Priests urged to channel lay vision of the future

Two bishops have pushed for a more lay-led Church during separate homilies over the weekend.

A priest’s work is to “channel” the gifts of lay people, and is not a lone enterprise, said Bishop Noel Treanor during Fr Tony McAleese’s ordination.

“Priestly work and ministry is not a solo run: the passage from the letter to the Ephesians whispers across the centuries a constituent quality of Christian life and of priestly ministry, a quality that we are re-discovering and re-appropriating in our times,” he said.

Quality

“What is that quality?” he continued, “it is this: that priestly ministry, as a life of service within the Christian community, is a ministry that calls on, promotes, coordinates, collaborates with and channels the gifts of many parishioners and volunteers so that, as the second reading puts it: ‘the saints together make a unity in the work of service, building up the body of Christ’.”

He advised Fr Tony that the lines quoted from the letter to the Ephesians was a “source of vision” behind the pastoral plan of the diocese and are a “future way” of the Christian community.

Bishop Treanor added that: “As priests we are team workers”.

Similarly, during a homily on the same day at the Marian Shrine of Knock, Bishop Leo O’Reilly said the people who were involved in campaigning for the retention of the Eighth Amendment before the referendum “are the new evangelists”.

Seed
 of 
the 
Gospel

“You have been out sowing the seed of the Gospel of Life in homes and hearts the length and breadth of Ireland. The dream of the Second Vatican Council for the role of the laity in the Church is coming true,” he said.

Bishop O’Reilly said that for the first time in his life “we have a nationwide mission of evangelisation led and carried out…by the lay people”.

“A mission, not preached in churches, but rather in radio and TV studios, in hotels and homes, on doorsteps and streets. That is truly a quiet revolution.”