Courtney McGrailThe Pope is challenging Catholics to transform a cynical and vindictive world, writes Fr Martin Browne OSB
Fr Martin Browne OSB
I’ve been a monk for nearly 15 years and was ordained deacon seven years ago. I had planned to remain a deacon permanently. I should have known that making plans when it comes to serving God is never wise. As the old Yiddish proverb put it: “Man plans and God laughs”… and so it was that I was ordained a priest last May.
Having ministered as a deacon since 2008, lots of the things that priests are called upon to do were not new to me. I was accustomed to preaching, to leading people in prayer, and to speaking and singing in public. I had assisted at weddings and had buried the dead. I have a particular interest in liturgical matters and had even led workshops for clergy on presiding at the liturgy.
But there was one part of the life and ministry of a priest that I knew very little about; the hearing of Confessions.
Confession is harder to prepare for than most elements of priestly ministry. You can read about it, but what use is that when faced by an individual with his or her unique story to tell?
Doing a mock dry-run is so artificial as to be pretty much useless. And unlike other parts of ministry, asking experienced priests for advice is not much use either, since the seal of the confessional constrains them from talking about their experiences in anything but the most general terms.
The confessional can be a dangerous place. It is private and intimate and its privacy has sometimes been abused in monstrously criminal and sacrilegious ways.
Fortunately, the number of priests who have caused damage to penitents in such ways is small. But well-intentioned priests can cause damage in the confessional. People go to Confession because they are seeking something, and that seeking makes them vulnerable – literally ‘woundable’. A priest who says the wrong thing when celebrating the Sacrament of Penance can unwittingly do great damage. It is all too easy to be what one wag I live with calls ‘A Wounded Wounder’. As I prepared for ordination, I was terrified of the responsibility of hearing Confessions.
About a month before I was ordained, Pope Francis published the formal document – called a Bull – proclaiming the Jubilee of Mercy. This Holy Year runs from December 8 this year until the feast of Christ the King 2016.
Pope Francis certainly isn’t the first Pope to write about mercy. St John Paul II devoted the second of his 14 encyclicals to the subject. Nevertheless, Francis has made it a key theme of his entire ministry as bishop and Pope, and it is both unsurprising and entirely appropriate that he should offer the gift of a Holy Year of Mercy to the whole Church.
Mercy is the lens through which the Pope invites us to see the story of God’s dealings with his people. For Francis, mercy is not only the heart of the Holy Year; it is the heart of Christianity itself. The Bull which proclaims the Jubilee is named Misericordiae Vultus, taking its name from its opening words: “Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy. These words might well sum up the mystery of the Christian faith.”
Mercy is, says Pope Francis, “the ultimate and supreme act by which God comes to meet us…mercy: the bridge that connects God and humankind, opening our hearts to the hope of being loved forever despite our sinfulness”.
The document is a beautiful one. It is easily found online and is well worth reading. In our often cynical and vindictive world, Pope Francis is inviting all people to renew and reform the way we think and act.
“Without a witness to mercy, life becomes fruitless and sterile, as if sequestered in a barren desert.”
And he is challenging those of us who are part of the Church to be the ones to provide that witness, saying that “the time has come for the Church to take up the joyful call to mercy once more”; to be, as the motto and the official song of the Holy Year say, ‘Merciful like the Father’.
There is a lot more to the Year of Mercy than the Sacrament of Penance, but, reading it when I did, I couldn’t but think of this part of the ministry to which I was about to be ordained.
Questions
The call to be like the Prodigal Father – embracing the broken, penitent son; coaxing the resentful older son; not asking useless questions but proclaiming a celebratory banquet – is profound and beautiful advice for the priest in Confession. It gave me courage to embrace the dangerous ministry of the confessional with trust and with hope. This ministry, about which I had been so nervous, has been one of the most truly blessed experiences of the time since my ordination. It is one of the few contexts where being addressed as ‘Father’ really feels appropriate.
I pray that I, and all confessors, may truly be merciful like the Father and that we may be faithful to the Pope’s call “to be a sign of the primacy of mercy always, everywhere, and in every situation, no matter what”.