Quo Vadis?

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

                                                                                          - C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Quo Vadis?

Photo Taken at Quo Vadis Domine Church, Rome in 2017

Waking up with the question - quo vadis? (Where are you going?) seemed a significant divine whisper to me today. Faced with a situation of not knowing how to proceed, being clueless, or forcing my will over God’s will, with the probing questions whether to remain or to quit, to face or turn away, God does not easily let you have your way. A legend has it about St. Peter. Peter was facing persecution from the regime of his day and he was about to be crucified. While he was running away from being crucified for Christ’s sake, it seems that Peter Saw the Risen Lord along the road outside the city of Rome. So he asks the Lord, “Quo Vadis? (Where are you going?)” The Lord answered him saying, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again.” We know from Scripture that the gaze of the Lord (Lk 22:61) melted his heart and he wept bitterly (Lk 22:62). When the Lord told him that he is again going to face crucifixion, St. Peter picks up courage to return to his ministry.

Do You also Want to Leave?

Jesus after his Eucharistic Discourse in the Gospel of John, Chapter 6, asks the twelve, “Do you also want to leave? (Jn 6:67). In fact many disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him at the difficult teaching. At this time, it is Peter who answers Jesus, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (Jn 6:68).

I have heard stories of many priests leaving their priesthood either to marry or to a properly discerned state of life. What intrigued me is that I did not find any canonized saints who left priesthood though there are saints who were once married. I have also heard of priests who had difference of opinion over celibacy. And the discussion is ever on. Before the Amazonian synod there were discussions about the lifting off the rule of celibacy and allowing married priests. It’s true that celibacy is an ecclesiastical discipline. I liked the frank discussion of Pope Francis with a Jewish Rabbi Abraham Skorka as found in the Book titled, “On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family and the Church in the 21^st Century”,

Bergoglio: I would like to make a clarification: a Catholic priest does not get married in the Western Tradition, but he can in the Eastern Tradition. There priests can marry before being ordained, but if they have already been ordained, then they cannot get married……..Now what happens with us who are consecrated? We are so weak that there is always the temptation to be contradictory. One wants to have his cake and eat it too, he wants the good things from the consecrated life and from the lay life. Before entering the seminary, I was on that path. But later, when one cultivates the choice for the religious life, when one cultivates the choice for the religious life, he finds strength in that direction. At least I live it that way, which does not take away the possibility that at one point one could meet a woman. When I was a seminarian, I was enchanted by a young woman at my uncle’s wedding. I was surprised by her beauty, the clarity of her intellect… and, well I kicked the idea around for a while. When I returned to the seminary after the wedding, I could not pray during the entire week because when I prepared to pray, the woman appeared in my mind. I had to go back to thinking about what I was doing. I was still free because I was only a seminarian, I could have gone back home and said see you later, I had to think about my choice again. I chose once again – or allowed myself to be chosen for- the religious path. It would be abnormal for these types of things not to happen. When they do happen, one has to rediscover his place. He has to see if he reaffirms his choice or if he says, “No, what I am feeling is really beautiful, I am afraid that later I will not be faithful to my commitment, I must leave the seminary.” When a seminarian thinks like that, I help him to go in peace, so that he can be a good Christian and not a bad priest. In the Western rite, to which I belong, priests cannot marry like the Catholic Byzantine, Ukranian, or Greek rites. In these Churches, the priests can get married; the bishops cannot, they have to remain celibate. They are very good priests. Sometimes I tease them, I tell them that they have a woman in their house, but that they do not realize that they also got themselves a mother-in-law. In Western Catholicism, the issue has been discussed by some organizations. For now, the Church remains firm on the discipline of celibacy. There are those who say, with a certain pragmatism, that we are missing out on more manpower. If hypothetically, Western Catholicism would change on the issue of celibacy, I believe that it would be for cultural reasons (like in the Eastern Church), not as much as a universal option. For the time being, I am in favour of maintaining celibacy, with the pros and the cons that it has, because it has been ten centuries of good experiences more often than failure. What happens is that the scandals are immediately seen. But tradition has weight and validity. Catholic priests chose celibacy little by little. Until 1100, there were those who opted for it and those who did not…….Celibacy is an issue of discipline, not of faith. It can be changed [Jorge Mario Bergoglio-Abraham Skorka, On Heaven and Earth Pope Francis on Faith, Family, and the Church in the Twenty-First Century, Trans. Alejandro Bermudez and Howard Goodman (Bloomsbury: London, 2013), 47-49.

