The Priest and His Loving

"In the depths of our priestly being, thanks to what each one of us became at the moment of our ordination, we are friends: we are witnesses who are particularly close to this Love which manifests itself in the Redemption. `For God so loved the world that he gave his Only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life'. This is the definition of love in its redemptive meaning . . . And we priests find ourselves particularly close to this redeeming love which the Son brought to the world - and which he brings continuously. Even if this fills us with a holy fear, we must nevertheless recognize that, together with the Eucharist, the mystery of this redeeming love is, in a sense in our hands. We must recognize that it returns each day upon our lips, that it is inscribed in our vocation and our ministry."

Pope John Paul II - Letter to Priests, Holy Thursday, 1983.

Nihil obstat: Rev. John Redford, STL, LSS

Imprimatur: Rt. Rev. J. A. Callanan, MA. VG. 27/11/85

The Nihil obstat and Imprimatur are a declaration that a book or pamphlet is considered to be free from doctrinal or moral error. It is not implied that those who have granted the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions or statements expressed.

The Priest and His Loving

Edward Holloway S. T. L.

The jottings in this pamphlet are not a philosophically exact account of priestly love as an experience, nor do they give the precise difference between priestly and every other kind of loving. In the life given to God "for the Kingdom of God's sake", whether among men or women, ordained and unordained, there must be an overlap of the quality of loving experienced in care, in work, and in prayer. One seeks only to outline in a factual way such aspects of the loving of the priest as one knows it to be true. These aspects, and space allows only a few to be delineated, seem to be related to the theology of the priesthood in the doctrine of the Church, and to follow from the setting of the priest within the living constitution of the Church.

Is priestly love specific?

Is priestly love specific to the vocation, in the same way that married love is specific, and the love between child and parent is specific? I think it is. The theology of the priesthood can be expressed in thoughts and relationships that belong to the nature of the Church and to the sacramental life of her people. But that is only a "map of life" a map of the terrain. Maps are most useful, but they are dry and abstract. To the map there relates a way of living and loving among people and unto people. This love is specific to the human relationship and the tie to Christ that relationship gives, on both sides. It is a love that is warm, joyous, and creative. The relationship is as essential to the life of men as is marriage, and deep, noble, supportive friendship. It carries its own specific fulfilment. It is a love which, because it is specific, and most close to the loving of Christ Himself upon the people of God, is crucifying to great deeps of sorrow, often and often. But the sorrow is part of the fulfilment. People don’t usually see sorrow as part of fulfilment, but it is so, in all great human relationships and achievements. Ask a mother about the wayward son she prays and agonizes for: ask St. Monica, about that boy of hers, - Augustine! Such a sorrow was at the heart of Christ's own experience of the loving in His unique Priesthood. It rang from the Cross against a darkening sky, - "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me" (Matt. 27: 46. Ps. 22:1). No doubt it is part of other vocations too, part of married love and married fidelity. It is a thought modern philosophy shudders away from, and also modern psychiatry. But, that would be another story, not to be pursued here.

There are degrees of office and power within the priesthood of Christ in the Church. If there is a love proper to the vocation, will there be degrees within that love? Certainly, but this is a pamphlet and not a book. One all important example only may be pointed. Take the response of ordinary, run of the mill people to the person of "The Holy Father". It is a response that impresses non-Catholics and intrigues them more than a little. At the time of the papal visit to this country, one commentator remarked that he could not imagine a similar response to the Archbishop of Canterbury anywhere, no matter who he might be. Personally I do not think it has anything to do with the obvious human warmth of the man himself. As a student in Rome years ago, and on many a visit, one has seen people rise in just the same way to Popes beautiful indeed in personality, but less obviously `charismatic' than Pope John Paul II. The response transcends natural attraction. It is given because on this man there falls for us all the burden of belief: this man is the ultimate witness on earth, the sign set for the Church's resurrection through history, but also a sign set to be contradicted, that out of many hearts, their secret thoughts may be laid bare. When Satan has obtained his way, when the Twelve are divided and sifted, then upon this frail human thing devolves the right and the duty to invoke the Covenant between mankind and God (Dan. 7: 23-28), to invoke that efficacious prayer of Christ that must, and will be answered, lest the Gates of Hell prevail against the Kingdom. All this, and the intolerable pietas of it all, the People of God feel in the collective unconscious of their Catholic Communion. Therefore they rise to this man, on whom falls through history the burden of Peter, the ultimate `confirming of the brethren in the faith' with a quite special love: It is the "gut reaction" of common men to the hero in the ancient, Homeric sense of the word. It is an acclaim shot through with awe and a great compassion; as a love, it is also a prayer.

