My spiritual director often reminds me that I often see the world in ideals, and I need to remember that it there's a lot more grit than my idealistic notions seem to see. I would say that he is certainly right; everything has smudges, nothing is perfect. Yet I do have a tendency to overlook smudges so that I can be completely enraptured and taken away by the beauty of an ideal theology or perspective of something in this world. I enjoy the experience of awe thoroughly, especially after most of my life seeing everything as bland, barren in rationality, through cynical eyes that painted everything gray.
Idealism, to me, isn't blindness. Rather, truly, it allows us to see, to understand. An understanding of the common formulas can help us understand the world of motion, even while those formulas operate in a perfect world with a very limited number of variables, and our true world has an infinite number of variables. The real world is those formuals of physics put to life, which inherently means they will see great manifestations in the real world due to countless variables, but at the core of all physical movement, the pure and simple laws of physics still stand strong.
Likewise with idealism, especially in theology, and in this post, in the priesthood, we can see an absolutely beautiful demonstration of what, theologically speaking, the Priest of God is. We can understand at the core in a very pure way what they are called to do. What their mission is. What happens to them during ordination. What their role is in the Church, in the economy of salvation (of which I prefer the image 'The War of Darkness and Light'), in their communities, etc. But then, as my SD reminds me, we must know that these ideals are a starting point. In practicality, countless variables are thrown on top of this core, creating the actual priesthood we see today, the actual practical ministry that today's priests do carry out in the world today. Yet the ideals still stand at the core, and at the purpose of this priesthood. The idealistic, theological priesthood could be understood as the mystical ministry of the priest, while the practical, day to day life which priests live, can be understood as the practical ministry of the priest. The two are, of course, organically bound - the mystical ministry is the DNA of the priest's ordained soul, while the practical ministry is the visible product of this DNA, the ministry which we can explicitly see.
Priests are, foremost, sacraments. As I always remind my catechism class, sacraments exist because God is awesome. Because he knows our needs (for example, communion with him and each other, forgiveness, the everpresent aid of the Holy Spirit, rebirth, etc) and he also knows that we struggle to grasp the invisible dispensations of these graces, he has given as sacraments to tangible, touchable, tastable graces. For communion with and in his body, we eat his body. For the everpresent aid of the Holy Spirit, we are annointed with the oil of the Holy Spirit. For the rebirth of our souls in Him, he gives us baptism. For forgiveness? Well, lets talk about that one, which will help us with the others, too.
Without an understanding of what the Priest is, the sacrament of reconciliation hardly seems tangible at all. In it, we tell the priest our sins, say we're sorry, he tells us we are forgiven, gives us a blessing and we go home. Why couldn't we do that on our own? Why couldn't we just read a scriptural passage that guarentees God's mercy and forgiveness? Why did we need to go to a priest just so he could say the same thing? A largely lacking understanding of what the priest is has caused confessional attendance to plummet, and it is certainly the reason Christian denominations without the valid priesthood have found confession virtually pointless - because it is virtually pointless, without a valid priesthood.
Let's take a step back. I said that priests are sacraments, by the understanding that a sacrament is a grace of God made visible and tangible, touchable or tasteable. It is the grace of God reassured not only to our intellectual minds, but also to the great and beautiful characteristic of us that we are flesh, not just spirit, that we are body, not just mind. Sacraments are graces for the flesh and spirit, they are divine gifts specially made to be both abstract and tangible, all at once, just as Jesus was God and man, all at once as well.
A definition of grace, simply put, is a free gift of God.
Let us recall as young children, around Christmas time, when our parents valiantly fought the challenging battle of teaching us the true meaning of Christmas. One thing that my mother and father often reminded me is that the greatest gift of Christmas is the gift that God gave to us: Jesus.
Jesus, then, is the ultimate grace to mankind. He is the ultimate grace because He is the fountain of all graces; forgiveness, communion, and the lasting help of the Holy Spirit are all free gifts given by Him. They were in the year 33 AD, they were in the year 300 AD, 1300 AD, 2013 AD, and will be in the year 3013 (God willing the present order yet persists).
Jesus is the fountain of all graces to mankind, today. Yet we cannot see Jesus doing this. Jesus is the one who forgives us, yet we cannot hear him smile and tell us it is all okay. Jesus is the one who sends the Holy Spirit to us to be our paraclete, yet we cannot hear Him sending the Spirit forth. Though he was born, and all Christians today fully accept that Christ was made fully man, fully smelly, fully hairy, fully real and touchable, today, he is not. In the person of Jesus 2000 years ago, the Word of God was ultimately manifested as the ultimate tangibility of God. Yet it is not blasphemy to say that a man who literally walked among us 2000 years ago is not so tangible anymore. Indeed, it is inherrent that the person of Jesus has become abstract to us today. This is evident secular jabs at Christ, oftenly poking fun at how abstactly godly we depict him to be, when we forget the fact that He is a man, a brother, one of the guys.
