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(The following is excerpted from the keynote address given
by His Eminence Francis Conscious that the harvest is rich but that the labourers are few, Serra International has gathered at the 62nd International Convention to reflect on what it can do to promote the recruitment, training, encouragement and perseverance fo the labourers in the Lord's vineyard. Focusing on the specfic theme for this convention, A Confluence of Cultures and Serra's Mission, let us reflect on the mission and how the Church meets cultures with reference to the priesthood and consecrated religious life. As members of Serra International, you are convinced that it is necessary, indeed crucial, to the life of the Church that there should be priests. "No Christian community can be built up unless it has its basis and centre in the celebration of the most Holy Eucharist" (Presbyt. Ordinis, 6). And for the Eucharist celebration the Mass, we absolutely need a priest. Serra International is therefore doing a very important work in joining in the concern and action of the Church to promote vocations to the sacred priesthood. "The ministerial priesthood represents in different times and places, the permanent guarantee of the sacramental presence of Christ, the Redeemer" (Christifideles Laici, 55). It was Jesus Christ himself who chose men to continue his work as priests in order to provide for the people of God, ministers of the sacred mysteries, dispensers of the Word of God, and pastors who gather God's flock together. You are also convinced that the Church and the world need the various forms of the consecrated life by which men and women "remind the baptised of the fundamental values of of the Gospel" (Vita Consecrata, 33). The consecrated life (of the monk or nun, brother or sister, member of a secular institute or other consecrated person) deeply rooted in the example and teaching of Christ, bears "splendid and striking testimony that the world cannot be transfigured and offered to God with the spirit of the Beatitudes" (Lumen Gentium, 31). God has not created people like matches in a box. Peoples have different ways: if communicating, of dress, of expressing joy, of approaching problems – different cultures. This international convention reflects on the truth that the Church that Jesus Christ established is catholic. She is universal. She is sent to all peoples, cultures, places and times. "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:18). Jesus gave to his Church a universal mission. This Church "is not bound exclusively and indissolubly to any race or nation, nor to any particular way of life or to any pattern of living, ancient or recent" (Gaudium et Spes, 58). The Church is not a village affair, one people did not put it together - our Saviour sent the Church to the whole world. The Church assumes all that is good, true or noble among a people or culture and, if necessary further purifies and ennobles it then elevates it into Catholic unity. The Church does not come to destroy what makes a people a people – their cultural identity. When we apply this to the ministerial priesthood in the Catholic Church, we marvel at the workings of God's grace among peoples of differing cultures in the history of the Church. There are indeed undeniable cultural differences, or emphases or characteristics. Some cultures are more intensively dedicated to academic studies than others. With reference to marriage and the family, some cultures regard as priority the arrival of children, while others highlight the individual fulfilment of the spouses. Obligations to one's relatives in the way of financial assistance are in some cultures limited to the nuclear family, while among other peoples the members the members of the extended family (cousins, nephews, etc) have a claim to be maintained by a well-off elder. The community dimension of life is stressed in many African cultures, while Europeans generally put the emphasis on individual achieve ment. While all this, and more, should be admitted as general cultural characteristics, it is also true that Jesus calls to the sacred priesthood in his Church from around the world young men who share such fundamental virtues or dispositions as attraction toward Christ and His Gospel, love of the Church, generosity, readiness to sacrifice one's self for the sake of the Gospel, honesty, chastity, gratitude and concern for the welfare of others. The grace of God works on these firm foundations, which cut across cultural frontiers. Christ calls to the sacred priesthood from all cultures. The priestly vocation therefore goes down well in all cultures. It invites. It challenges. It elevates. Sometimes it has to condemn a defect in a culture. More often it has to purify, elevate, adapt and ennoble. It is not true that there exists a culture from which a vocation cannot be called. The Gospel is a challenge for every culture. The Church "which has long experience in human affairs" (Paul VI: Pop Progressio, 13) is a sign and a builder of unity between peoples. Some of the problems and challenges in the promotion of vocations have their origin in the family. If spouses do not live in harmony and mutual love, and, worse still, if they allow their disagreements to stampede them into separation or divorce, the influence on their children is obviously negative. In some parts of the world spouses tend to have fewer and fewer children. What then shall we say of spouses who practice contraception or abortion? Sometimes the family is more a victim than a primary offender. The mass media, which can do much good, sometimes creates big problems for the family by projecting a materialistic and hedonistic view of life as beautiful and ideal, by glamorising pornography and marital infidelity, by banalising religion and focussing too much on violence and crime. Within the Church herself, negative influences have come from scandals by priests and religious. There are occasionally some people in the Church who discourage priestly vocations because they do not accept the Catholic teaching and view on the priesthood. They may, for instance, be pushing for lay people to conduct Sunday Service and to distribute Holy Communion., while they oppose recruiting priests from another part of the world and show little interest in appealing to the young to enter