Between bishop and priest men do not sense the gap as so great. There is a difference, of power and provision for men, but the bishop and his priests form a common Presbyterate, a college of witness, of rule, and of power over the Body and Blood of the Lord. The people feel it that way as well. For them, the bishop is Father writ more large (and would to God we could drop the My Lord, which seems so plainly contrary to holy writ -- Luke 22:24). Thirty years ago at a Confirmation service in Walworth, diocese of Southwark, the then Bishop Cowderoy asked: "and what is the difference dear children between a bishop and a priest? What is the difference between myself and Father Holloway, who is standing here?". "Please my Lord," said a smooth female voice from out of the children of God, "Father Holloway is only an ordinary priest, and you are an extraordinary priest!" The bishop enjoyed himself very much, and pronounced it an excellent answer! One does not suggest this answer exhausts the theology of the episcopate, but it is a good short summary of the `sensus fidelium'. It may be only the idiosyncrasy of this writer, but one could wish that bishops wrote longer and doctrinally fuller pastoral letters to their people: Pastorals that wore their "hearts on their sleeves" as did those of St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Leo, whose sermons are preserved for us by their devoted amanuenses, the personal secretaries who were the cassette recorders of that age! Fathers in God could and should come across with such clarity and fire that men and women, boys and girls are held readily to their Faith, and vocations flourish from a love of God prompted by men who so mirror in their personalities the joy of the work of God. An edited extract could do for reading at Mass, but folk could pick up the full text, take it home, and mull over it. For that matter some parish priests include a "from the heart" sermonette in their weekly newsletter, and one knows from experience that this initiative is very much appreciated by the people, not least the housebound and the sick.

The Mirroring of Christ

From the mirroring of Christ, we take up again with the priest upon the parish. Does his state of  celibacy  matter,  or  is  it  irrelevant,  or  even  a  hindrance?  It matters very much, if the priesthood is to be lived with greatness of soul, and the utter intimacy of a love which can knock on the most private doors of the human heart: a love too, that can dare to agonize over rejection, and so embarrass another Christian soul with the agony of Christ's own seeking, carried into the secret inner chamber of a man's being. You cannot do that unless you have the aloneness of Christ. I do not say the loneliness of Christ, because a priest's life, like Christ's own, is not lonely. You spend, as He did, so much time running away from the tumult, which after all is a tumult of men, and their love, to find time for prayer, and for counsel, and for teaching in a more essential, more utterly worthwhile relationship of formation and of communion. One suggests that opinions which talk of celibacy as merely an ecclesiastical `law' or as a `promise not to marry' are wide of the mark. As this writer understands the tradition of the Church of Rome, and understood it long ago as a student there, the law of celibacy is based upon the personal vow of chastity, the chastity which is taken for the Kingdom of God's sake, according to the proclamation, and invitation of Christ Himself. This is not a negative vow. This vow suffused the whole manhood of Jesus Christ Himself, He came for the Kingdom of God's sake. He gave Himself for the work of a quite specific and utterly intimate love. Yet, He did not marry. True, He was God in person, but He was a perfect man, a natural man, and the source  example  for  the  perfection  of  every  human  person,  male  or  female,  married  or unmarried. You will say "but marriage could have no conceivable part in the vocation on earth of the Son of God". Let it be granted, and by the same token I am going to say that it should not have any part in the vocation of the priest either. Because Christ was Incarnate to give us a quite specific love, and he who sacrificially and sacramentally, magisterially, and by intimate formation carries Christ through the character of Order and its powers into the souls of men, shares so much of the same specific type of love that it cannot flourish with its perfection, unless he is chaste; i.e. alone but not lonely, given, but not taken, for the Kingdom of God's sake. This fact of spiritual experience will be true of other vocations of course, in which chastity is embraced for the Kingdom of God's sake. But we speak here only of the priestly relationship to the Kingdom, of that which seems to follow from the living theology of this relationship to Christ and Christ's people. It is better to speak only of what we know; let others witness to the gift and ministry God has given to them. Chastity under vow is not the negation of sexual communion, and the responsible love of that communion. Marriage is basic to human life, to human fulfilment, and the upbuilding of the City of God and the City of Man. Through it alone heaven is holily peopled. Chastity for the Kingdom of God's sake, is the embracing of a wider, more Christ-centred love for the creation of beautiful people: for the creation of the most deep, most noble, most holy sons and daughters of God. Chastity is the condition of a specific human love, wider in scope than marriage, nearest to the love of Christ, and sought for the salvation of one's brothers and sisters. Mother Teresa spoke once of "doing something beautiful for God". In terms of loving, the seeking and doing of the most beautiful, is to seek salvation and to bring salvation. Salvation has nothing to do with the negative snatching of brands from the burning.

