The Priesthood of Christ

The Priesthood of Christ
Father Marie-Dominique Philippe, O.P.

During this year dedicated to "Christ, Word of the Father, only Savior of the world," it is good to try to penetrate more deeply into the mystery of the priesthood of Christ. To do so we must reread the Letter to the Hebrews, which is very great because it helps us understand the profound intention of the Father for Jesus at the Cross.

Royal Priesthood and Ministerial Priesthood

The Letter to the Hebrews, which was once attributed to Saint Paul, is now considered to have been written in the perspective of the disciples of Saint John at a time of crisis when many of the Levites who converted to Christ and became priests were considering the Levitical priesthood as more perfect than Christ's. We then understand that this Letter was written to show the grandeur of Christ's priesthood which is, as Saint Thomas said, fons totius sacerdotii, "Christ is the fountain-head of the entire priesthood" [1]. Beginning with Christ's priesthood, we must understand what the royal priesthood [2] of the faithful is, which comes from sanctifying grace --our Christian grace is priestly--as well as what the ministerial priesthood is, which is in the order of a sacrament. Vatican II asked theologians to reflect often upon the relations between the royal priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood, both of which find their source in the priesthood of Christ. The ministerial priesthood is ordered to the royal, "mystical" priesthood of the faithful. The person who has received the ministerial priesthood enjoys a sacred power to form and lead the priestly people, in order to bring about in persona Christi the Eucharistic sacrifice and to offer it to God in the name of the entire people [3]. The faithful, on their part, participate in the Eucharistic sacrifice by offering the Divine Victim and by offering themselves with Him [4]. Just as the proper act of Christ's priesthood is to offer Himself as victim of love in order to glorify the Father and save us, so too does the royal priesthood consist, for the faithful and for the priest himself, in offering their lives for their brothers and sisters, in the footsteps of Jesus and with Him: "Love one another as I have loved you" [5]. The Letter to the Hebrews, which is the epistle of the priesthood, is situated within this great perspective. It is difficult but very important; we can almost say that it is a revealed theology (indeed, if we wants to understand what theology is, we must always return to the Letter to the Hebrews).
From the Old to the New Testament

In the Old Testament, there is first the family (with the patriarchs), then the legislator (Moses is not a priest; he is a legislator), then the judges, then the kings and, above all of these, the prophets. It is curious to see how God governs this little people which was admittedly the weakest, the most fragile of all peoples--which, moreover, gave rise to this longing to have a king.

When the people of Israel demand a king, Samuel, the first great prophet, warns that this will not be easy and that, when Israel experiences a crisis because of the king who is chosen, Yahweh will not listen [6]; because to ask for a king, as opposed to God, is not good. In God's intention the people of Israel is a theocracy... yet they wanted to have a king. And Jesus will be condemned as "King of the Jews" [7]. This is the allegation the high priests: Jesus wants to be king of Israel, and thus he is opposed to Caesar [8]. It is curious that this has not received more emphasis. The people of Israel wanted to have a king, and the high priests make use of this royalty to condemn Jesus, He who according to the great visions of the Apocalypse--that of the white horse signifying the victory of Christ--is "King of kings and Lord of lords" [9].

Thus we see in the Old Testament first of all the fathers, the patriarchs, who are first in the familial order (today we don't know what a patriarch is, but in civilizations which are still very close to the family, as in Africa, the patriarch is venerated; he is the founder). Then Moses, legislator, is quite different: it is the passage from the family to the people; the people apply the Law, while there is no law in the family. Then the progression from legislator to judges, from the Law to its interpretation, to its application. Then come the kings and, above all else, the prophets. There is also the Levitical priesthood, which appeared with the sons of Jacob, in the tribe of Levi. The Levites are a portion reserved for God, that of the priests.

All of this is found in the mystery of Christ, in His priesthood. Christ, source of the entire priesthood, is Father at the Cross [10], and at the same time He brings about a new covenant (thus He is legislator). He is the one to whom the Father entrusts all judgment [11]; He is king [12]; He is prophet [13]; and above all He is priest, and everything comes back to His priesthood. In the Old Testament authorities are diverse and multiple. There are, as it were, six authorities, or five rather, for the prophet has no authority properly speaking. He is the one who constantly reminds Israel of their finality: "You are a religious people; it is God who leads you." The prophets are the instruments of the Spirit of God, of the Holy Spirit (Samuel, the first, helps us better understand this), thus they are totally relative to the Spirit who moves them. The others, however, are all first in some respect: in the order of life (the patriarch), in the order of the Law (the legislator), in the application of the Law (the judge), in government (the king), in the religious order (the priest). Thus there are five "heads" who share authority; the prophets are beyond authority as the instruments of God who unceasingly recall the divine demands.

