By Tim Puet
COLUMBUS, Ohio (CNS) — A
priest’s “office hours” are unlimited and the priesthood is not
solely focused on administrative work, the apostolic nuncio to the United
States told students at the nation’s only Vatican-affiliated seminary.
“It’s important to say this
to young seminarians: Don’t prepare yourselves to be administrative people, to
say ‘I work from 8 to 6 and after that, it’s finished and I take my rest.’ No,
you are full time,” Archbishop Christophe Pierre said during a
question-and-answer session April 23 at the Pontifical College Josephinum.
“Your enthusiasm is so
important,” he continued. “This country needs the church announcing
the beauty of the presence of God in Jesus Christ, the power of his
resurrection, and the power of transformation found in the Gospel, in which
whenever a person met Jesus, he became different.”
The nuncio’s remarks came after he
delivered the college’s annual lecture honoring the late Cardinal Pio Laghi, who served
from 1980 to 1990 as the Vatican’s apostolic delegate to the United States and,
after the title was changed, as nuncio, the equivalent of an ambassador.
As nuncio, Archbishop Pierre also
is chancellor of the college, the only seminary outside of Italy with
pontifical status, an honor Pope Leo XIII granted to the institution in 1882.
The archbishop frequently referred
in his talk on “The Priests We Need Today” to a Vatican document on
priestly formation, “Ratio
Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis,” (“The Gift of the
Priestly Vocation”), which the Congregation for Clergy revised Dec. 8.
The document echoes a phrase
made familiar by Pope Francis: “Seminaries should form missionary disciples
who are ‘in love’ with the master, shepherds ‘with the smell of the sheep,’ who
live in their midst to bring the mercy of God to them. Hence, every priest
should always feel that he is a disciple on a journey, constantly needing an
integrated formation, understood as a continuous configuration to Christ.”
The archbishop referred to Pope
Francis’ description of priests in formation as “uncut diamonds, to be
formed both patiently and carefully, respecting the conscience of the
individual, so that they may shine among the people of God.”
“Formation for the priesthood
is best understood within the concept of the journey of discipleship,” Archbishop
Pierre said.
“Christ himself calls each
person by name,” first through baptism, followed by the other sacraments
of initiation, the archbishop said. “The journey begins with his family
and parish. It is there … that his vocation is nurtured, culminating in
entrance into the seminary. The gift of the vocation comes from God to the
church and to the world. A vocation should never be conceived as something
private, to be followed in an individualistic or self-referential manner.”
The model of formation proposed
in the document “prepares the seminarian and priest to make a gift of
himself to the church, to go out of himself, to not be self-referential, but to
look to the essential needs of the flock,” Archbishop Pierre said.
He said six characteristics are
particularly needed by the 21st-century priest: missionary spirit,
humility, communion and unity, prayerfulness, discernment, and closeness to the
flock.
The nuncio returned to the
document’s phrase describing priests as missionary disciples, saying such a
person is “one who follows the Lord, but who also goes out with joy,”
who, in the words of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation “Evangelii
Gaudium” (“The Joy of the Gospel”) “obey(s) his call to go
forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all the peripheries in need
of the light of the Gospel.”
“This call to be a disciple
and this raising up to be a priest is a gift,” the archbishop added.
“The church needs priests today who are willing to receive this gift as
men of communion.” He also quoted from a talk earlier this month in which
the pope told seminarians at the Pontifical Spanish College, “It is an
ongoing challenge to overcome individualism, to live diversity as a gift,
striving for unity of the presbyterate, which is a sign of the presence of God
in the life of a community.”
Archbishop Pierre also was at
the Josephinum for the rededication April 24 of the college’s chapel of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo, archbishop
of Lima, Peru, from 1580 to 1606, who is patron of the Latin American episcopate
and founder of the first seminary in the Americas.
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Puet is a reporter at the Catholic Times,
newspaper of the Diocese of Columbus.
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