(10/1/09 - My Catholic column for Newman University newspaper The Vantage)
Unless you are familiar with either the ancient Greek of the New Testament you may be unaware that there is a Christian priesthood that offers a new form of sacrifice. And, unless you go to daily Mass here at Newman you may be unaware that the Church has declared this the year for priests, from June 19 to June 11, 2010.
The word “priest” is an English shortening of the Greek New Testament word presbyter, which is literally translated now in most English versions of the Bible as “elder.” In fact, Scripture speaks of two levels of priesthood: the priesthood of all believers and the ministerial priesthood. In our daily lives as Christians we continually offer our goods, our struggles, and our personal gifts up to God as our “spiritual sacrifice,” as Saint Paul called it.
The ministerial priesthood, on the other hand, offers a special sacrifice before God on behalf of the whole community. In the Old Testament the priests offered up various forms of sacrifices, such as “first fruit” offerings, which represented giving one’s best to God, as well as animal sacrifices, which represented detachment from idolatry. For example, the Egyptians worshiped bulls, so the Jews were called to sacrifice bulls, which represented killing false gods. In all this the Jews were trained to keep their focus on God.
In the New Testament Jesus put an end to the old sacrificial system, fulfilling the prophetic role of the sacrificial lamb while giving the Apostles (His new priests) the new sacrifice of the “New Covenant” of His body and blood – what Christians began calling the Holy Eucharist. In the Gospel of John, chapter 6, Jesus gives the preparatory teaching on the Eucharist as His “flesh” and “blood” becoming “true food” and “true drink.” Thus, in the Last Supper stories we have Jesus referring to the bread and wine as His “body” and “blood” of the New Covenant. As well, Saint Paul refers to the Eucharist as a “participation” in the body and blood of the Lord.
There was much controversy over the literal or symbolic nature of the Eucharist during the Protestant Reformation. As a result, one of the typical distinguishing marks between Catholics and Protestants is literal belief in the Eucharist and symbolic belief. However, when biblical scholars also become historians and properly interpret the words of Scripture to the historical record of what the ancient Church believed, we discover that for the first thousand years all Christians held a literal belief in the Eucharist.
Thus, you have men like Saint Ignatius, disciple of the Apostle John and the Bishop of Antioch, telling the Christians, “Take note of those who hold false opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God. ...They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again.”
As a disciple of the Apostles, this is the most ancient of clear statements of the Christian belief in the literal transformation of the bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Jesus, but from there forward this central and core tenant of the New Covenant is consistent.
You may be wondering why, when starting to talk about the Christian priesthood I diverged on a talk about the Eucharist. My point: Christ ordained a special priesthood to preserve and protect the teaching of the New Covenant and to bring the Christian community into communion with God. In other words, we NEED our priests! PRAY for our priests!
After daily Mass here at Newman we pray the following prayer. I encourage everyone to copy this prayer and praying it often.
O compassionate Jesus, I pray for Your priests. They are but weak and frail
human beings so stir up in them the grace of their vocation which was given
through the imposition of the bishop’s hands. Keep them close to You so that the
enemy may never prevail; let them never do anything unworthy of their vocation.O Jesus, I pray for Your faithful and fervent priests, and for Your unfaithful
and lukewarm priests. I pray for Your priests laboring at home and for those
abroad in distant mission fields. I pray for Your lonely and desolate priests,
for Your young priests and for those who have served for many years. I pray for
Your dying priests and for the souls of Your priests in purgatory.Above all, I pray for the priests closest to me, the priest who baptized me, those who
pronounced absolution over me in the sacrament of penance. I pray for the
priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Your Body and Blood in Holy
Community. I pray for the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way. O
Jesus, keep them close to You and bless them abundantly in time and eternity.
Amen.