Sex and Loving

Here lies perhaps the distinction between celibacy and chastity under vow. Celibacy, as a condition, is the natural and also the only spiritually pure state of all young men who are not married. Celibacy, as a condition, is obligatory under grave sin for all the unmarried. Chastity under vow is the giving of oneself to God in an especial, and higher relationship of love, both for the Kingdom which is within oneself, and the Kingdom of God which is in the brethren. It is, as has been said, the perfection of the way in which Christ gave Himself. Unless the law of celibacy  in  the  Latin  Church  were  based  on  this  vow  of  chastity,  I  do  not  see  how  its requirement in a man seeking the priesthood could be defended. If it is more than a legalistic promise not to marry, then the Church has a right to seek her priesthood among those who are willing to accept this more intimate invitation of Christ to perfect loving; to perfect loving of Christ, and of the brethren, for the Kingdom's sake.

One must stress that sex, in the genital sense of the word is not given for `loving'. Sex, in that more biological meaning of the term is given for family, in a permanent and consecrated relationship of loving. In marriage, and in all human affection, many things are called `sexual' in a wider sense of the word. That wider sense embraces the complementary tenderness, cherishing, and sense of completion between man and woman, everything in that `helpmating' which is of the distinction in human nature between male and female. The loving of the child to `mum' or to `dad' is shot through with the same difference of response. Not all loving which has sexual overtones in this wider and natural sense, gives the right to erotic pleasure, requires it, or is perfect and holy with it. This by the way can be true on many an occasion within marriage, and  the  engaged  might  bear  in  mind  that  sexual  intercourse  before  marriage  is  not  the perfection of their love, but its selfish despoiling. Every response of the body, in every aspect and in every vocation of love is governed by the truth and wisdom of the soul. The soul is governed also by the goodness and rightness which is the mind of God and the joy God intended in that loving, and in its expression. There is no love which is truly noble, and truly fulfilling in which the flesh does not take the measure of its expression from the mind of God and the goodness of God. All spiritual nobility prompts love, and in all love as experienced there will be a joy, and a sensed tenderness. The tenderness, in any and all types of loving may be expressed and exchanged, but always according to the truth of God and the prudence in the honesty of grace, required in fallen human nature given our now addictive drives. Erotic delight at no time may be sought as simply part of `loving'. As part of loving it belongs only to the holy love of marriage, and within marriage it is holy and supportive only in due and chivalrous subordination to a sincerely spiritual, and faithful, a considerate and exclusive love.

When men form Orders of men, and women form Orders of women, there must be a deep bond of love, because love as union and communion, and as happiness in the good possessed is basic to all fulfilment in heaven and upon earth. It is for brothers and sisters so joined to say what is the prudent norm of its expression, and how much or how little another's company should be exclusive. But only in the modern age would such love be suspect of homosexuality, because only in the post-Christian era, reverting two thousand years to pagan decadence, is it presumed that there can be no deep and sweet loving without urgent erotic seeking or release. It is reaching a stage in which no marriage can be faithful, and no child is safe, in the home or out of it. Here the essential point one is making is that the priest does give up `sex' in the sense of sexual intercourse, but he does not give up love, noble warm and fulfilling love. He does give up his own wife and family, but he receives in exchange most deep loves one hundredfold, and love given on a level of sheer excellence and communion of being which is not the lot of ordinary love and loving, in any other vocation of life. In the matter of `tenderness' Christ also knew love. As I would interpret it, He gently and prudently restrained the sheer ecstasy of the Magdalen's love for Him, as she manifested it after the resurrection, most pure as was her love for Him. He also allowed John to rest his head upon His breast at the Last Supper1. For me, this was a final expression of an habitual relationship and a most holy love. John thought no evil to describe himself as "the disciple whom Jesus loved," and until modern times, and the destruction of love by permissiveness in the name of love, nobody else took scandal from the relationship. Certainly the Holy Spirit did not stop the fact being recorded in the Gospels. (John. 13:23 and John 21:20).

