The Priest at Prayer for July 7: Priestly Chastity

The Third Part - Vices and Virtues

Priestly Chastity

Second Meditation - The Mind of the Church

I. Let us see the mind of the Church in this matter; it is not of recent date but of every age right down to the Apostles and to Jesus Christ Himself.

So pure and chaste was our Lord that, although accused of so many crimes by enemies who had no scruples when it came to putting into operation their perverse intrigues and giving expression to their male­volent designs, nowhere do we read in the Gospels, impartial and serene as they are, of the slightest hint or most veiled insinuation against the absolute purity of Christ; and that in spite of a number of opportun­ities which might possibly have given His enemies some shadow or glimpse of an excuse for accusing or sus­pecting Him.

For example, on the occasion when Christ confronted them with that scathing reply about the woman caught in adultery : He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her, and clearly showed them that He knew they were as guilty in their obstinacy and hard-heartedness as ever the woman was guilty in her adultery, they could not take up the chal­lenge; one after another (" being reproached by their own consciences" add some Greek codices), starting by the older men, they all slunk away covered with con­fusion.

What a grand opportunity it would have been to throw a tu quoque into our Lord's face had He ever furnished them with the slenderest pretext! No, never were they given a chance to accuse Him of impurity.

O Jesus, that slinking away of Thy slanderers was the most eloquent panegyric of Thy immaculate purity; I endorse their testimony and confess Thee to be the all-pure Son of a Virgin Mother. Only once didst Thou defy all laws of nature, and that was in order to take flesh and blood from a Woman who out-dazzled the sun's rays in radiant purity, who was never defiled by any most fleeting shadow of lascivious touch or thought.

II. The Fathers and Doctors of the Church are unanimous in their praise and practice of celibacy.

The Gospels gave them the first lead in those graphic words of the Saviour:

There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven; he that can take, let him take it. (Matt. xix, 12);

they had from St. Paul those admirable lessons on total victory over sensual cravings, lessons which the Apostle prefaced and endorsed with his own example:

"I wish you were all in the same state as my­self. . . . To the unmarried, and to the widows, I would say that they will do well to remain in the same state as myself." (l Cor. vii, 7-9.)

And lest he should provide the least motive for sus­pecting his personal integrity, he renounces things quite lawful in themselves:

"Have we not the right to travel about with a woman who is a sister, as the other apostles do, as the Lord's brethren do, and Cephas? . . . Yet I have not availed myself of any such right." (l Cor. ix, 6 and 15)

Moreover, St. Paul gives us to understand quite clearly what the practice was among the priests of that time; because, while telling us in detail the duties of priests towards others, including the priest's own children, if before his ordination he had had them in lawful wedlock, never does he make the slightest allusion to the conduct he should observe towards his wife, sup­posing she lived on after the priest's ordination; an evident sign that she had no further claim over her husband who, once a priest, lived in separation from her.

III. That St. Paul demanded of the priest absolute absten­tion from marital intercourse follows from his teachings.

For the Apostle of the Gentiles - who with a touch of self-assertiveness declares, in proof of the truth of his teachings on the merit of virginity, "and I, too, claim to have the spirit of God " - the priest is essentially the "homo Dei" (1 Tim. vi, 11), the man wholly conse­crated to God's service. He is the soldier of Christ with no other possible task in life than to fight for Christ:

"Thou art God's soldier; and the soldier on service, if he would please the captain who enlisted him, will refuse to be entangled in the business of daily life ". (2 Tim. ii, 4)

A text which expresses the same line of thought, even if we omit the word "God" that is missing in some of the old codices; the idea that just as a soldier renounces al1 other worldly pursuits and business in order to be exclusively a soldier and to please and serve his enlist­ing captain, so also the priest, as a soldier of Christ, called to Christ's colors, must renounce every occupa­tion and aspiration other than soldiering for Christ.

Here we have the supreme and unanswerable argu­ment for ecclesiastical celibacy set forth in so many words by the same Apostle:

"I would have you free from concern. He who is unmarried is concerned with God's claim, ask­ing how he is to please God; whereas the married man is concerned with the world's claim, asking how he is to please his wife; and thus he is at issue with himseIf." {1 Cor. vii, 32-33)

How should the priest, the miles Christi, the homo Dei, who has renounced all other concern, be allowed to tie himself down to the rearing of a family? St. Paul does not think so, he considers this task precisely the source of this world's anxieties, worries and aspirations.

I may well observe the law of celibacy in its sexual meaning, but do I live solicitous for the affairs of God? Or do I squander the energies of my solitary celibate life for the sake of stupidly trying to raise the economic status of my parental home, of my nephews and nieces, or, sadder still, of strangers? Will not this misplaced concern of mine be one day my stunning reproach?

Resolution
With all that is truest and best in me, and notwith­standing the rebellion of my lower nature, I will cherish the privations of my celibate state of life, even when rendered really painful by the occasional impetus of passion. I will cherish continence such as was practised by Christ, my Master and High Priest, by the Apostles, who learned the lesson from Him, and by the Church in every age.

But I wish to cherish it for the sole purpose for which the Church imposes it upon me; namely, in order to live with the one concern of pleasing God by my ministry and my life of piety. I am not going to be so foolish as to allow the immense energies, which the faithful preservation of this virtue demands, to be har­nessed to the economic advancement of my family or of anyone else, instead of the interests of God's glory.

No, dear Lord, I have not bent my shoulders to the heavy yoke of celibacy for the sake of bettering my father's position in life or of giving a career to my nephews, or of enabling my nieces to marry "well"; I have taken the burden on for Thee, and for nothing but Thy glory and the salvation of souls.
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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!