I had sometimes expressed my passing desire to work as a missionary in the Amazon region. My brother priests sometimes fooled me perceiving that I chose the amazon because of the popular thinking that the Pope would eventually allow married clergy. With the sex abuse scandals and other obvious and scandalous lives of priests or leaders in the hierarchy, many give into the temptation of saying, ‘Why can’t they get married?” On the one hand, it is true that the laity in certain rites have high regard for priests and on the other, when the naked scandals stare at the face of the faithful, an awareness of weakness and vulnerability facing priests is shown up. They either realise this and look at priests with compassion or make a judgement with an outright condemnation. 

In the context of Corona Virus, a peculiar situation has arisen that the faithful cannot easily partake in the Eucharistic celebration physically. No priests, No Eucharist. No Priests, no sacrament of Reconciliation. No priests, no anointing of the Sick. Pope Francis in the Post Synodal Apostolic Exhoration, Querida Amazonia writes,

“…the exclusive character received in Holy Orders qualifies the priest alone to preside at the Eucharist.”

“The Priest is a sign of that head and wellspring of grace above all when he celebrates the Eucharist, the source and summit of the entire Christian life. That is his great power, a power that can only be received in the sacrament of Holy Orders. For this reason, only the priest can say: “This is my body.” There are other words too, that he alone can speak: “I absolve you from your sins”. Because Sacramental forgiveness is at the service of a worthy celebration of the Eucharist. These two sacraments lie at the heart of the priest’s exclusive identity.”

So dear priests, why there is no conviction about your identity as priests? Why ruminate on leaving the path that is consciously chosen. My dear priests, loving the Lord is not a feeling, it is a decision to remain in the relationship with Christ that you have consciously chosen. Faith is trusting God even when you don’t understand His plans. But do you think that it is hard to wait and impatiently leave the path that you already trod. Know this – its God’s nature not to reveal everything all of a sudden. He is gradual in his revelations. A priest friend of mine wrote to me the other day, “Let us humble ourselves…bearing fruits of repentance…reparation for our own sins of commission and omission…and wait ‘under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time’ (1 Pet 5:6).

Cracks in Priesthood

A question that can be addressed to Priests is, do you notice a crack in your priesthood? A question that can be addressed to the lay faithful is, do you notice some cracks in your priests? Bishop Fulton Sheen in his book The Priest is not His own traces the first crack in the priesthood of Judas. He writes, “was avarice the cause of the fall of Judas? No! His fall began with lack of faith and trust in the Lord…..It was Judas’ lack of faith that hardened his heart and confirmed him in his greed.” In the face of the necessary evil of institutionalization, we have somewhere forgotten to cultivate and nourish that faith and trust in the Lord. We might have given attention to everything else except Christ. That’s the reason why Christ becomes centre stage on Holy Thursday as he washes the feet of his disciples. If you truly love, you can really come down and set an example. 

A lack of clarity about the ideal of celibacy and the practice of it might find you in trouble. Those reading this might have heard stories of priests leaving their priesthood to marry the woman they love. You have also heard by hearsay that such marriages do not remain successful. Even some cultures consider departure from priesthood as taboo and curses attached to it. It is important to understand that a priest is a sexual being twenty four seven. Coming to terms with sexuality has a say in the celibate priestly development. Friendship with women that lacks purity and integrity, the many celibate adjustments that celibates make are remote expressions on the way to departure from priesthood.

