Some look upon a priest as the endpoint of a sequence of religious events rooted in history. They see him as a living "proof text" of the divine Logos (Gk. word, truth, Christ), the bearer of the mysteries of God. Ordinary persons cannot easily comprehend a priest's theological and philosophical knowledge.
It would seem to many lay persons that through the Sacrament of Holy Orders, a priest is given the privileged grace for which Moses was renown in ancient days--knowing the Lord face to face [Deu 34:10]--the very grace forfeited by the foolish Adam who walked in the garden with God in the cool of the evening breeze. [cf. Gen 3:8] Not a few, then, will impute to God what they see in the priest.
If he is holy and devoted to the Church and to its members, then God is perceived as perfect and charitable. LEAD PERSONS TO CHRIST
However, if a priest is perceived as worldly and egotistical, many will be misled by their weak faith to perceive God in the same way. Thus is it critical for the attentive priest to lead persons to Christ and not to himself.
The presence of the priest is certainly a sign of the nearness of God. But the priestly ministry is not merely one of presence; still less is it the cultivated passivity of religious intellectuals for whom the supernatural power of God is a worn abstraction. The young man who presents himself for ordination stands in two worlds, with one foot on earth and the other in heaven.
The Sacrament of Holy Orders unites the Holy Spirit and the ordaining bishop in conferring upon him the indelible mark of priesthood. He is anointed in the flesh by his bishop, a successor to the Twelve. He is anointed in the Spirit by the grace of Christ, the Lord of all that is seen and unseen.
The man of God is ordained to be the visible sign of the invisible supreme power of God. The newly ordained is to be the sign of Jonah [cf. Lk 11:29-30]: always human and bound to his humanity, he is sent out on the Kingdom road. But the vessel must always find its way back to the fountain.
SIGN OF MERCY
With one hand a priest clutches the robes of Christ tightly. In the other, he bears the Sacred Word of God. Christ is the fountain of divine revelation through which the priest will minister to the sheep who have not known the Shepherd. The sign of Jonah is a sign of contradiction. God uses the humanity of the priest to overturn human expectations, but the priest for his part must call on the divinity of God to set to rights the broken world.
The sign of Jonah is a sign of mercy witnessing to the world that the urgent need to reform is authentic. Though the hour of this age is late and the clock strikes eleven for the present generation, the priest shines God's light on timid spirits huddled in the world's dark corners.
PROOF OF EXCELLENCE
He is not there to bring them to silence, but to join them in beseeching the power of Jesus Christ to deliver them. With one foot on earth and the other foot on high, he carries the distress of lost and troubled souls to Christ, and he returns to them the will of the Lord mediated through the sacraments of faith.
Whether the priest's apostolic work is easy or rough, he has but one objective: to bring every soul to follow Christ as he himself does, to bring every soul near to the miraculous power of God, and to stir the hearts of people everywhere to praise the Father for his glorification of Christ.
To this apostolic task, the Lord Jesus Christ demands that each of his priests offer a humbled spirit willing to preach fearlessly, teach ardently and bring to the apostolic task entrusted to him by Christ the proof of excellence.
