Jubilee of Bishops and Jubilee of Priests

 Though they are presented as if they are two distinct celebrations, the Jubilees of Bishops and of Priests due to be marked between 25th June 2025 and the 27th June 2025 form an integrated programme, ending with Mass celebrated on 27th for the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. If the earlier Jubilee of movements and ecclesial communities reminded us of the role of the charisms in the life of the Church, these two jubilees remind us that, nevertheless, the Church is expressed in a hierarchical structure.

In the programme of the Jubilee, the Bishops will take part in a catechesis with the Holy Father, intended I susggest to manifest the communion of the individual Bishops with the Successor of Peter and their sharing in a care for the universal Church. On the following day, catecheses will be given by Bishops (in language groups) to priests taking part in the Jubilee of Priests, expressing something of the collaboration of a priest with his Bishop in the pastoral care of a parish within a diocese. The Dicastery for the Clergy will also be hosting an event Joyful Priests - I have called you friends, during which there will be testimony of examples of vocational ministry and seminary formation from different parts of the Catholic world.

In a lecture given in 1981, and subsequently published in the journal Communio, Cardinal Lustiger discussed the connection between celibacy and priestly and episcopal ordination. Early in the lecture, he attempted to define "what this episcopal ministry is, priesthood par excellence":

The bishop, exercising in the church the priestly ministry is given to the church-body of Christ as a sign of Christ the head. Thus the whole church can exercise the priestly act of Christ described in the first Epistle of Peter by receiving in the sacramental grace given in the episcopal ministry the assurance that the word which is spoken in her is truly the word that Christ utters in his church, and that faith brought about by the Holy Spirit is truly the common faith of the whole church. Thus guarantees that the holiness given by the Father to his church comes indeed from Christ himself who acts in the sacraments, and so that unity in brotherly love which must always gather the members of the church in mercy and pardon is truly that which is accomplished and operated by Christ himself in his body. Through the priestly ordination of the bishop, the church is assured that she receives herself from Christ, priest, prophet and king. A formula recently quoted by John Paul II condenses the significance of the sacrament of orders - through his priestly ministerial act, the bishop (the priest) acts in persona Christi before the body of Christ, for example, the church.

Cardinal Lustiger continues to suggest that priests "exert jointly and in collegiality the episcopal ministry" as collaborators with the bishop who is the primary priest of his particular church.

In 2009 Pope Benedict XVI wrote a letter to inaugurate a Year for Priests, celebrated to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of St John Vianney. The year began on the Feast of the Sacred Heart that year, the feast being one marked as a day of prayer for the sanctification of priests.

Saint John Mary Vianney taught his parishioners primarily by the witness of his life. It was from his example that they learned to pray, halting frequently before the tabernacle for a visit to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.“One need not say much to pray well” – the Curé explained to them – “We know that Jesus is there in the tabernacle: let us open our hearts to him, let us rejoice in his sacred presence. That is the best prayer”. And he would urge them: “Come to communion, my brothers and sisters, come to Jesus. Come to live from him in order to live with him… “Of course you are not worthy of him, but you need him!”. This way of educating the faithful to the Eucharistic presence and to communion proved most effective when they saw him celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Those present said that “it was not possible to find a finer example of worship… He gazed upon the Host with immense love”. “All good works, taken together, do not equal the sacrifice of the Mass” – he would say – “since they are human works, while the Holy Mass is the work of God”. He was convinced that the fervour of a priest’s life depended entirely upon the Mass: “The reason why a priest is lax is that he does not pay attention to the Mass! My God, how we ought to pity a priest who celebrates as if he were engaged in something routine!”. He was accustomed, when celebrating, also to offer his own life in sacrifice: “What a good thing it is for a priest each morning to offer himself to God in sacrifice!”.

This deep personal identification with the Sacrifice of the Cross led him – by a sole inward movement – from the altar to the confessional. Priests ought never to be resigned to empty confessionals or the apparent indifference of the faithful to this sacrament. In France, at the time of the Curé of Ars, confession was no more easy or frequent than in our own day, since the upheaval caused by the revolution had long inhibited the practice of religion. Yet he sought in every way, by his preaching and his powers of persuasion, to help his parishioners to rediscover the meaning and beauty of the sacrament of Penance, presenting it as an inherent demand of the Eucharistic presence. He thus created a “virtuous” circle. By spending long hours in church before the tabernacle, he inspired the faithful to imitate him by coming to visit Jesus with the knowledge that their parish priest would be there, ready to listen and offer forgiveness. Later, the growing numbers of penitents from all over France would keep him in the confessional for up to sixteen hours a day. It was said that Ars had become “a great hospital of souls”. His first biographer relates that “the grace he obtained [for the conversion of sinners] was so powerful that it would pursue them, not leaving them a moment of peace!”. The saintly Curé reflected something of the same idea when he said: “It is not the sinner who returns to God to beg his forgiveness, but God himself who runs after the sinner and makes him return to him”. “This good Saviour is so filled with love that he seeks us everywhere”.

[It is interesting to compare St John Vianney's observations about the Sacrament of Penance to the late Pope Francis' contemporary emphasis on the mercy of God.]