seminaries. There are others who are crusading that the discipline of priestly celibacy be abolished because they argue that it would solve the priest shortage problem. These people seem to think that if a wife were given to each priest, there would be no more problems. In some communities I have found that good candidates were not encouraged. But a closer look sometimes reveals that not enough was done to choose candidate who seemed called to celibacy, and that, worse still, some people want to precipitate a crisis by forcing the Church to face a de facto situation of the failure of some priests. Moreover, such people ignore the fact that some ecclesial communities outside the Catholic Church that do not require celibacy are also facing a shortage of pastors. The problem is much deeper – the problem isn't celibacy, its whether we are prepared to face our religion that God has called us to, and if we are ready to sacrifice. Everyone makes a sacrifice – all married people know this. If there is no sacrifice in marriage, the marriage fails. If a priest cannot make a sacrifice for the Church, he cannot make a sacrifice for a wife – he is a bundle of selfishness. These challenges and problems indicate that we must launch further into deep water. No matter the problems and the challenges on the road to vocations promotion, there are signs of hope and encouragement. Many more people in the Church are getting a clearer idea of the priest's identity. They appreciate much more what a priest is, before they consider what he does. A priest is an alter Christus, another Christ. He is Christ among us, blessing us, celebrating the Mass and other sacred mysteries, preaching to us the Word of God and gathering God's people together. Like Christ, the priest comes, not to be served, but to serve. This evangelical attitude should permeate the priest's entire ministry. The priesthood is part of the Church hierarchically constituted according to the mind of Christ. We must not put the priest's ministry alongside the service of those who promote music, youth, hospitality or healing. Of course these lay ministries are important. But they do not, and cannot, replace the priest's ministry. Christian communities need priests (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 32-33) – it seems so simple. After every World Youth Day celebration it is noted that there is a rise in priestly and religious vocations. It is not true that young people of today are allergic to a life of sacrifice. But they want to be convinced why they should sacrifice marriage and earthly goods and give up doing their own will. Above all, they want to see people who are role models. St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Pope John Paul II answer to this role admirably. Two weeks before her death, I celebrated Mass in the Generalate of Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity. I asked her, "Mother Teresa, why do some religious communities not have enough candidates?" Her reply was worthy of a saint: "I do not know because I have not met the problem". I understand that in the year 2000, 50 years after their foundation, the Missionaries of Charity had 4000 sisters and 370 priests, and they work in 647 establishment in 124 countries. Vocations to the priesthood and to the consecrated life are gifts of God to the Church. They are very much in the Church and for the Church. They respond to important needs of the Church in order to promote her overall apostolate or mission. God gives these vocations to individuals in the Church and through the Church. Their celebration is fittingly located in the Eucharistic sacrifice, the apex of the public worship of the Church. Since the Church cannot do without the Holy Eucharist, it is absolutely necessary for her to have ordained ministers who will consecrate Bread and Wine into the Body and Blood of Christ and offer Jesus to the Eternal Father with and in the name of all the baptised. In the Church, the various vocations are related to one another. They encourage one another. The lay state recalls to priests and consecrated people the significance of earthly realities in God's plan of salvation. The ministerial priesthood guarantees the sacramental presence of Christ. This shows why the promotion of ecclesial vocations is a concern for the whole Church, not only of bishops and priests, but also of the consecrated men and women, and of the lay faithful. Prayer is the first and most important means. Jesus himself instructed us to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send more labourers in to his vineyard (Mt: 9:38). In his message for the 41st World Day of Prayer for Vocations celebrated on 2 May 2004, the Holy Father insisted on the irreplaceable place of prayer, saying that local churches or dioceses, priests, religious, monks and nuns and all the lay faithful, must turn to God in prayer for this great need for the Church and society (Message in L' Osserv. Romano, Weekly Eng. Ed. 2 14 Jan 2004). As members of Serra International, you are convinced that you can and should be part of the Church on the parish, diocesan, and universal levels in helping promote priestly and religious vocations in appropriate ways. In particular, as parents and grandparents, you know that it is very positive when you pray for vocations and especially when you insert in your family prayer the intention that God may call one or more of your children to his service. As lay faithful you can, where appropriate, put in a word of advice to seminarians or candidates to the religious life. Sometimes the testimony of a lay person, telling priests or religious that they are not the only ones who make sacrifices for Christ or the Gospel, can be very powerful. A seminarian or candidate to the consecrated life will rarely forget such witness when they hear from married people what heroic sacrifices they have sometimes been called upon to make for the Gospel. Members of Serra International, it is an honour and responsibility
that God's grace makes it possible for all of us to contribute to
the promotion of vocations in all the cultures of the world. May
the Blessed Virgin Mary, Moth of our Saviour and Queen of Apostles,
obtain for us the generosity, the dynamism and the faith to respond
to that grace.
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© Serra Club of Canberra 2004