Jesus's abstactness is also evident in the lack of genuinely personal experiences with him that we have. Perhaps we can recall occasions when we were just totally swept off of our feet by an intimate encounter with Christ; for me, anyways, these powerful moments of intimacy are certainly not daily occurences. While I have great moments of peace in prayer with God more regularly, those very real and intimate moments of encountering the presence of God, so fully, are sparse and completely treasured when I am blessed to receive them. Yet if Jesus were a man who I literally followed, walking with him everyday, surely I would have these experiences more often, because if I literally experienced Him dispensing his graces to me daily, how could I not tangibly feel him doing so?
Where abstactness surrounds God's grace, he gives us sacraments, because he is awesome. The fact of our seperation from Jesus's earthly ministry by near 2000 years makes the grace of the person of Christ abstract. Thus, the priesthood.
The priesthood is a sacrament in that by the ordination of a priest, men are given the grace to act in the person of Christ. En persona Christi. The necessity of a person to become through ordination a sacrament of Christ's person during the liturgy is necessairy for all of the reasons highlighted above. The liturgical sacraments of the Church: baptism, reconciliation, communion, confirmation, marriage, holy orders, and annointing of the sick are all graces given to us directly by Jesus Christ. Yet we can't see Jesus giving us these sacraments with our eyes. So Priests are annointed to take upon His person in the liturgical dispensation of these graces through sacraments.
The bread which is consecrated into the body of Christ is always done so by Christ himself, as he did during the Last Supper. For this reason, when the Priest consecrates the bread, he does not do it as Father Bill, Father Andrew, or Father Jim - he does it in the person of Jesus Christ. And in the person of Jesus Christ, the words of Jesus are spoken through his mouth, "Take, eat, this is my body, given for you."
In reconciliation, the Priest says, "I absolve you of your sins." Again, this is not the person of the priest talking - it is the person of Jesus Christ, through the priests mouth, which by ordination the Priest has been transformed so that could Christ could act through.
Priest's are not perfect, they certainly themselves are not Christ. But in the liturgy, they act in the person of Christ. The graces which Christ dispenses through them are not corrupted by the sins their imperfections, because their priesthood is for that very dispensation of grace to the people that they serve.
Priest's are people that we can see, hug, laugh with, share a meal with, and simply be with. Priests can be "one of the guys". With an understanding that by their ordination, a priest's entire life is made to be a sacrament, so that the person of Christ might be visible and tangible to us all, despite a priests personal flaws, we can experience Christ's person tangibly through them in laughing and sharing meals. What otherwise would have only been abstract is made visible and and tangible to us by their ministry. This is that Christ is a person, and he is with us.
Making this person visible is the very purpose of the priesthood. This is one of the core reasons why priests are male; Christ is male. The person (and linked personality) of a male cannot be made visible through a female. Of course, this is dependent upon an understanding that male and females were created equally in the image of God, but by their gender differences, inherently and intuitively to express God in different ways. Jesus was a man, and so His person in his maleness was meant to express God as a male; if his priests are to express his person, then they must be male too.
In the Orthodox Church, priests are obliged to grow a beard, because Christ had a beard. Perhaps we are reminded of Talledegan Nights, when Grandpa Chip offered us an insight into his Christian wisdom, saying, "He was a man, he had a beard!" This tradition isn't present in the Roman Rite because we don't want to muddle the significance of Christ's personality as being masculine, and not feminine, with the merely external facial hair decisions he made. This might confuse people into believing that a priests role as a sacrament of Christ's person is merely a roll of acting the part. We know from experience in youth drama productions that females can do very well in portraying male characters and taking upon themselves their masculine personalities. The priesthood is more than acting; it is a fundamental transformation, a complete grace given through ordination by which a priest is mysteriously united to Christ's person. In the liturgy, the priest doesn't pretend to be Christ; Christ is made present through Him in a tangible, and real way.
However, if it is helpful for orthodox parishioners to recongise the tangible presence of the person of Christ in their priests by his beard, then all the more power to them.
Aligned then with the person of Christ, the ministry of a priest can take many different forms, all aligned with the beautiful ministry which Christ on earth took up. The vast number of priests allow them to specialize in different aspects of Christ's ministry; some to education, some to leadership, some to healing, some to prophecy, all, to the dispensation of grace, as Christ always did, and the priests do daily through sacraments.
But the common core of the priesthood, the ministry which they all share, is to make one thing abundantly clear to all of us. As they fill our communities, and we shake their hand, and we invite them over for dinner, and we laugh and are with them, we may know at the same time that the person which they act in, the person of Jesus Christ, is with us as well. By the priesthood, emmanuel is made an ever constant truth not just in an abstract way, but in a tangible way as well.
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