“We [Western culture] are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires. We, however, have a different goal: the Son of God, the true man. He is the measure of true humanism. An ‘adult’ faith is not a faith that follows trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ” (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, homily, opening of the 2005 conclave Mass, April 18, 2005).

The human being is regularly tempted to retreat into himself. It is a condition that invites vigilance. The weakness of our wills, the diffusion of our desires and the darkness of our reason conspire to tempt us into settling for a life of trend-following and ideological enslavement, all within an ambiance of inconstant values. For the greater part of his intellectual ministry, Cardinal Ratzinger was keen to sound the alarm over such living. He promoted spiritual, affective and intellectual maturity. But he was certain that such maturity could be accepted only by first accepting Christ as the true measure of human life.

Western culture has been hijacked by fear and irrationality. Those who educate children and university students seem timid in their trust that reason can reach truth; in fear, they capitulate to ideology and political expediency. These become the new guides for educational content and decision-making.

Thus we live in a culture that has lost its capacity to retain a constant and integrated understanding of human identity. The diocesan parish may be the last community that reveres both reason and God. But this also makes it a flashpoint for tension as the pastor preaches the Gospel into a community already under the sway of current fashion and political ideology. The ignition for this flashpoint may, indeed, be the Liturgy of the Word. In the Gospel, we expose ourselves to the God-Man who reveals to us both himself and our own true identities. It is always a risk to exterior calm and peace to preach what God has to say.

Grounding Parishioners

As the priest leads one of the last communities where faith informs reason and reason can judge what is true and false, he seeks to secure these goods by grounding parishioners in friendship with Christ. This friendship is encountered in the sacramental and intellectual life of the parish. The closer one is to Christ, the more authentically human one becomes. Nothing is lost in such communion except the irrationality of sin. Worship, understood as our participation in the divine life, fastens a person to his or her God; and because it does so, one is fastened to his authentic human identity. The more holy one becomes, the more fulfilled is his humanity (cf. Roch Kereszty, OCist, and Denis Farkasfalvy, OCist, “Theology in Practice: A Beginner’s Guide to the Spiritual Life,” Ignatius Press, $18.95).

Christ’s friendship is all-encompassing toward all persons who seek it. Its influence is life-altering since he comes to us as God and, as such, reframes our grasp of what is human. In each Mass celebrated at the parish, the participants are taken up into communion with Christ. In this communion, Christ is sharing his own communion with the Father. By participating in this reciprocal sharing, we come to possess our true humanity. By worshiping, we retain or recover what it is God’s will to share: a sanity born of holy communion with divine love.

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Friends of Christ

Jesus speaks of his friends in John 15:14-17: “You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.”

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Friendship with Christ determines both one’s grasp on reality and one’s capability of participating in reality’s essence, communion with others. The deeper a person is given to participate in the sacramental life, the deeper that person is gifted with a secured humanity, one that is disposed to revel in both sanity and love. The more one drifts from such communion and friendship with Christ, the more one puts himself into an isolating life, one that has no relation with the realities given by God.

“The problem set out in the second chapter of Genesis is that Adam and Eve chose something that was an end, that had no relation to God. … ‘The fruit of that one tree, whatever else it may signify, was unlike every other fruit in the Garden: it was not offered as a gift to man. Not given, not blessed by God, it was food whose eating was condemned to be communion with itself alone, and not with God’” (Andrew T. J. Kaethler, “Royal Priests and the Integrity of Things,” Humanum: Issues in Family, Culture, and Science, at humanumreview.com).

Night of the Cross

The parish exists to call humans back into the gifts that God is offering and to eschew the temptation to take what has no relation to God — for example, the deadly sins, disobedience to the Ten Commandments. The priest is especially called to enter friendship with Christ since he is the preacher of such a life. Priests know what God is giving and what should be received from him. They also know what is not from God and what isolates persons from grace.

Jesus himself told the first priests that they were not simply servants but friends, and as such they would walk the way of a common life with him (cf. Jn 15:15). Friendship entails sharing common interests and one’s deepest intentions, virtues, hopes and aspirations. What is most characteristic of Christ sharing friendship with the priest is his invitation to each priest to join him in the “night of the Cross” (cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Priestly Spirituality,” Ignatius Press, $14.95).

One aspect of this “night” is surely the suffering known by any pastor who leads a parish toward Christ, toward sanity and holiness, but finds such leadership resisted. It is natural for people to want to keep taking realities (sins) not offered as gifts to man from God. Priestly friendship with Christ is friendship that commiserates with him at the cross, at the place where commitment to truth and love meets strident rejection. But as John 15:15 reminds the priest, Christ has given the priest everything he has heard from his Father. Receiving this living Word in deepest contemplative prayer secures a friendship with Christ first established sacramentally. This “everything” that he has heard cannot simply be notional data; no, that which is being transmitted is the very love and life of God. Here, in vulnerability, the priest can stand at the cross and remain faithful as he receives love and life from his friend, Christ, even as his people may resist.

Behold the Mystery

The strengthening agent for this friendship at the cross is the practice of regular contemplative prayer flowing from daily Eucharistic worship. In this prayer fear is healed and one becomes established in the courage needed to befriend Christ and stay with him at the cross. St. Elizabeth of the Trinity said, “I will be your death … look at me [Jesus] and you will forget yourself” (cf. Louis Bouyer, “Women Mystics,” Ignatius Press, $17.95).

The more the pastor beholds the mystery of Christ, the more self-concern diminishes until only Christ is preaching Christ from within a priest’s body configured to the cross. No doubt, Christ being one’s “death” is a daunting invitation, but within such a call is the freedom of allowing his life to become one’s own. To forget the self is the goal of all who minister. No mature cleric wishes for the people to choose him, reverence him or become dependent upon him. Clerics desire only their people to know and cling to Christ. As one’s prayer deepens in ardor, frequency and vulnerability, any remaining interest in promoting the self simply dries up. Because of such deepening even to turn toward self-promotion yields boredom. “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3).

In friendship with Christ, the priest who prays becomes the priest who preaches boldly, albeit invitingly. As his prayer strengthens, his soul becomes marked by an ever-growing fascination with Christ and his mysteries. As such a mature man of prayer, he seeks time to be with Christ; this seeking marks his desires as preeminent, as God being his first interest.

Being a friend of Christ forms the priest into being a trusted guide for his own people as they choose a life of prayer and public witness. The priest needs to be a man of supernatural leanings, as he knows he lives in a spiritual battle and is preparing the laity to give witness in public to the Gospel. Both the priest’s own spiritual battle and his people’s vocation to give public witness to the Gospel require the courage born of friendship with Christ.

The goal is to remain in dialogue with Christ. Over time, this deepens to a life beyond saying prayers to a life where one has become a prayer. Communication is friendship with Christ (cf. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “God is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life,” Ignatius Press, 17.95). Once attracted to novelty, fashion and ideology, now the priest is consumed with eternal truths and simply allows what is of “this age” to pass away (cf. Rom 12:1-2).

DEACON JAMES KEATING, Ph.D., is professor of spiritual theology at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.