The love of a priest as specific

It is true that married men can be ordained, but one would state that the perfection of priestly love and its true specific fullness cannot be achieved in the married state, any more than it could have been achieved in a married Christ. This is based partly on personal experience.

This writer once knew, as closely as it is philosophically possible to know, a certain young man who loved a very good girl in a way that could be resolved only by leaving her, or by leaving the seminary. Once, he reproached her because she did not bother to get up and go to Mass every day, during the holidays. She retorted, her face blazing with the insult of a spiritual privacy invaded, "who the hell do you think you are Jesus Christ?" And alas, he realised with a shock that in a way, -he did! For with whatever other accompanying tenderness, you can love a man or a woman, a boy or a girl with a love prompted first by the sweetness of their goodness and this deep, inner, spiritual goodness you can want to foster, deepen, draw into apostolate with a certain leadership and authority. Wherever you find such folk, you are going to love, and want to lead, and to `invade' their privacy by invitation and appeal. Well, - you can’t marry `em all! There was some Blues ditty going around at that time, the chorus of which was "but you cant marry ten pretty girls"! and the young man concerned found himself whistling it and knowing that it was very true indeed, for him. It hurt just as much to give up a girl very chastely loved, but all the same he went on his way rejoicing, and much more confirmed in his vocation. For it is true, - the unique love, the unique challenge, the authority which enters the soul to prompt goodness, holiness, and to release from sinful ways, that sort of relationship with men and women is a Christ relationship. It does not go well with sharing of life, and bed, and board. Marriage is an equal relationship in Christ, but Christ can beckon you to a love which is even closer to His own and more fulfilling still, and that is not an equal relationship. Nor will be it possible to possess deep and fulfilling friendships, most delightful because most of God, with holy young people , many of whom may well enter the priesthood or the religious life under vow, in such a way that they can come and stay with you, and commune with you, except the priest be physically alone, but not lonely. No wife is going to endure a priest's love for another woman, given because the other is holier than she is, and nearer to his `other' life, the life of his priesthood. It is cruel to inflict such a burden, and some good and deep parsons do just that, or try to do it. I have their own word for it. What son or daughter is going to allow `dad' to love, and see in the house, another boy, or another girl, loved more than they are, in a more intimate bond of a love mutual in Christ? They could not do it. They don’t do it. It will crucify any man who as a priest attempts this. This also, I have from the evidence of good parsons. No man can serve two Masters, he will love the one and hate the other, or cleave to the one and neglect the other. There is no Master more delightful, but more demanding than Jesus Christ. Sometimes Christ may `send' a man or woman, especially a young one, to a priest for most intimate formation by him in the knowledge and love of their mutual Lord. This sort of relationship is totally demanding like Christ, when He said to such a one "let the dead bury their dead, but come you and follow Me" (Matt. 8: 22). We are all disciples, but in the priesthood we are made apostles, in a more specific sense. The Twelve also found it so. It broke all other ties, and it must have been very hard on their wives! For the priest is a man who is given, but not taken through his body by a woman, nor by the children of his flesh. He is taken, - taken by The Son of Man, a new and specific relationship and a unique and specific love. The two loves, that of marriage in which men and women are mutually taken, and the love within chastity for the Kingdom of God's sake, in which men and women are given for the work of God, are mutually complementary loves, and mutually exclusive loves. Neither can embrace the perfection of the other. Through both loves, not through either alone, is the Kingdom of God on earth built up to perfection. Yet the love given to God for the Kingdom is nearest to Christ's own loving, towards the Father and towards men. "Martha, Martha, you are busy and fretful about many things, but only One Thing is necessary: Mary has chosen the better part, and it shall not be taken away from her".

