Book Review
The Priesthood of the
Faithful – Key to a Living
Church by Fr. Paul
J. Philibert. Liturgical Press, 2005.
In the ongoing struggle
among many Catholics to sort through the complexities of the past nearly
four years of crisis and crimes in our
Church, it is with
great relief that someone is reminding us of something other than our rights
and responsibilities – the very heart of our faith is precisely why we
struggle and precisely why we are so able to do so. Faith, we see in this short
book, is knowing, not just hoping, that everything will be all right.
Fr. Paul Philibert begins The Priesthood of the Faithful with
the understanding that Christ is acting on the baptized through the Holy
Spirit at all times. “Because
the role of the Holy Spirit pervades the sacramental life of the Church, it
is useful to think of the church in terms of an ecology of epiclesis.” He
notes that the word ecology refers to an interdependence of living and nonliving
in the natural environment. Epiclesis reflects a similar complex interrelationship
between the human and divine. We are asked to look at a “graced sacramental
action” according to three stages: symbolic matter (such as the liturgy
in our sacramental lives); a graced sign (the presence of the invoked Spirit
into life-giving water); and a realized mystery (one body, one Spirit in Christ
effected in Eucharist). Philibert moves from here into a brief look at the “how” of
our good works in our daily lives concluding that it is the Spirit’s
anointing that makes each of us a graced sign. This anointing is what brings
all the faithful into the “only priesthood that there is – the
priesthood of Jesus Christ.”
It is Philibert’s discussion of the rediscovery of baptismal priesthood
that brings the most comfort to those of us who carry the dis-ease of the past
few years into our churches and out again and to those who are unable to embrace
the routine of regular attendance at Mass because we just don’t feel “at
home” any more. “The Mass does not belong to the ordained” is
one of the most beautiful sentences to be found in this book but it doesn’t
come from Philibert alone. It grew out of the work of theologian Yves Congar
and others and their impact on the Vatican II document “The Constitution
on the Sacred Liturgy.”
Congar’s touching disappointment in the opening liturgy of Vatican II
speaks volumes and, in fact, this opening of the Council will strike many as
antiquated, even foreign, for the enormous distance that was so fixed between
the clergy and the congregation. The event comes across as a performance by
the ordained, the “elect,” and all others are observers – invited
to passivity. In fact, the German liturgist Jungmann noted, “A High Mass
without distribution of communion…. Perhaps the idea was to make clear
[what we have to leave behind] in matters liturgical!”
‘The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy” changed all of this and
was the first document of Vatican II to be published. It established the principle
that “in every Christian liturgy, the primary celebrant is Christ Himself.” The
decades-long move toward an inclusive liturgical expression of the solidarity
of Christ with His Church succeeded and, arguably, underscores the energy behind
today’s reform efforts. These efforts attempt to reconcile the artificial
distance between the priesthood of the ordained and what Philibert calls the “priesthood
in the ordinary.”
There is much here for
every Christian reader (and not enough space to cover it all!) – for
those who feel somewhat battered during this time of horrific revelations
and for the masses of Catholic laity, so
often presumed incapable
of understanding what the ordained among us have been thinking, reading and
writing. Philibert provides both a bridge across what divides us one from the
other and a companion for the journey.
Just before The Priesthood of the Faithful concludes
with “An Open Letter
to Religious,” Philibert gifts us with this reflection:
A flourishing laity are
first of all people who know that they are loved and who feel important
in the life of the church. We find
in 1 Peter an appeal
to the newly initiated to appreciate their value in the life of the church. “You
are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,
in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out
of darkness into his marvelous light.”
A marvelous light, indeed!
PLT
If you read this book on your own or for a book club, please send comments
to pthorp.ed@votf.org.
Paul J. Philibert,
O.P., S.T.D., is professor of pastoral theology at the University of Fribourg
in Switzerland and was the Distinguished
Visiting
Professor
of Church and Society at the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. His
published works include Stewards of God’s Mysteries: Priestly Spirituality
in a Changing Church (Liturgical Press, 2004).
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