I am pleased to share with you the beauty of sharing God’s Love as Brothers in the US- Philippines Delegation. Due to the pandemic, last year we were not able to have our annual retreat as a Delegation. This year, we are grateful to God for allowing us to gather again for our spiritual exercise from August 2 to August 6, 2021, at the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama.
For our retreat, we had Father Paschal Mary MFVA (Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word) as our facilitator, who is the Administrator of the Shrine.
How good and pleasant for brothers to dwell together as one! (Ps 133,1). We had 16 priests and one postulant from our communities in the United States of America. The theme of our retreat was “Religious Life in time of Pandemic”. The theme was developed in three conferences:
-the first conference: the Love of God
-the second conference: the Forgiveness of God
-the third and last conference: the Eucharist. How did we experience the presence of God during the pandemic (almost two years now)?
“It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you – for you were the fewest of all peoples. It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors” (Dt 7,7-8). This quotation recalls the Love God has for us. God sets his heart on you despite your frailty and chooses you to become the instrument of his love among his people, his humble instrument. In fact, our mission as priests is to present God’s Love to our people so that they will know Him and love Him above all and be transformed by his Love.
We have been chosen by God and His love is for us. This love is a first love which comes before any perfection on our part; none of us merits God’s Love because of our unfaithfulness to the Covenant. God is always faithful. Once He gives his grace to a soul, he does it once for all. It is time to give back to Him. He died for us while we were yet enemies (Rm 5,8). The love we see in Jesus is not just for our people, but first for us. We cannot give what we do not have; we understand why the priests must first believe in God’s love, must remain faithful to his Covenant. As Jean-Baptiste Chautard puts it in quoting Saint Bernard of Clairvaux: “If you are wise, you will be reservoirs and not channels”. He explains in the following terms:
The channels let the water flow away, and do not retain a drop. But the reservoir is first filled, and then, without emptying itself, pours out its overflow, which is ever renewed, over the fields which it waters. How many there are devoted to works, who are never anything but channels, and retain nothing for themselves, but remain dry while trying to pass on life-giving grace to souls! “We have many channels in the Church today but very few reservoirs” (cf. Jean-Baptiste Chautard, The Soul of the Apostolate, 1946, p. 55)
God’s choice makes us the first recipients of his Love. Jesus asks not simply to Peter “do you love me?” (Jn 21,15-17) but “will you allow yourself to be loved by me? I recall the words from Saint Augustine. He said, “This is an opportunity to reflect once more on God’s love in our life and our personal response to his Love and call. God who created you without you, will not save you without you’. Human’s salvation depends on God. In Saint Augustine thought, there is a need to cooperate with the grace of God. God loves you. Do you love Him? He chose you to become one with Him in the covenant.
Are you faithful to this covenant? Why did God make his covenant with us knowing human beings will not remain faithful? The reason for this choice is his nature. Saint John says that God is love (cf. 1 Jn 4,16-21). The priests are the first recipients of his love. Therefore, we should experience it more than other people in becoming not as God’s channels but as his reservoirs. This love enables us to be ministers of the same love among us ourselves and the people under our pastoral care.
Knowing ourselves to be loved by God, we are enabled to offer this same love and receive forgiveness. Forgiveness is not a feeling but willing the good of the other person. Even in Luke, Jesus reminds us to be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful (cf. Lk 6,36). Saint Francis of Assisi spoke to his brothers often about the need to forgive. He encouraged us to pray for the grace to forgive others when we feel unable. Forgiveness is not human power; it is God’s grace. We are forgiven in the Sacrament of Penance, but often struggle to forgive our brothers in Community.
In God’s plan, Love and Forgiveness are tied together. God forgives because He loves. Through the Sacraments, God continues to love and forgive us and the people we serve. To love God and hate one’s brother is hypocrisy. In his love and forgiveness, God purifies us and makes us participants in his plan for the world. He makes us worthy. Our life is a sharing in the love and forgiveness of God. In return, those who receive his grace are expected to offer him in sincerity of their hearts a pure gift of love. We believe that his love and forgiveness last forever for those seek them. Human frailty is nothing compared to God’s Love and Forgiveness. For this reason, we understand why the priests are privileged to act in Persona Christi in the Sacraments and especially in the Sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist in which “the work of our redemption is accomplished” (SC, 2) despite their humanity. In fact, God does not call a super-human, He calls you, a human person to become a priest, a man of God; being a man of God means being a man of prayer and having God as his first and principal interlocutor of the day (cf. Constitutions, #47).
What a wonderful gift the priests have, to make present our Lord and Savior in the Eucharist to the people! God does not change His ways. Our Lord has given Himself to us so humbly in the Incarnation, and each day in the Most Holy Eucharist. As the Priest says in persona Christi “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my Body…. This is my Blood poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins”, so we are to be drawn into this offering more and more. The sacrificial love of Christ is more than a model for us, it is the very Life we have been graced to live.
As we celebrate the Eucharist, we share in God’s Love and Forgiveness and make present the Lord in the Christian community. How wonderful is God who uses the weak priests to serve Him through the brothers and sisters! Even the Prophet Isaiah says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways-oracle of the Lord….” (Is 55,8-9). How can’t we be grateful to God for the Sacrament of Holy Orders which configures us to Christ the Priest-Prophet-King.
We have been chosen by God because He loves and forgives us in our wickedness. In doing so, God enables us to love, to forgive, to grow in patience and humility. To respond to his love, we need to deny ourselves for his sake. Our Constitutions remind us also, “…with Christ they will learn to offer themselves, so that, day after day, they be perfected in union with God and among themselves and God be finally all in all” (Constitutions #56). As it is said, great love requires great sacrifice. God’s grace is enough for us to strive to remain in his covenant, to make our communities places where love and forgiveness are shared. However, Jesus reminds us, without Me you can do nothing (cf. Jn 15, 5).
A priest is chosen by God and ordained to serve others. Therefore, he should find in God his only source and strength because apart from God a priest has no identity of his own. I would like to conclude with a quotation from the Second Vatican II Council:
“Priests represent Christ and are collaborators with the order of bishops in that threefold sacred task which by its very nature bears on the mission of the Church. Therefore, they should fully understand that their life has also been consecrated to the service of the missions. By means of their own ministry, which deals principally with the Eucharist as the source of perfecting the Church, they are in communion with Christ the Head and are leading others to this communion” (AD, 39).
Fr. Godefroid Paluku, CRM