Jesus Himself is sent by the Father; He is the "one mediator between God and men" [14], "the Mediator of the New Covenant" [15], and this mediation is a priestly mediation. Everything comes back to the priesthood, a priesthood which in some way assumes paternity, the authority of the legislator (the Eucharist, Christ's testament, is like a "new Law" which is, in reality, "the new covenant in His blood" [16]), judgment, kingship, and prophecy. Yet Christ is king as priest: thus it is a kingship in poverty. His kingship "is not of this world" [17], it is not a temporal royalty because it is surpassed by the priesthood, the kingship of the One who is "King of kings" is an interior royalty in poverty. And while Jesus is a prophet, it is also within the priesthood.

The Letter to the Hebrews shows us that the act by which Jesus saves us is a priestly act. The mystery of the redemption is realized in a priestly act and the New Testament is a covenant in the priesthood of Christ which can be shared in two ways: by the royal priesthood of the faithful and by the ministerial priesthood--keeping in mind that the ministerial priesthood is ordered to the royal priesthood of the faithful, of Christians. Mary is first in the royal priesthood of the faithful, and the Pope, Peter, is first in the ministerial priesthood. If we want to understand something about the mystery of the Church, we must always look at Peter and Mary--and John with Mary. Religious life (John) is not linked to the ministerial priesthood, it is connected with the royal priesthood of the faithful. This royal priesthood is the motherhood of Mary, while fatherhood, the ministerial priesthood, is authority. This is something we need to understand since it is very important.

The mystery of the Redemption is thus a priestly act which Jesus accomplishes as High Priest. This is why a very good exegete, Albert Vanhoye, has shown that it is indeed at the Cross that Jesus is High Priest, as the Letter to the Hebrews tells us [18]. It is at the Cross that He accomplishes His priestly act in order to help us understand that the entire New Covenant is priestly. It is realized by the mediation of Jesus, which is a mediation between the Blessed Trinity (the Father) and the faithful.

This priesthood is a priesthood of love wherein the priest and victim are one and the same [19]. This is the most profound vision of the mystery of the Redemption. Jesus offers Himself at the Cross. He is indeed the priest, but He is also the Lamb [20]; He is the young ox [21]. He is the victim, victim unceasingly offered in the mystery of the Eucharist which, as John Paul II forcefully says, defines the ministerial priesthood: the "principle and central reason" of the ministerial priesthood is the Eucharist [22]. The priest (ministerial priesthood) is defined by the Eucharist. If there are no longer priests, the Eucharist is absent [23]. The missionaries of old always said that the Church was only established in a place when the Eucharist was present there, for the Word of God is insufficient: it is perfected in the Eucharist. This is quite true. We see it clearly in the Eucharistic liturgy: the first part of the Mass is the teaching of the Word. This teaching is ordered to the consecration which is the summit of the Eucharistic liturgy, and the consequence, the fruit, is communion. The first part of the Mass is thus concerned with the Word of God, then we begin the "Eucharistic prayer" which is ordered to the consecration, and the fruit of the consecration is communion. These are the three major parts of the Mass, constantly reminding us that the mystery of salvation is Jesus High Priest offering Himself for us as victim of love.

The ultimate vision that we should have of the mystery of the Redemption (which is accomplished in the mystery of the priesthood [24]), thus consists in understanding that Jesus is the Lamb, the victim, that this victim is identical to the priest in this priesthood of love, and that for each of us, being Christian is sharing in Christ's priesthood through the royal priesthood of the faithful. In other words, through fraternal charity we are responsible for our brothers, and this is why fraternal charity is at the heart of our Christian life. Someone who has no the sense of fraternal charity is not Christian; fraternal charity is the ultimate criterion of Christian life.

