The Priest at Prayer for August 1, Ambition

The Third Part - Vices and Virtues

Ambition

Second Meditation - Inordinate Desire for High Office

I. By ambition is understood an unruly craving for honours and dignities.

This craving may well be the last ditch where the evil spirit takes his stand.

You may have tamed the coarse tendencies of the flesh, dismissed wealth as unworthy of consideration; you may be admired for your austere and pious priestly life; and yet you may still qualify for the indictment worded by St. Cyprian:

"In the bosom of pious priests ambition slumbers; there in the shade it cuddles up, there it artfully hides, as in a nuptial bed "­

and, to be sure, the gentlest stir in the air is enough to awaken it!

While obedient to the hissing of the wily serpent, you will all the time swear to God and to man that your only aim is the salvation of souls, and that only the glory of God could induce you to shoulder such a burden. Or you will argue that justice is fulfilled. With­out suspecting the existence of a capital vice, and borne along, as it were, by the gentle-blowing breeze of your sense of justice, you will eventually find yourself caught up in the tempestuous whirlwind of ambition.

II. Keep a careful watch: latet anguis sub herba, the snake is hiding in the grass. From its place of hiding it watches and waits, that fallen angel of ambition, who one day said: I will ascend into heaven; I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. . . . I will be like the Most High. (Is. xiv, 13-14) Knowing, like St. Paul (cfr. 11 Cor. ii, 11), how resourceful this evil spirit is, you also must be on the alert to forestall his tricks and to allow him no advantage over you.

At least have the sense to mind your step and to take a shuddering glance at the abyss of evil to which ambi­tion will thrust you even in this life:

"all those useless and dangerous appetites which sink men into ruin here and perdition hereafter." (1 Tim. vi, 9)

Like the love of money, ambition "is a root from which every kind of evil springs," causing the ambitious to involve themselves in a world of sorrows.

What anguish of mind, contempt, humiliation, hatred, shame, difficulties, blind alleys, there are concealed under the empty pomp of rank and honour! Honours are the harlequin of Italian comedy: boisterous mirth smeared with brightest vermilion, but inwardly a terrible void and the gnawing of relentless pain. How many, like King Saul, would be happier, now and eternally, if they had remained a few rungs lower!

And if to the above we add that the "grace of state" is not forthcoming to the ambitious, because God is not obliged to give it to anyone who has intruded into an office against His Will, it is greatly to be feared that the ministerial duties attached to the office and dignity will be badly performed, and the office-holder will prove more of a hindrance than a help. Is not this the explan­ation of so many high posts unworthily sought and un­worthily held?

III. "It is for thee, servant of God, to shun all this." (1 Tim. vi, 11)

And God grant that fear of the Judgement-to-come may lend wings to your flight! The more you are given, the more you shall be asked for. What, then, will be demanded of the man who proprio marte, by his own devices, worked his way up to positions of eminence to which God had not called him, to heights where he was not endowed by God with sufficient balance to keep him from suffering vertigo?

"Do not be too eager, brethren, to impart instruction to others; be sure that, if we do, we shall be called to account all the more strictly." (James iii, 1)

What account will you render of those heavy burdens if you are bent on assuming and carrying them on your own shoulders without the aid of God's supporting Hand? Yours is a yoke imposed by presumptuous ambi­tion, not Christ's yoke; a crushing burden, not Christ's; for my yoke - says Christ - is easy, and my burden is light. (Matt. xi, 30)

On the Last Day the ambitious priest may well have to fear lest the Finger of God should write on his con­science in burning characters:

Thou art weighed in the balance and art found wanting. (Dan. v, 27)

Therefore, as a preliminary resolution, I shall read slowly chapter six of the Book of Wisdom, which con­tains the following:

"Listen well, all you that have multitudes at your command. . . . Swift and terrible shall be his coming; strictly his doom falls where heads rise high. . . . For the meanest, there may be pardon; for greatness, greater torment is reserved. . . .

Such is God's schedule - a schedule He adheres to inexorably.

Resolutions
The road to ecclesiastical dignities is not absolutely blocked. After all, I am a priest, and, as such, a poten­tial candidate for Church dignities; and in some places, the Church encourages lawful aspiration by the fact of holding competitive examinations, etc., for the promot­ing of candidates to higher office. Besides, ambition is an ungoverned and disorderly craving; a well-regulated desire is a worthy type of ambition, perhaps one that I should do well to possess and to foster, so long as I observe these three condition's:

1. Never to aspire after any office except for the sole, or at least the principal, purpose for which the office was instituted; e.g., the office of parish priest, for the sake of instructing the faithful, administering the Sacraments, doing conversion work, etc.; in short, to bring souls to God. Is there any dignity in the Church of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of souls, with any other assigned purpose? Would Christ have died in order to provide me with a sinecure and keep me in comfortable idleness here below?

2. Not to entertain the thought of possessing any ecclesiastical dignity whatsoever unless I am personally and properly convinced, or better still, unless others in a position to know me thorougly are convinced, that I have the moral and intellectual qualities which such a dignity requires. Were a doctor to aspire after a medical post for which he knew himself to be unequipped, his ambition would be criminal. And are souls of less account than bodies?

3. In spite of all human injustices and lack of appre­ciation that I may come up against, I will not enter upon any office except through the proper canonical channels, not aliunde - through the back-stage door of wire­pulling, simony, or pharisaic pretensions. Far better to remain a beggar on the door-step of the Lord's House!
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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!