Pints With Aquinas - Priests are meant to make God present w/ Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: June 19, 2023

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Hello, my name is Fr. Gregory Pine and I am a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph. And my voice just cracked, which is awesome. There was one time in high school where it was a pep rally for fall sports and the two cross country captains were responsible for introducing the cross country team and its respective accomplishments. So the other captain introduced the team and then I introduced him because he was a really good runner. And within the first three words, my voice just shattered. It was awesome. And it like the fall pep

rally I think was the only time that the whole school came together. So it was a great grace in my life. So cheers to us. Okay so small announcement at the outset is this. I submitted my dissertation which is cool because I've been working on it for the past three years so it's good to have finished it. I still have to defend it and that'll be in the fall. So if you have an extra prayer or two or a thousand, I would appreciate any. You could send my direction for a good dissertation defense. Boom. Okay.

This, uh, this video though is not about voice cracking or about dissertation defending it is about priesthood, priesting. Uh, so I thought we could talk a little bit about the priesthood insofar as there are lots of questions about the priesthood and see if we could answer just a couple of them. So I want to get at what is the heart of it, what is the heart of the mystery and in what way or how might we better get to that to that mystery itself. So here we go. go. Okay, so in St. Thomas Aquinas talks about the priesthood. He kind of exchanges between or he draws a parallel between or a connection between. Finally, third attempt, he gets to the concept. Priesthood and mediation. So if you're looking at the Summa Theologiae,

you might consult Secunda Secundae, Question 85 on sacrifice, Tertia Pars, Question 22 on priesthood, specifically Christ's priesthood, and then Tertia Pars, Question 26 on Christ's mediatorship. If you are not looking at that book, have no fear and don't be turned away because I'm going to break down some concepts. So what is it that a mediator does? Well basically there's an ascending dimension and a descending dimension. The ascending dimension which we can call ascending mediation is that the priest offers to God the prayers and sacrifices of the people. And sacrifice usually when we talk about sacrifice we think of immolation so

like when you burn the victim which would be true of the Holocaust offering, where you burn the whole victim on the altar, but it can also include other things like blessings or meals, and I think meal is one of the main senses of sacrifice in the Old Testament, the way that it's employed there. But certainly, like the Holocaust offering is one of the most intense or like intimate expressions of a priestly people's offering to the Most High God So yes, so he offers the prayers and sacrifices of the people That's the ascending mediation dimension and then the descending mediation dimension is that he mediates the gifts of God So he gives or bestows divine things to men. How is it that a priest

is made able to do such a thing? Well, so you've heard that there is a character given in certain sacraments, the three sacraments that cannot be repeated, which are baptism, confirmation, and holy orders. So in the case of baptism you're given a character which in general character is a participation in Christ's priesthood and it constitutes you as a worshiper of God and it also makes you capable of receiving the sacraments. So in the case of baptism you have this now capacity to receive the other Christian mysteries as they are kind of lavished upon you throughout the course of the rest of your life. And then with confirmation there is a kind of, yeah, there's a further character which is given which marks you in your Christian identity and witness as a kind of agent of sorts. But they're both, I think, principally a passive phenomenon in so far as they open you up to God's gift.

Whereas with priestly ordination the character that is given associates you with Christ the High Priest in such a way as to make you a giver of divine things. So it's more of an active thing. Now you might quibble with the language and say there's like something very active or something very agential if there's a word I just made it up about baptism and confirmation. Cheers I'm not against you I'm for you but I just think of with the priesthood, it's of a peculiar sort that the priest is ordained

and so associated with Christ, conformed to Christ at a kind of existential level such that he can mediate things from on high. And I think that when we get down to it in simple layman's terms, that's part of one of the gifts of the priesthood is that a priest is meant to make God near. Not in the sense that he just gives godly things, but that he himself becomes a kind

of conduit, such that the grace that enters his life is kind of canalized or motorized, such that it is given to the people for whom he is ordained. So there's a priest at Franciscan University of Steubenville where I was an undergrad, named Father Conrad Harkins, and at one point there's a woman who asked him to hear her confession outside of the stated times because of XYZ reasons, and she was apologetic for having so asked, and he responded with, yeah, don't't apologize I was ordained for you. So I think that at some level a priest is meant to communicate that with a kind of intensity and intimacy to all those individuals for whom he was ordained.