Here we understand Mary's place in the divine economy. Mary is first in the order of the royal priesthood of the faithful, and this royal priesthood (arising directly from sanctifying grace) is first; the ministerial priesthood, as we have said, is ordered to it. So when women want to take the place of priests and receive the ministerial priesthood, this proves that they do not understand the mystery of Mary. This is sad! They abandon what is first in order to covet a service. Can you imagine Mary demanding the ministerial priesthood from Peter, going to see Peter at Rome and saying to him, "I rank ahead of you! Don't I know Jesus better than you? I should be bishop of Rome"? Some women's demand for the ministerial priesthood is the grimace of the devil towards the mystery of the royal priesthood of the faithful. And this is perhaps (perhaps ) the ultimate venom of the serpent, the ultimate temptation to make us go against the vision of the Father's wisdom with respect to the Cross. By doing this people show that they have no understanding of the wisdom of the Cross [25]. For according to the wisdom of the Cross, Jesus, source of the entire priesthood, willed that His priesthood (which implies the victimal state since He is both priest and victim) be passed on to and shared with all Christians. As the Fathers of the Church very quickly understood, we are born to Christian life with the piercing of the heart of Christ [26], and this piercing expresses, symbolically yet really, the victimal state of Jesus, the immolated Lamb. Being born to divine life through this piercing, we are linked to this piercing by the grace which sanctifies us ("sanctifying grace").

This is what being Christian is. And if we go to the end in our Christian life we must understand that, born from the victimal state of Christ and thus bound to the Savior by our birth, bound to the salvation wrought by Him, we are responsible for our brothers in fraternal charity, a responsibility which constitutes the royal priesthood of the faithful. The royal priesthood is our cooperation with the mystery of Christ's Cross. To the very extent that we are called by Christ to be beloved disciples, to the extent that we receive and choose Mary as our Mother, we are called to cooperate. So much so that from time to time Jesus asks us, or Mary asks us, to "carry" our brothers, those whom Providence places near us, whether they be far from Christ or, on the contrary, friends of Jesus. We must cooperate in the mystery of the Cross for those who are farthest away and for those who are closest. It is the mystery of fraternal charity. Those who are farthest away from God, from the present light and love of Jesus' heart, are the poorest of the poor, and we must have a special love for the poorest of the poor since Jesus loved them. And we must also cooperate for the greatest saints. If God wants to unite us with those who are contemporary saints in the Church, we must not only cooperate with them; we must cooperate with Jesus and Mary for their holiness by living the mystery of the Cross.

So that the royal priesthood of the faithful can fully blossom, so that fraternal charity can grow, Jesus gives us three foods [27]: His Word, the Eucharist, and the Father's will. He asks us to live by three covenants: the covenant in the Eucharist, the covenant with Mary and the covenant with Peter (obedience to Peter) [28]. It is paramount to understand this today, when the attacks of the devil assume an ultimate character. Anyone who wants to understand a little what is currently happening in the world (and we have the duty to understand) must indeed find that the attacks of the devil today are extremely treacherous. The Pope himself said this the first time he came to Paris. To the assembly of French bishops he said that humanity finds itself today in the presence of a temptation that it has never experienced yet, a "meta-temptation" [29]--the ultimate temptation: thinking it has arrived at adulthood, humanity turns inward on itself (adulthood is the age of "rereading") and believes that it can save itself. Thus there is no place for the Savior in today's culture. There is no longer a place for the Redemption in the culture emanating from this adult humanity, and thus there is no place for the priesthood....

If we are a little bit attentive to the present struggles, we clearly see that we are faced with this ultimate temptation. Thus we must try to understand it, especially beginning at the moment when the Pope himself uncovered it. What is curious is that these words of the Holy Father are not often repeated.... When a Pope says something like this we should be very attentive, because it comes from the Holy Spirit. It is indeed a prophetic statement: "Beware!", John Paul II tells us. Since it has arrived at adulthood thanks to the progress of science and technology, men no longer need the Savior, and thus no longer want Him: "The Savior was good for the Middle Ages! But now we have science and technology so that we can dominate life, and we have come to the point where we can save ourselves." Some go so far as to think that it is possible to "create" a man who no longer dies. In order to be sure that it no longer needs a Savior (for people do not know what happens after death), humanity tries to produce a man who no longer dies....

