Holy Thursday of every year is not only the day of the birth of the Eucharist but also the birthday of the ministerial priesthood.
I qualified the priesthood as ministerial because by virtue of the sacrament of the Holy Orders we, as priests, perform in the Church that service which has been solely entrusted to us to perform, namely the Eucharistic service. Moreover, our priesthood is hierarchical because this service empowers us, through our serving, to guide pastorally each and every single community that forms the entire people of God.
Can a priest be a minister of beauty? If his heart, mind and will are completely open to the action of the Holy Spirit he surely can.
For one of the most important theologians of the 20th century, Hans Urs von Balthasar, beauty is not just a matter of appearances. It intrinsically demands truth and goodness as its ever faithful companions. In fact, in the first volume of his series The Glory Of The Lord, Dr Balthasar writes: “We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past – whether he admits it or not – can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.”
God is the beautiful one since it is only He who is infinite goodness and truth. When a priest, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, genuinely perceives and accepts in his heart this transforming reality, his priestly existence starts gradually becoming itself beautiful.
St Augustine is a case in point of how this transformation occurs. In his 10th book of the confessions he exclaims: “Late have I loved You, 0 Beauty ever ancient and ever new, late have I loved You! You were within, while I was outside myself and there I searched for You and in my deformity I forced myself upon the beauties of Your creation... You called and shouted and burst through my deafness… You extended Your fragrance and I drew a breath and then parted. I tasted and now I hunger and thirst” (Confessions: Book 10, Chapter 27).
Attracted by God’s eternal beauty, goodness and truth, the priest slowly undertakes a long, yet passionate journey of hungering and thirsting for God’s presence. He enthusiastically shares his longing for the Lord with that of the psalmist in Psalm 63: “O God, thou art my God, I seek thee, my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is. So I have looked upon thee in the sanctuary, beholding thy power and glory. Because thy steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise thee. So I will bless thee as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on thy name. My soul is feasted as with marrow and fat, and my mouth praises thee with joyful lips, when I think of thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the watches of the night; for thou hast been my help, and in the shadow of thy wings I sing for joy. My soul clings to thee; thy right hand upholds me” (Ps 63, 1-8).
Hence, the priest becomes the minister of God’s beauty when he lets God’s truth and goodness take hold of his priestly spirit. In other words, when he lets himself be led by charity in what he does, says and thinks. In this regard, St Augustine, the doctor of grace, comes to our aid in order to encourage us and illumine our priestly mission by his precious pastoral advice. “If you are silent, be silent out of love; if you speak, speak out of love; if you correct, correct out of love; if you forgive, forgive out of love, may the root of love be in you, because from this root nothing can come that is not good” (7, 8: PL 35).
In the aforementioned book, The Glory Of The Lord, Dr Balthasar said: “Beauty is the word that shall be our first”. An authentic priestly life is one pervaded by God’s goodness and truth, thus by the beautiful one. And by time, God’s beauty will eventually transform us, priests, into God’s beautiful ones!