So the priest makes God near and that he ascending mediation, he offers the prayers and sacrifices of the people to God and descending mediation, he bestows divine priesthood dimension and then bringing it in conversation with sacrifice also helps to suss out the details of it. So then when we talk about priesthood, there are some contemporary issues which I think people are concerned about or are focused on. So one is clerical celibacy and then the other one is women's ordination. I did a video about women's ordination so I'll just refer you to that one for the latter case but when it comes to clerical celibacy I think that part of the reason for this is that it's a radical kind of conformity to our Lord Jesus Christ who is the High Priest in whose priesthood the ordained minister shares and whose sacrifice he commemorates and applies in celebrating the sacred mysteries. So this idea of priestly

celibacy, so it's not a doctrine, it's a discipline, which means it's not something that is to be held with divine and Catholic faith, but it's rather something upon which the church insists as conducing to You know like the building up of the lay faithful, but also as a testimony of the church's tradition And so you know that like in the East there are married priests So it's not it's not something like half of the church is in error about this But there are different practices which correspond to different traditions which underline or highlight different aspects of what God is communicating to his people. And part of the reason for which clerical celibacy is insisted upon is because of the

way in which it makes God near. Specifically how does God choose to reveal himself in time and space? Well you know God always makes himself known from start to finish in creation but he makes himself most especially known in Christ. So in the fullness of time, God sent a Son. And the reason for that isn't to overwhelm us or nullify what has gone before, but to make more near, more easy, more human what formerly was available to us in the dispensation of salvation. And so, like, the whole logic of the Incarnation is nearer, easier, humaner. And so the priest is meant to image that.

He is meant to image our Lord's coming in human flesh, and our Lord comes as a bridegroom in search of His Church. Which bride He makes pure and undefiled, he makes spotless without wrinkle or stain, not because we ourselves are holy, but because the bridegroom is holy and he makes his people in turn to be holy. So the priest is meant to image that or he's meant to represent that in his person, not in that he like congratulates himself on being Christ in a way that makes him better by comparison, but in the sense that yes, he has been made by virtue of his priestly ordination, the grace of orders, an alter Christus, as a mediator, as the one through whom God bestows divine things, and by the worship of whom God's people draws near to their God. their God. So that's a great responsibility and it's also part of the reason for which clerical

abuse or scandal is so grave because it's not just like anybody committed an abuse or comported themselves scandalously but it's somebody with such a high, with such a dignified calling has betrayed it in a way that undermines not just his life but the lives of those to whom he has sent because it makes it feel like our lives are less coherent. So when somebody endeavors something beautiful you think, maybe I can do that and then when they fail in having so endeavored then you say to yourself, maybe every attempt of such a sort is in fact ill founded. Maybe we should content ourselves with in the West married priests or we should kind of cave on X, Y, or Z other issues

because, you know, we're being too ambitious proposing this high ideal. It's like, no, that's the point, right? The point is the high ideal because the point is God and nothing less than God. The point isn't to be like physically or emotionally or psychologically well adjusted. If that happens, God be praised. The point is to be a saint because he the Lord is holy So when you look at the book of Leviticus the justification for all of these laws is I the Lord am holy and that's enough And the priest is meant to convey that message not just by by word But also by deed which is to say by his person, which having been ordained and conformed

to our Lord Jesus Christ in a radical way, becomes a living testimony of a particularly excellent sort. So pray for your priests and look to your priests to give you God because it's for this that they were ordained. It's for this that they were offered to you. Boom, all right, that's what I wanted to say. So three quick things at the end. First, this is Ponsor the Quinus.

If you haven't yet, do subscribe to the channel, push the bell and get email updates when other cool things come out. Second, I contribute to a podcast called God's Blaining. We had an episode about the priesthood a couple years ago which I thought was pretty good. So you might check that out to nourish you in your faith and then in your love of your priest and support of your priests. And I might add that by way of addition. Just pray of your priests and support of your priests. And I might add that by way of addition is pray for your priests and sacrifice for your priests.

It's easy to criticize your priests and sometimes that comes naturally to us but I think that yeah, we'll always have difficulties with the hierarchy. It's just a matter of how we invest and how we make ourselves available to them for their ongoing sanctification and our own growth. I was talking to a religious sister who was saying that they had a priest in their parish who was not especially happy to be a priest and kind of lukewarm in his prayer and praxis. And the community offered to pray over him and to pray with him and he was renewed, he was converted. And since then he's just been on fire. So think about that as a prospect for your future.

And then the third and final thing is I just wanted to share the news about the Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage which is to be held on September 30th in Washington D.C. at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. It's just going to be like a big rosary jamboree with mass, preaching, teaching, procession, adoration, cool stuff. And the opportunity to meet some of the friars whom you've come to know through God's Blending and the Thomistic Institute and other things besides. So check out the Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage.

You can just Google those words and it should come up. I hope to see you there. I look forward to seeing you there. All right, that's all I got. So know my prayers for you. Please pray for me. And I look forward to chatting with you next time on Pines of the Aquinas.