We do not see clearly enough that we are undergoing today a temptation that has never yet been experienced, and this concerns the priesthood, since God willed to save the world in a priestly act. Understand this: the priesthood of Christ is not the ministerial priesthood. Christ is not a "minister," He is not a priest "ministerially," He is substantially so by the very mystery of the Incarnation. True, He is for humanity by His Incarnation "King of kings and Lord of lords," yet He is above all Priest, and this explains His reaction whenever the people of Israel wanted to proclaim Him king [30]: He refuses (except at the moment when He enters into His Passion [31]). Note that the people of Israel do not want to proclaim Him High Priest, yet the high priests are nevertheless afraid of Him, for if Jesus is acknowledged as King they will lose their place and disappear. There is a bitter jealousy here. Jesus died because of the jealousy of the high priests, a sacerdotal and pontifical jealousy which used another jealousy, the jealousy of Judas towards John.

Judas must have indeed been very jealous of John. Wouldn't he have wanted to be the beloved disciple? When he saw John very close to Jesus during the Last Supper--Jesus drew him close to his breast--it was the final straw.... In fact, John is alone in recounting in detail the announcement of the betrayal of Judas during the Paschal meal [32]. He does not explicitly speak of a temptation on Judas' part, and he certainly is not going to say that Judas is tempted because of him, yet he speaks of himself, for the first time, as the "disciple whom Jesus loved" [33].

The royal priesthood of the faithful is a mystery of love. Someone who receives the ministerial priesthood, before receiving it, has been baptized, made his first communion, and has been confirmed. In his royal priesthood of the faithful he is a beloved disciple of Jesus, and his ministerial priesthood always remains ordered to this. That is why it is a terrible heresy when one wants to be a priest more than he strives for holiness. We must all strive for holiness, not only in a search for perfection but also in the desire to be beloved disciples. For holiness is not manufactured; it is not our work. It implies first of all acknowledging "not that we have loved God but that he loved us" [34] and that we thus have only to love, since "he first loved us" [35]. This is what being a beloved disciple is, and this we are by baptism, by sanctifying grace. It is not the ministerial priesthood that makes us saints. On the contrary it might distance us from holiness, because the ministerial priesthood gives a "position" and this is something that is difficult to get past. Indeed, when someone is a priest he has a certain authority, and we easily confuse authority and power: he then becomes manager of his parish or the ministry he has received. This is terrible because this places something ahead of holiness, something which is admittedly quite great yet remains a service --a service with respect to the body of Christ, i.e., with respect to the Eucharist and the mystical body: the faithful. A priest who has received the ministerial priesthood is the servant of the friends of Christ.

As Mary's beloved son John understands that though his ministerial priesthood he becomes servant of Mary and entirely ordered towards his Mother. The first exercise of John's ministerial priesthood is ordered to Mary's sanctity. "You will do greater works than these," said Jesus [36], and it is true: John did something greater in the sense that it was he-after the Resurrection and the Ascension-who led Mary from the Compassion to the Assumption. The last stage of Mary's holiness on earth, her ultimate growth in love, was entrusted to John, and it is the greatest thing that has been lived in this world by a creature along with, clearly, the divine maternity of Mary (both of them by the Holy Spirit, according to an order).

[8] "'We found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ a king'" (Lk. 23:2). Cf. Jn. 18:33, 19:12-15; Mt. 27:11; Mk. 15:2.

[9] Rev. 19:11-16. When we need to revive our hope we must reread this passage....

[10] "'No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him'" (Jn. 6:44). Thus it is indeed at the Cross, when He "draws all men to himself" (cf. Jn. 12:32), that He most reveals to us His unity with the Father. It is at the Cross, in the act of obedience by which Jesus offers Himself to the Father in order to glorify Him (cf. Jn. 17:1) that the words addressed to Philip--"'He who has seen me has seen the Father'" (Jn. 14:9)--assume their strongest meaning. In seeing Jesus crucified, we "see" the Father. The face of the Father who attracts us is revealed at the Cross. As John Paul II says, it is in Jesus crucified that we must see, "according to the expression of the Letter to the Colossians (1:15), the living image of the Father, the perfect icon of the invisible God. (...) In the Paschal mystery Christ unites Himself to every man, He reveals the face of the Father and fully reveals man to himself (Lettre pour le 3'eme centenaire de saint Paul de la Croix, Documentation Catholique n. 2107, p. 9).

[18] Heb. 2:17, 3:1, 4:14, 5:5-10, 6:20, 7:26, 8:1, 9:11. See A. Vanhoye, La structure littéraire de l'Epître aux Hébreux, DDB 2 éd. 1976; and Prêtres anciens, prêtres nouveaux selon le Nouveau Testament, Seuil (Parole de Dieu) 1980.