Two more things that have passed me by .... St John Vianney, Invocation

This weekend I find myself reflecting again on two events that have happened without my really noticing. As it turns out, the two events are connected.

The first event is the visit of the relic of the heart of St  John Mary Vianney to the north-west of England, and to Birmingham. Details of the visit, and associated resources, can be found at the website of Shrewsbury Diocese.

The second is the annual Invocation 2012 festival at Oscott College, Birmingham. This event is aimed at young people and intends to encourage them in discerning their vocation in the world and in the Church. It is characterised by the presence of young priests and religious and by the presence of representatives of some of the new orders and religious communities. The home page of the Invocation website is here. The link to the visit of the relic of St John Mary Vianney is that the relic was brought to Oscott College as part of the programme of the festival.

To try and capture something of both events, I link to the text of the address delivered by Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury at the Invocation event. Two points that I particularly noticed about this address were the way in which the origins of the priestly vocations of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI were cited as examples for the young people listening, and the confident and strong affirmation of the value of the ordained priesthood that is drawn from the words of St John Mary Vianney.

It is also interesting to note the way in which the words of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI are cited by Bishop Davies. There is nothing dogmatic or authoritarian about this. The Holy Father exercises a pastoral office towards the whole Church through annual messages such as those for the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. However, that exercise of a universal office is not in conflict with the exercise of a local pastoral office by the Bishop of a diocese, and the use by Bishop Davies of citations of the words of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI indicates the way in which the two offices act in communion with each other.

The Feast of St John Vianney in Ars

This post at Priest's Secretary reports - briefly in text, but perhaps most movingly in the photograph slide shows embedded in the post - on the celebrations at Ars for the feast day of St John Mary Vianney.

General Audience: St John Vianney

Blog-by-the-Sea has put me on to the General Audience address that Pope Benedict gave yesterday. He devoted his address to St John Vianney, whose feast day we celebrated on Tuesday.

The full Italian text can be found here, at the Vatican website. This article at Catholic News Agency gives an account of Pope Benedict's catechesis, including the comparison of the "dictatorship of rationalism" that St John Vianney experienced to the "dictatorship of relativism" that we experience today. This presents a fascinating insight, rooted in, of course, one of Pope Benedict's constant themes, that of the appropriate relationship of reason and faith.

I offer here the original Italian text of these two paragraphs, from the text at the Vatican website:

Lungi allora dal ridurre la figura di san Giovanni Maria Vianney a un esempio, sia pure ammirevole, della spiritualità devozionale ottocentesca, è necessario al contrario cogliere la forza profetica che contrassegna la sua personalità umana e sacerdotale di altissima attualità. Nella Francia post-rivoluzionaria che sperimentava una sorta di “dittatura del razionalismo” volta a cancellare la presenza stessa dei sacerdoti e della Chiesa nella società, egli visse, prima - negli anni della giovinezza - un’eroica clandestinità percorrendo chilometri nella notte per partecipare alla Santa Messa. Poi - da sacerdote – si contraddistinse per una singolare e feconda creatività pastorale, atta a mostrare che il razionalismo, allora imperante, era in realtà distante dal soddisfare gli autentici bisogni dell’uomo e quindi, in definitiva, non vivibile.

Cari fratelli e sorelle, a 150 anni dalla morte del Santo Curato d’Ars, le sfide della società odierna non sono meno impegnative, anzi forse, si sono fatte più complesse. Se allora c’era la “dittatura del razionalismo”, all’epoca attuale si registra in molti ambienti una sorta di “dittatura del relativismo”. Entrambe appaiono risposte inadeguate alla giusta domanda dell’uomo di usare a pieno della propria ragione come elemento distintivo e costitutivo della propria identità. Il razionalismo fu inadeguato perché non tenne conto dei limiti umani e pretese di elevare la sola ragione a misura di tutte le cose, trasformandola in una dea; il relativismo contemporaneo mortifica la ragione, perché di fatto arriva ad affermare che l’essere umano non può conoscere nulla con certezza al di là del campo scientifico positivo. Oggi però, come allora, l’uomo “mendicante di significato e compimento” va alla continua ricerca di risposte esaustive alle domande di fondo che non cessa di porsi.

And my own English translation, with assistance from the Catholic News Agency article, which translates some but not all of the paragraphs:

Far from reducing the figure of St John Mary Vianney to an example, to be just admired, of 18th century devotional spirituality, it is on the contrary necessary to grasp the prophetic force that gives his human and priestly personality a great topicality. In a post-revolutionary France that was experiencing a kind of “dictatorship of rationalism” bent on erasing the very presence of priests and the Church in society, he lived, first - in the years of his youth - a herioc secrecy travelling many kilometres during the night to participate at Holy Mass. Then - as a priest - he stood out for his unique and fruitful pastoral creativity in showing that the rationalism that prevailed at the time was in reality far from meeting the authentic needs of man and therefore, ultimately, was not worth living.