 I have found the detailed summing up of the celibacy very meaningful as experienced by a Capuchin Friar Keith Klark in his book titled An Experience of Celibacy: A Creative Reflection on Intimacy, loneliness, Sexuality and Commitment:

“On the physical and emotional level, celibacy is the ability to know oneself as sexual and to experience some considerable comfort with that knowledge. It is the ability to regard oneself as sexual without experiencing the internal and external demand to do something about it – neither the need or demand to make it go away, nor the need or demand to act it out. It is the choice not to act out one’s sexuality in a genital or romantic way.

On the level of relationships, celibacy is the ability to cherish and nurture other people’s being and becoming without establishing bonds of mutual emotional dependence with them. It means not to be married, and not to be pursuing the path which naturally leads to marriage. It is the ability to establish warm and deep relationships with others by loving them and being loved by them in a non-exclusive and non-possessive way. It is a way of loving which allows the celibate person to say, “They and I are better off for our having been together, but no worse off for our parting.”

On the practical level, celibacy is a way of remaining significantly more available to cherish and nurture others’ being and becoming because of the choice not to take on the responsibilities of establishing and maintaining one’s own family unit.

On the level of social impact, the prophetic level, it is a way of living which seriously challenges the hedonistic tendencies in all of us. It says that an auto is not something to believe in, that you don’t necessarily deserve a break today, and that self-fulfilment is not the ultimate meaning of life.

On the personal, spiritual level, celibacy is a commitment to stand ready to enter fully and vulnerably into life’s moments of loneliness because God can be found concrete in such moments. It is a commitment to face the reality of our separateness and incompleteness and to allow ourselves to experience, however momentarily, that our own being and becoming is blessed by God, and to discover the radical all-sufficiency of God.

On the level of Christian Faith, celibacy is this lifestyle taken up and lived in response to a call or invitation one has received from God to live as Jesus did. The call to a celibate life is a gift from God.”

I have found the definition of celibacy very satisfying as given by Richard Sipe, an eminent psychologist who himself was a priest for several years

“Celibacy is (1) a freely chosen, (2) dynamic state, (3) usually vowed, (4) that involves an honest and sustained attempt, (5) to live without direct sexual gratification, (6) in order to productively serve others, (7) for a spiritual motive.” [A. W. Richard Sipe, Living the Celibate Life: A Search for Models and Meaning (Missouri: Ligouri/Triumph, 2004)].

Are you still fooling yourselves and not convinced? Do you still want to debate celibacy? On 27^th January 2019, on his return flight from Panama to Rome, Pope Francis had this to say quoting the phrase of Saint Pope Paul VI, “I would rather give my life than change the law on celibacy…….celibacy is a gift for the Church.”

Do you also want to leave finding that it is hard to fulfil the obligation to celibacy? “Celibacy as a lifestyle has never been upheld as a value by the church. It is celibacy “for the sake of the kingdom” which has always been promoted” (Keith Klark). It goes without saying that it is a voluntary choice. It presumes that the individual who takes up the celibate way of life has had an overwhelming experience of God. In response to this experience, one sets out to love and serve the Lord.

You are a priest – a diocesan or a religious priest vowed to celibacy for the Kingdom. What matters in life is how we have learned to love. St. Paul tells us that the greatest of all virtues that eternally remain is LOVE. St. John of the Cross attests to the same truth when he says, “In the twilight of our lives, we will be judged on how we have loved.”

In the conclusion of the book The God who Loves You “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”, Peter Kreeft exhorts the readers, “Tell God right now that this is the one thing you want above all: the gift of loving Him completely. Tell Him you will never let Him go until He blesses you thus. Tell Him that even in eternity you will not let Him go until you are 100 percent love. And then you will never want to let Him go.” This is exactly the blessing that Jesus granted to St. Peter after his resurrection by asking him the same question three times: Do You Love Me? He found reinstated to continue his loving relationship with the Lord. That gave Peter the courage to proclaim Christ and believe in the Power of God’s Promise.

“May your hand be with the man on your right (the chosen/ Priests), with the son of man whom you made strong for yourself. Then we will not withdraw from you; revive us, and we will call on your name. Lord God of hosts, restore us; light up your face and we shall be saved.”

-      Psalm 80: 18-20

Fr. Vayalamannil Aneesh Chacko SDB

(09/04/2020, Maundy Thursday)