Pope Francis Priesthood is not a job but a gift, Pope says
Being a priest is not a job or fulfilling an employment contract but is a gift from God that should be contemplated and treasured as such, Pope Francis has said.
Those who turn ordained ministry into an occupation “lose the heart of the ministry, lose the gaze of Jesus who looked upon all of us and told us, ‘Follow me’”, he said on September 19 during morning Mass at the Domus Sanctae Marthae.
The Pope focused his homily on the day’s first reading in which St Paul writes to Timothy (1 Tim 4:12-16): “Do not neglect the gift you have.”
Ordination is a freely given gift from the Lord, the Pope said; it is not “a job” or “an employment contract” in which one “must do” something.
“Doing is secondary,” he said. First and foremost, “I must receive this gift and safeguard it as a gift and from that – in the contemplation of the gift – everything else springs.”
When ordained ministry is not seen and treasured as a gift, he said, “deviations” emerge, starting with “the worst ones, which are terrible, to the more everyday ones that makes us base our ministry on ourselves and not on the gratitude of gift and love for he who gave us this gift, the gift of ministry”.
Canon law needed for ‘ecumenical dialogue’ – Pontiff
Pope Francis has said that canon law is essential for ecumenical dialogue with Orthodox and Oriental Churches.
“Many of the theological dialogues pursued by the Catholic Church, especially with the Orthodox Church and the Oriental Churches, are of an ecclesiological nature. They have a canonical dimension too, since ecclesiology finds expression in the institutions and the law of the Churches,” Pope Francis has said.
In an audience with members of the Society for the Law of the Eastern Churches, Pope Francis said: “Canon law is essential for ecumenical dialogue,” adding that “ecumenical dialogue also enriches canon law.”
Canon law is the Church’s legal discipline, it gives expression to concepts like natural and divine law, and orders the Church as an ecclesiastical society.
Pope Francis said that the Church can learn from the synodal experience of the Eastern churches.
“Synodality expresses the ecumenical dimension of canon law,” Pope Francis said, explaining: “the commitment to build a synodal Church — a mission to which we are all called, each with the role entrusted him by the Lord — has significant ecumenical implications.”
Francis’ council meets to discuss key reform project
Pope Francis’ now six-member Council of Cardinal Advisors met last week to continue work on the forthcoming apostolic constitution, incorporating into the draft suggestions submitted by bishops’ conferences and others during the summer.
According to a brief press release from the Holy See press office, the council met with a focus on “re-reading and modifying the draft of the new Apostolic Constitution”, which has the provisional title Praedicate evangelium.
“This first rereading, which has come to an end, was a passage of listening and reflection that responds to the indications of the Holy Father in the sense of communion and synodality,” the statement said.
The new constitution has been the advisory group’s key reform project since its establishment in 2013, one month after Pope Francis’ election.
Praedicate evangelium will replace Pastor bonus, the current apostolic constitution on the Roman Curia promulgated by Pope John Paul II on June 28, 1988, and subsequently modified by both popes Benedict and Francis.