Dear brothers and sisters, 150 years after the death of the Holy Cure of Ars, the pressures of today's society are no less demanding, though perhaps they are more complex. If then there was a "dictatorship of rationalism", today there is noticeable in many situations a type of "dictatorship of relativism". Both of them represent inadequate responses to the just demand for man to make full use of his reason as an element that is distinctive and constitutive of his proper identity. Rationalism was inadequate because it did not take account of human limits and raised reason alone as the measure of all things, transforming it into a goddess; contemporary relativism mortifies reason, because in reality it concludes by affirming that the human being cannot know with certainty anything outside the field of the positive sciences. But today, as before, man "beggar for meaning and fulfilment" searches continually for the exhaustive answers to the fundamental questions that do not cease to challenge him.

Pope Benedict points out in his address that there are some aspects of the life of St John Mary Vianney that constitute his own individual charism, and that we might not expect them to be reproduced in the lives of priests today. On the other hand, there are aspects that are of permanent value for the priestly life today: the living of an intimate friendship with Christ, which spills over into pastoral efficacy in the community served by the priest; devotion to the celebration of Mass and adoration of the Eucharist; faithfulness to the Sacrament of Penance.

Whilst the priest of today might look with awe at the life of St John Mary Vianney - and, rightly, judge that it would not be appropriate today for them to live a life of such severity - nevertheless, they should look to his life to discover the essentials of priestly life and ministry that might renew their lives and ministry today. "I hope nobody is expecting me to do that" is a response that has only some justification; most priests can do some of it, to the growth of their priestly lives and ministry.

An interview with the Cure d'Ars

Interviewer: St John Vianney, you are a very famous Priest. You are the patron saint of parish priests. It is good of you to join us today.

I’m happy to be here.

Interviewer: Please, tell us a little about yourself. Where were you born?

I was born near Lyon, in the south of France in 1786.

Interviewer: Were you very close to your family?

Yes. I worked on the family farm, looking after the animals. It was the time of the French Revolution, and priests were not allowed to celebrate Mass. I went to Mass with my parents, in secret, when a priest came to the area. It was a situation that meant we were close to each other.

Interviewer: Were you able to make your first Holy Communion?

Yes, when I was thirteen. The priest said Mass in a barn. We put carriages piled with hay in front of the barn windows, with lookouts, so no-one would see us. It was all very dangerous - not like it is for you today!

Interviewer: Did you always want to be priest?

I told my father that I wanted to be a priest when I was 18 years old. But I had no idea how it could happen. There was no seminary to train priests because of the persecution by the French Revolution.

Interviewer: What difficulties did you face in becoming a priest?

The first problem I faced was the study - I just wasn’t very good at it! I moved to a village nearby to study with the priest there. I hadn’t really been to school much, so it was very hard.

Interviewer: … and the second problem?

Napoleon was now the Emperor of France. I was told I had to join the army, and fight in a war in Spain. A bit by accident, I ended up as a deserter, so I never fought in the war. I had to hide in a mountain village for 14 months. I was only able to return home because of an amnesty, and because my brother volunteered to join the army in my place.

Interviewer: Was that the end of your difficulties?

No. I went to the seminary to continue training to be a priest - we could do this now. But I couldn’t cope with the study! I had to leave at the end of the first term, and go back to studying with Fr Balley in his presbytery.

Interviewer: When were you ordained priest?

12th August 1815, two months after the battle at Waterloo which defeated Napoleon. I was sent to a village called Ars, in the middle of nowhere. Nobody really went to Mass there any more - the French Revolution had seen to that.

Interviewer: What did you do?

I started a campaign to get people to go to Mass on Sunday. During the French Revolution, Sunday wasn’t a special day any more and everyone worked like on any other day. I had to change all this. The people were also involved in heavy drinking and dancing - so I preached against this, too. I preached and I taught catechism. I started a school, and a home for children and young girls.

Interviewer: What about the Sacrament of Confession?

I eventually spent hours every day hearing confessions. It was part of my particular gift to the parish in Ars. On one of my retreats something very funny happened. The people of that town were so keen that I should hear their confessions, and the Church was so crowded with people pushing to reach the confessional... they very nearly tipped the confessional over, with me in it!

Interviewer: And the Blessed Sacrament?

I encouraged my parishioners to go to Mass every day, and to receive Holy Communion every day. This was something else I campaigned on - and quite a few parishioners started to do it. One of my favourite stories is about a farmer in the parish who spent all day in the Church one day - instead of working in the field. When a friend asked him what he had been doing all day, he said: “I look deeply at Him, and He looks deeply at me”. The farmer was talking about his union with Jesus in Eucharistic Adoration.

Interviewer: Did you ever want to leave Ars?

At one time I did visit nearby villages to give retreats. It was during one of those retreats that I was nearly tipped over in the confessional. I really wanted to be a priest in a monastery, but everyone wanted me to stay in Ars. Near the end of my life, I wanted to move to a nearby house to live a kind of monastic life. I tried leaving during the night - but the parishioners found out, and wouldn’t let me go. By this time I was very popular - and this was the third time that I had tried to leave!

Interviewer: And you died on 4th August 1859, 150 years ago. Thank you John Vianney for joining us today, and sharing the story of your life with us.