Our People

Priesthood and New Evangelisation

Address to Australian Catholic Students Association

By Most Rev. Julian Porteous
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
8/7/2006

A New Millennium

Remember all the hype about the new millennium? Remember all the celebrations around the world as Midnight issued in a new year, a new decade, a new century and a new millennium. Remember all the fire works and the huge crowds out in the streets and public places. And as dawn broke there were further celebrations. Australia was one of the first countries to welcome in the new millennium. Also do you remember the K2 bug fears – would planes fall out of the sky?

It was a significant moment in history. It is worth recalling too that the world’s designation of time was based upon the birth of the Son of God in Bethlehem.

The Church celebrated the occasion, conscious that it marked the completion of the second millennium of Christianity and the entry into a third millennium. The Year 2000 was a Jubilee Year.

In 2006 these events have faded a little in our personal memory, the third millennium is now well under way.

I would like refer to the reflections of our beloved John Paul II as he looked to the new millennium, an event that he saw as having great significance. He wrote to the Catholic world a letter, an Apostolic Letter, Novo Millennio Ineunte, “At the beginning of the new millennium”. 

The Pope had a basic thought in his mind as he gazed into the prospects of engaging with the new millennium: Duc in Altum! – “put out into the deep”. The Gospel passage behind the phrase is well known – Luke, Chapter 5. We know the story: the disciples fishing all night, catching nothing, are urged by the Lord to “put out into the deep” and we know the result – a huge catch.

The letter has as it special focus an outline of direction for the Church as it enters the new millennium. The Pope says that he wants all of us in the Church to “start afresh from Christ”. He says, “we must gain new impetus in Christian living, making it the force which inspires our journey of faith”.

The Foundation and Context

I believe this must be the foundation for us looking to the future, and his thoughts provide a context for the consideration before us today: the Priesthood and the New Evangelisation.

The Pope lists what he considers to be the key pastoral priorities for the Church. I will list them but won’t have time to elaborate. They are:

• The call to grow in Holiness
• Becoming men and women of Prayer
• Making the Sunday Eucharist the centre of the Lord’s Day
• Reclaiming the practice of the Sacrament of Reconciliation
• A recognition of the Primacy of Grace
• Listening to and Proclaiming the Word of God

The Pope is offering us here a simple set of priorities which he identifies as the key to the Church moving with effectiveness into the new millennium. What strikes me in this list is that the Pope sees the embracing of Catholic spiritual and sacramental life as the key foundation to its pastoral mission.

I would firstly offer these points to you as young Catholic university students:

• Set yourself to grow in holiness
• Be serious about prayer
• Reclaim Sunday as the Lord’s Day in your life
• Make regular use of the Sacrament of Penance
• Discover that it is not our effort that counts, but the way God’s grace works in and through us.
• Read the Word of God as the living Word of God. (I will speak of proclaiming the word in a moment)

Priests for the New Millennium

I was asked to speak about priests and the formation of priests. I am a seminary rector – now for five years. I have thought much about the priesthood and the question of what sort of priest is needed for the New Millennium.

There are forty-two seminarians currently in the Seminary of the Good Shepherd in Homebush. These men are, in the main, sons of John Paul II. Their vision of the Catholic faith, of the nature of the Church and of the character of the priesthood has been nurtured by the teaching and example of the John Paul II.

I would like to offer some thoughts to you about the priesthood. The priesthood is not just a job or even a mission in the Church. It is not just something taken on by the individual. It is not a role bestowed upon a particular person by the community. The priest is who he is because he is changed at the very essence of his being.

A priest is, please excuse my theology speak, ontologically configured to Christ the Priest. The priest’s very being is priestly, expressing the one priesthood – that of Jesus Christ. Everything he does is priestly, and exercise of the priesthood of Christ. In the sacraments this is so clearly evidenced when the priest says “I baptise”, “I absolve”, “This is my body”. It is not me, but Christ.

It is not theoretical theology to say that the priest acts in persona Christi capitis; it is a simple statement of the truth of the matter. [1]

The priesthood is not his own. It is the priesthood of Jesus Christ in which he shares. This is where the priest finds his identity and fruitfulness.

Allow me some further considerations: In John 20, 21, Jesus says, “As the Father sent me, so also I send you”. In other words a priest is not acting in his own right. In another place the Lord says, “He who hears you, hears me” (Luke 10, 16).  Preaching, catechesis, is not just the priest’s own ideas, Christ acts and speaks through him in a mysterious but absolutely real way.

Nowhere is this more significant than when the priest celebrates the sacraments. The priest is simply a minister of sacred mysteries. God works through him. Grace is bestowed, in one sense, irrespective of the priest, or at least, of his personal holiness.

Pastores dabo vobis puts it thus:

In the Church and on behalf of the Church, priests are a sacramental representation of Jesus Christ - the head and shepherd - authoritatively proclaiming his word, repeating his acts of forgiveness and his offer of salvation -- particularly in baptism, penance and the Eucharist, showing his loving concern to the point of a total gift of self for the flock, which they gather into unity and lead to the Father through Christ and in the Spirit. In a word, priests exist and act in order to proclaim the Gospel to the world and to build up the Church in the name and person of Christ the head and shepherd. [2]

The Church of the new millennium needs priests who deeply know and understand this. Then they will be men who strive for holiness. They will be deeply men of prayer. They will celebrate the sacraments of the Mass and Penance with a profound awareness of their sacred character. They will know that they are instruments of grace and they will be imbued with the Word of God.

New Evangelisation

In Pope John Paul’s treatment of the need for a proclamation of the Word of God in NMI he comments, “Over the years, I have often repeated the summons to the new evangelisation. I do so again now, especially in order to insist that we must rekindle in ourselves the impetus of the beginnings and allow ourselves to be filled with the ardour of the apostolic preaching which followed Pentecost. We must revive in ourselves the burning conviction of Paul, who cried out: "Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel" (1 Cor 9:16).

I believe one of the great legacies left to the Church by Pope John Paul was his call to the New Evangelisation. The Pope recognised that the Church had been active in a primary evangelisation over the centuries – an evangelisation that has enabled it to spread across every nation on earth – but the time has come for a new evangelisation, as he explained in 1988 in his document on the role of the lay person in the Church and in the world:

Whole countries and nations where religion and the Christian life were formerly flourishing and capable of fostering a viable and working community of faith, are now put to a hard test, and in some cases, are even undergoing a radical transformation, as a result of a constant spreading of an indifference to religion, of secularism and atheism. This particularly concerns countries and nations of the so-called First World, in which economic well-being and consumerism, even if coexistent with a tragic situation of poverty and misery, inspires and sustains a life lived "as if God did not exist". (n. 34)

We can see how true this is: people around us in Australia, young people particularly, are living as though God did not exist. The Pope repeatedly called the Church to make this challenge a major focus of its work.

My brothers and sisters, I echo the Pope’s call, let us make the new evangelisation the focus of our life’s service to the Church.

As rector of the seminary I am seeking to form a new generation of priests who will take up the challenge of the new evangelisation. This work must engage priest and lay person working closely together.

Endnotes:

[1] Directory on the Life and Ministry of Priests, n. 7. Congregation for the Clergy.

[2] Patores dabo vobis, n. 15.