The Priest at Prayer, May 17

The Priest and the Eternal Truths

HELL

Second Meditation - A Priest Can Be Damned

I. The Church has always believed that Her priests, from the highest members of the Hierarchy to the lowest, can incur eternal damnation. That explains why in Her literature and in the pictorial and sculptural arts She has always allowed Her ministers to be portrayed within the dwellings of everlasting woe. Go through Her cathedrals and most sumptuous churches, examine retables and tapestries, and the miniatures and illumina­tions in the old liturgical books; turn over the pages of the most famous literary works of Christendom in bygone centuries; perhaps it will scandalize you to see the boldness and frequency with which artists and writers develop, with a realism now obsolete, the theme of the priest, of the religious, of the prelate or pope, plunged into the eternal abyss. And the Church not only keeps silent, not merely refrains from strictures and censure; She arrays Herself in these works of art as in rich attire, and She exposes them to the eyes of the faithful and of the whole world.

Would She conduct Herself thus were She not infallibly certain that Her own ministers can also die the "second death"?

What support could I find for persuading myself of the contrary?

II. Unprotestingly She has allowed the greatest boldness of speech from those very champions whom She honours with the title of Fathers of the Church, and Saints.

What priest has not winced under the well-known text from St. John Chrysostom?­

"I speak not with rashness, but what I feel and mean: among priests, I reckon that not many will be saved, but many more perish, not so much on account of their own sins as for the sins of others, which they have not put a remedy to."

We may not be all aware that such a hair-raising state­ment was written for Prelates; as will be obvious to anyone reading the third Homily "In Actibus Aposto­lorum", in particular the paragraph headed in every edition of Migne's Patrology by the title: Episcopi Officium. (Migne. St. John Chrysostom, vols. viii-ix, p.59).

Still more daring is the opinion voiced by St. Vincent Ferrer:

"There are nine heavens through which the nine Choirs of Angels are distributed, and with them the elect, according to their merits and their calling in life. The sixth heaven is that of the Dominations. It is the place for those who wield human authority: emperors, kings, rulers, and the governors of states; Authorities that ruled justly and whose rule rested on legitimate claims. . . .

"The same applies to Prelates who entered in by the door, and, when inside, first mastered them­selves properly. . . and were more solicitous about souls than about their emoluments. When such as these come to die they are placed in this sixth order, to the accompaniment of great honors. When they pass through the different Choirs of Angels, Archangels, etc., in each one there is a great festivity. The Angels say: 'Let us make a great feast, because it is so many years since anyone of these came through here' . . ." (Sermo iii, De Omnibus Sanctis).

What security shall I find in my priesthood if, according to these Saints, those in high places run such risks?

The conclusion is obvious: God will not save me for being a priest, but for being a good one.

III. Fear of the eternal torments makes St. Paul exclaim:

" I do not fight my battle like a man who wastes his blows on the air.

"I buffet my own body, and make it my slave; or I, who have preached to others, may myself be rejected as worthless." (I Cor. ix, 26-27)

In the bitter struggles of flesh against spirit, the spirit trying to subdue and master the flesh, in that glorious but costly achievement, the Apostle of the Gentiles recognises the fear of eternal reprobation as his main driving-force. And he applies to himself the warning he gives to others:

" You must work to earn your salvation, in anxious fear."-(Philip ii, 12)

That was St. Paul, the man rapt to the third heaven; the man who swears there is no power in heaven, on earth, or under the earth, that can prevail to wrench him away from the love of Christ!

No wonder: it was the Divine Master Himself who gave that lesson to all the Apostles:

And I say to you, my friends (a friendly warning) Be not afraid of them who kill the body, and after have no more power that they can do.

He tells them to fear neither the sword that sunders the flesh, nor the wild beast that can crush their bones, nor the fire that can bite into the entrails and devour them; because none of this can reach the sanctuary of the soul.

But I will show you whom you shall fear; fear him who, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say to you: fear him -(Luke xii, 4-5)

And those Apostles: Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, John the beloved disciple, etc., so loving, so enamoured of their Master, so docile to everyone of His teachings, especially to those given them in confidence, as friends; throughout their lives they feared and trembled for their eternal salvation; they feared those everlasting pains so graphically described by Jesus Christ.

O Jesus, wilt Thou care more for me, as a priest, than for Peter and Paul and John? Is my dignity greater than theirs? Have I labored and suffered for Thee more than they? Am I better and holier? Then why do I not fear to damn my soul, as they so feared? Could not my scant fear betoken reprobation?

IV. That I, a priest, can lose my soul, Thou hast no need, Lord, to warn me: this bitter reminder I read in the depths of my being every day and many times a day; so evident it is.

In peril of condemnation is he who lives in danger of committing sin, and between sin and myself there is, to borrow David's expression, only the faintest line of separation; we are but a hair's breadth apart: uno gradu dividimur.

I trust that at present I am in the grace of God, but within a short while perhaps my passions, roused suddenly, will drive me to the edge of the precipice, or hurl me to the bottom of the abyss, of grievous sin, and leave me there naked to the lightnings of the Divine Wrath.

And how appallingly easy it is to contract a vicious habit! Three or four sinful acts, done with the gathering strength of passion's grip on the forbidden fruit, will suffice. And with the habit formed, with lapse after lapse, ah! I know only too well what happens: con­version seems impossible (nothing is impossible for God's grace!): neither my own reflections nor the warning from another's downfall nor the Sacrament of Penance nor even a spiritual retreat will avail to draw from my soul the poisoned shafts of vice. And when my last hour is come, my iniquities will be sealed by final impenitence. And eternally guilty, eternally I shall be punished.

Resolution
If I have contracted any vicious habit, to fight against it with all my strength and with all God's strength until I have rooted it out. If, by God's Mercy, I am free from so terrible a spiritual disease, to avoid every grievous sin. And in both cases, besides fleeing from the occasions of sin, to make frequent use of Confession preceded by a careful preparation.

This may put me to some inconvenience, but never to anything comparable to the pains of hell from which I thus escape. No pain too great if it spare me the pains that endure for ever!
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Adapted from The Priest at Prayer
by Fr. Eugenio Escribano, C.M. (© 1954)
Translated by B.T. Buckley, C.M.

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Please pray for our priests and pray for vocations to the priesthood!