Priest fulfilled in his people

At the time Mary was loving Christ, and being taught to love God in that relationship of teaching and formation. This is the sweeter part, but no doubt Jesus of Nazareth was glad to get his dinner afterwards, courtesy of Martha of Bethany. The priest, taken from among men and given back to them in a new relationship, most close to Christ's, can and must through all his ministry, and especially its sacramental part, deepen the stability and fidelity of husband and wife together. His vocation does not stand without theirs. The idea of a `shepherd' does not stand without the `flock'. Likewise, he can take up their children, especially from the age of about ten years, and deepen and perfect the work parents have begun, but cannot well finish, with a further authority, and a love which tries to enflesh again in a man, the love of Christ for the `little ones'. This terrible privilege and trust, is the measure of the chastity and sincerity in loving he must maintain to the children of the people. The priest too, brings into the life of the child,  in  the  unique  relationship  he  has  to  the  child,  the  development  of  the  child's  own personal, and private spiritual life. For some of the tension between parent and child derives from the fact that there is an inner, natural, personal privacy in the soul of the child which a parent may not invade, nor presume to take over. In this inner sanctuary of the mind and heart, a child may say `yes' to God or `no' to God. The child, and more urgently the youth, boy or girl, may allow a priest to enter that inner sanctuary at times, because the priest does embassy for Christ, even in the manner in which he, the priest loves. Parents can be, often are jealous of that relationship, but the fault is in them, not in the priest. We have all of us the fulfilments proper to our vocation in the building up of the Body of Christ.

Ministry and eucharist

It is very unfashionable to suggest that the priest is, in the specific nature of his vocation, and in the fulfilment he experiences in it, alter Christus, another Christ. I have been told at international  conferences  by  Belgian  priests,  and  by  French  priests  that  this  triumphalist attitude is utterly wrong, and bad theology. I wonder, could that be part of the reason why their countries are a spiritual desert, and vocations so appallingly sparse? Of course, with failure to teach a full and coherent faith to the young, and in the face of a hurricane of sexual permissiveness, vocations are being destroyed in our own country as well. A lot depends on the area, and a lot depends on the formation the bishop gives, and his attitude towards his priests and his people. We know that we are not co-Redeemers with Christ, nor co-Mediators with the Divine Son. We would have to be part of God to be that. We share with Christ first, the giving in ministry of our senses, hands, feet, voices especially for the continuation of the Economy of the Incarnation, of the Word, made flesh. To minister our bodies to incarnate the Lord in word and work, we must minister also our spiritual souls, our minds and our hearts, all that is in our person, to be even feebly adequate vessels of that ministering of Christ across the ages. "For we preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ our Lord: and ourselves as your servants through Jesus Christ. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ." (2. Cor. 4: 5-6). But the same St. Paul reminds us that we hold this treasure in the earthen vessels of our own human weakness and imperfection, that "the excellency may be of the power of God, and not of us". In every sacrament it is Christ, not the human minister who is principal minister and giver of the grace or status which is received. Yet, just as we are all, male or female, priest or laymen called to "put you on the Lord, Jesus Christ" so also the work of Christ that is paralleled in the life of the priest in the priestly ministry and its relationships, must and does carry with it a specific and precious fulfilment in the same likeness of Christ, and the same joys, close to the joys of Christ.

Our Lady also has a ministerial and creaturely role in the giving of the seed of her own body for the Incarnation of Christ. But God gave her more than a biological vocation. He gave her a universal Motherhood, and a care for us in love and power to match her own unique vocation and status. The priest too, has a sharing in the work of Christ, by the character of Holy Order, which gives him a special conformity to Christ, when he offers the Sacrifice of Christ in the `person' or stead, of Christ. What he is given to represent, must be psychologically paralleled in the bond of belonging and of loving. Again, he who is shepherd, teacher, forgiver of sins in the person and place of the Lord, baptiser and consoler of the sick through the anointing and comfort of Christ, simply must bear in his ministry in a personal way the character and the characteristics of Him whose ministry he continues down the ages. Certainly it will happen that a saint, whether layman or perhaps holy nun, may mirror in mind and heart more perfectly the nobility of the very being of God, for it is the character of baptism which gives the divinization, the right to be "co-sharers in the divine nature" (2 Peter 1: 4) to mortal men. We are insisting merely that the call which images Christ the Priest from the perpetuation through time of Christ's personal ministry in Sacrifice and Sacrament, must make of that man `another Christ' both in work, and in psychological relationship to God's people. We are also saying that holily and humbly lived it carries a specific and unique joy, and that far more young men would heed the call of Christ, if only they understood what He offered them.

The vision of the young

The people, and emphatically the young, see the priest as mirroring to them the personality of Christ as Man. The priest alone says Mass for Jesus in the person of Jesus. It is not that others must not, they cannot. They might `switch on', but there would be no light. There would be no valid sacrament because they are not `fused' into Jesus. Through them the power does not flow. Who is it that teaches you with a personal authority, an `but I say to you' in the name of Christ? Who forgives your sins again with Jesus speaking through his voice and will, like a viceroy for his King? Who when granny is near the end and `very low' comes in to give her Holy Communion, anoint, bless, and leave the old lady in a great peace, and mum and dad much comforted? Nobody wants to see the Chairman of the parish committee on these occasions.