[22] Letter On the Mystery and Worship of the Eucharist (1980), 2. "The priesthood... is a gift given to the Church in view of the Eucharist" (Letter to all priests of the Church [Holy Thursday, 1982]). The mystery of the Eucharist is "the center and root of my entire life as priest" (Milan, May 21, 1983). Cf. Gift and Mystery (Doubleday, 1996), p. 79: "Is this not the deepest reason behind the priestly vocation"? See also p. 75: "The priesthood, in its deepest reality, is the priesthood of Christ. It is Christ who offers himself, his Body and Blood, in sacrifice to God the Father, and by this sacrifice makes righteous in the Father's eyes all mankind and, indirectly, all creation. The priest, in his daily celebration of the Eucharist, goes to the very heart of this mystery. For this reason the celebration of the Eucharist must be the most important moment of the priest's day, the center of his life." And p. 91: "There can be no Eucharist without the priesthood, just as there can be no priesthood without the Eucharist. Not only is the ministerial priesthood closely linked to the Eucharist, but also the common [i.e., royal] priesthood of all the baptized is also rooted in this mystery."

[23] And if the priest no longer lives the Eucharist in all its truth, what will become of his priesthood?

[24] Cf. John Paul II, Gift and Mystery, p. 82: "Christ is a priest because he is the Redeemer of the world. The priesthood of all presbyters is part of the mystery of the Redemption."

[26] See Saint Augustine, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint John, IX, 10 (Bibl. augustinienne 71, p. 531): "Adam sleeps so that Eve may be formed; Christ dies so that the Church may be formed. During Adam's slumber, Eve is formed from his side; after the death of Christ, His side is struck by a lance so that the sacraments which form the Church gush forth." Saint Augustine continually returns to this theme (see op. cit., p. 904, note 69) which is found for the first time with Tertullien (De anima, ch. 43; P.L. 2, col. 723 b; also see ch. 11, col. 665 A), and then with Saint Hillary (Trait&ecaute des mystères, I, 2-5; Sources chrétiennes 19 bis [1947], pp. 77-85).

[27] See M.D. Philippe, Les trois sagesses (Fayard 1994), pp. 325-331, and Follow the Lamb, available from the brothers.

[28] Cf. Discourse of John Paul II to the Bishops of France at Issy-les-Moulineaus, June 1, 1981. The entire collection of speeches and homilies by John Paul II during this voyage has been published by the Daughters of Saint Paul under the title Message of Peace, Trust, Love and Faith.

[31] Matthew 26:22 only reports a question posed by Judas; Mark and Luke do not even mention Judas during the course of the meal.

[32] See Les trois sagesses, pp. 306-308.

[33] Jn. 13:23. Is it not this, more than any other consideration, that allows us to date the Gospel of Saint John? John can only call himself the beloved disciple after the death of all the other Apostles. Wouldn't it have been terribly out of place to have said this before, especially with respect to Peter? Concerning this, note that out of the five times that John is designated as the "beloved disciple" Peter is mentioned in four of them. See Jn. 13:23-24 (the announcement of Judas' betrayal); 20:2 (the announcement of the empty tomb); 21:7 (the apparition of Jesus on the shore of the lake); 21:20 (Peter's question concerning John). The only instance when Peter is not mentioned is in 19:26; John is alone at the foot of the Cross. On another occasion at the home of Caiaphas John mentions Peter and "another disciple" (18:15-16) who is easily identified since, in the race with Peter to the tomb, John identifies himself as "the other disciple" (20:3-4 and 8). By identifying himself as "the beloved disciple," far from excluding Peter, doesn't John on the contrary show that he is bound to Peter in a special way in fraternal charity? It is we who are exclusive: God is never so, and thus charity, true charity, never excludes. Whenever we want to exclude others (at least exclude them from the "first place" that we attributed to ourselves), we do not love in truth. The more Jesus chooses us and attracts us to Him, the more we must "keep His commandment" (cf. Jn. 13:34; 15:9-10 and 12), i.e., love our brothers and sisters as Jesus Himself loves them. Then how could we still want to be preferred to them?
[34] 1 Jn. 4:10.
[35] 1 Jn. 4:19.