and the priceless germs of social regeneration, because to him were committed the preaching of the Gospel and the ministry of the sacraments. He does not defend the State with arms, but, being a soldier of Jesus Christ, he contends for truth, order and justice, which are the pledges of the peace and happiness of nations. An advance guard of the faith of Christ, he scatters among the people religious beliefs, ideas of morality, notions of duty and that admirable store of doctrines which establishes and defines the relations between the Creator and the creature, between ruler and subject, and between the different members of society. The so-called man of culture teaches theories and explains the phenomena of nature; the priest teaches the science of duty by which public order is maintained and individual liberty protected.

Hence the priest is a man who is necessary to society. He is to it what the soul is to the body, diffusing throughout its members a healthy moral life. Remove the priest, and the dogmas of religion are without an exponent, and moral duties without a sanction. Remove the priest, and forthwith the bond that unites earth with heaven is snapped. There will be no longer a sacrifice or an altar, no longer a worship or religious teaching; no longer anything to remind man of his future destiny; and in consequence he will cease to believe in the rewards and chastisements of another life. And then what will happen? The pent-up passions, being no longer under restraint, will burst forth like a torrent which sweeps away all barriers and rushes madly over its banks. Man, filled with the spirit of hatred and bent on deeds of violence, rapine and murder, will carry desolation and terror into every home. Then will be committed horrible and unheard-of deeds.

It is impossible, then, to ignore or despise the priest. Every one recognizes him as the teacher of truth, the custodian of morals, and the guardian angel of society. This is why all good men love and respect him, and why the lawless hate and persecute him.

Only the true Christian can appreciate the mysterious greatness of the priest. He sees in him, not a man of this age or that, but a man whose influence stretches out into eternity. He sees in him the dispenser of grace and the representative of the Incarnate Word, whose life and divine mission are perpetuated in those whom He has sent to do His work. And how dear is the priest to all true Catholics! How they encompass him with their love and veneration! How saddened they are when they see his right violated, his independence menaced, his august ministry without defense and exposed to the outrages of the impious!

Lamartine, who frequently has happy inspirations, has drawn a magnificent pen-picture of the priest. This is the beginning of it:

There is a man in every parish who, having no family, belongs to a family that is worldwide; who is called in as a witness, a counsellor and an actor in all the most important affairs of civil life. No one comes into the world or goes hence without his ministrations. He takes the child from the arms of his mother and parts with him only at the grave. He blesses and consecrates the cradle, the bridal chamber, the bed of death and the bier. He is one whom innocent children grow to love, to venerate and to reverence; whom even those who know him not salute as Father; at whose feet Christians fall down and lay bare the inmost thoughts of their souls and weep their most sacred tears. He is one whose mission it is to console the afflicted and soften the pains of body and soul; who is an intermediary between the affluent and the indigent; to whose door come alike the rich and the poor—the rich to give alms in secret, and the poor to receive them without blushing. He belongs to no social class, because he belongs equally to all—to the lower by his poverty and not infrequently by his humble birth; to the upper by his culture and his knowledge, and by the elevated sentiments which a religion, itself all charity, inspires and imposes. He is one, in fine, who knows all, has a right to speak unreservedly, and whose speech, inspired from on high, falls on the minds and hearts of all with the authority of one who is divinely sent, and with a constraining power of one who has an unclouded faith.

Such is the parish priest, than whom no one has a greater opportunity for good or power for evil, accordingly he fulfills or fails to recognize his transcendent mission among men.

The Rev. P. Millet, S.J., Jesus Living in the Priest: Considerations on the Greatness and Holiness of the Priesthood (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1901), pp. 17-33.