In the case of the bishop, he speaks and acts with yet fuller Christlike power. He commissions and ordains his priests, and with his brothers gathered to Peter, speaks collegially across the ages, in the Church with doctrine and moral commandment which cannot err. The Pope indeed, in a supreme crisis, by his own power, not simply from the consent of the people or even the consent of his brother bishops, may put on the person of Christ, and proclaim defined and infallible doctrine, in his own right as Vicar of Christ. It is obvious that all of this, without increasing a scrap the intrinsic likeness of God in his soul above that of any other human being, does make of `The Priest' in the varying degrees of his participation of the sacrament of Order, another Christ in the only sense worth bothering about. It gives with the burdens and sorrows of his care and formation of the people of God a profound and unique joy. In this vocation we bring forth, in the words of Christ, speaking to His apostles, in the Gospel of St. John (John 15: 16) "fruit that will last", the hallowing of beautiful people, the only job on earth really worth doing; the gathering of riches in time and for eternity that do not wear out or grow dim. The young especially, when they are `trying hard' give to the priest a love that leans on him for support and brotherly affection, almost as they would on Our Lord Himself. They look for compassion, for greatness of heart, enormous patience, an acceptance never blunted by wretched letdowns, ignorance, or snubs. But, - that is how we all go to God. We kneel, say sorry, and expect instant forgiveness and instant love. We never expect the Good Lord to be huffy and mean for a while . . . just to `show' us, and mark how He feels. The young treat the priest in the same way, and while hard on our pettiness of heart, it is a wonderfully exhilarating experience. It also brings home to the priest that without the character of priesthood and the special relationship to Christ, you mean nothing more to them than anyone else does.

Eucharistic Love of the Priest

In the Mass, all this comes to a head. No priest, as he grows older can fail to love the Mass with an increasing understanding. In it he has found his own wisdom in God, his own joy, and his own purification of soul. As he prayed aloud the Canons of the Eucharist, he has relived the pain of Christ and the desolation of Christ. He has also found the joy of Christ in `His own', the `men Thou gavest Me'. He has found self-oblation and self-immolation, in the Body and Blood of the Lord, and shown his people how to do likewise. He has known that, in the likeness of Christ, he has to give himself, body and soul, to be `bread broken for you' in the ministry of Christ. He has sensed the union and communion of soul of his people, perhaps especially the young, in the offering and feeding upon the Body and Blood, the Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. Through all this the priest knows and feels his own union and communion with the people he loves, and how does he feel and know except through this most fulfilling, and yet most specific love and ministry lived in the character of Holy Order? So central is this taking up of all aspects of a priest's life, ministry, and love in chastity into the Holy Eucharist that one may hope that later editions of the new Rite of the Ordination of a Priest, beautiful as it is, may be enriched with an even fuller and more explicit relationship of the spiritual life and fulfilment of the priest in relation to the offering of the Eucharist. It is already underlined as the bond of love between priest and people, and it could perhaps be stressed also in its emotional relationship, in the deepest sense of the word, to the fulfilment of the Priest in his ministry in the Church. The Eucharist is a great reinforcement of priestly chastity, because in this relationship, in this sacred and terrible power over the Body and the Blood of The Lord, he knows why he is alone, and he knows he is never lonely. Just as Jesus said that He was never alone, for the Father is always with Him, so the priest is never alone, in the sense of lonely, for Christ is ever with Him, through the character of Holy Order. That character in its distinct degrees, is the character of apostleship, uniquely so called. Therefore, the love which characterises the priesthood is a quite specific love, the love proper to a special vocation. We can beckon men forward to ask it and receive it with confidence, for Christ ardently desires them, and urgently calls them. The great fulfilments must carry a burden of pain, but all achievement pays that price, and every mother knows that. A woman, when she is in labour has sorrow, but when she smiles on the face of her child, the sorrow fades into joy. She smiles on the face of her achievement: something very beautiful for God. So is the following of Christ, and the creation it brings forth. And He said "the harvest indeed is great, but the workmen are few: pray the Lord of the harvest that He send labourers into his harvest field" (Matt; 9: 37).

1Some modern texts translate the Greek epi (John 13: 23) as at the breast of Jesus but the particle more naturally means on : the same incident referred in John 21 : 20 uses Greek en which can only mean on used of place where.

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