Always a Disciple
spoke directly to the concept of discipleship in his own life. We can
find no better tribute to this man and no better contribution to this
issue’s theme of discipleship than to revisit his own words on the
subject.
One could open any of Walter Burghardt’s books at random and in all likelihood read about some aspect of discipleship — expressed with warmth, deep faith, and tremendous understanding. True discipleship ran through everything that Father Burghardt wrote, taught, preached, and lived. In his “spiritual autobiography,” Long Have I Loved You, he spoke directly to the concept of discipleship in his own life. We can find no better tribute to this man and no better contribution to this issue’s theme of discipleship than to revisit his own words on the subject.
Impressed though I was by Scripture and history, I still had to ask: If we do not get from God’s revelation or from the Church’s tradition some unchangeable notion of priesthood, where does this leave us, leave me? Is there anything we can uncover from Christ’s own tenting among us and from the Christian experience of ministry? Here, to begin with, good friend and first-rate biblicist Raymond Brown rode to my rescue [in his book Priest and Bishop]. The New Testament, he showed, furnished four facets of Christian ministry which the Catholic Church sees as basic in her priests. Not all were present from the very beginning in one and the same person; but the Church has gradually brought them together to help fashion her notion of what an ordained priest is.
First, the priest is a disciple. Always a disciple. To be a disciple means to be “called,” as the first companions of Jesus were called, as John and James, Peter and yes Judas were called — to have a vocation that stems from Jesus: “Follow me.” For the priest, as for the original disciples, there can be only one master: Jesus. And the response to him must be total: “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” (Mt 8:21-22) Not just for today: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Lk 9:62) Not part time: Discipleship must be a priest’s whole life; there is nothing else. And so you have that harsh sentence of Jesus, “Whoever comes to me and does not hat father and mother, wife and child, brothers and sister, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” (Lk 14:26) Exaggeration? If so, deliberate exaggeration, to make an unmistakable point: I am not a disciple of Jesus if he is not my whole life.
Furthermore, {quotes align=right}to be a disciple is to be called to hardships too cruel for most humans: to leave everything and embrace a cross, to have nothing as my own save Jesus.{/quotes} To be a disciple is to pattern myself after the one master — and this master is a bloodstained, crucified master who came not to be served but to serve, who warned his disciples against honors and first places, who turned savagely on Peter when he rebelled against the passion of his Lord.
Second, the priest is an apostle. Always an apostle. If to be a disciple means to be “called,” called to follow Jesus, to be an apostle means to be “send,” as the original apostles were sent, to serve others. The keynote is service. I must focus on St. Paul’s commitment, “I will gladly spend and be spent for you.” (2 Cor 12:15) And what I as priest carry to others is always Jesus — not only his message but his presence. “We do not proclaim ourselves,” Paul declared; “we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.” (2 Cor 4:5) It is always Jesus who is proclaimed — by word and work, by sacraments and sacrifice. But in a special way by prayer and suffering. A priest who has forgotten how to pray is a priest who cannot preach Jesus — whatever else he may preach. And a priest, like Paul, will present Jesus to others effectively only if he bears the death pangs of Jesus in his body. Only if I am constantly restless because, like Paul, I am “afflicted at every turn, from struggles without and anxieties within.” (2 Cor 7:5) Anxieties within: I mean a loneliness that is in itself no reason for forsaking the priestly life; a lack of appreciation, especially today when priesthood has no special status; an anguish that tears my heart because I am so weak and the forces of evil are so strong, because so often my words seem wasted on the wind, because so few seem to care.
Third, a priest is what the New Testament calls a presbyter. The New Testament presbyters were a group responsible for the pastoral care of the churches. The qualities the New Testament prescribes for the presbyter are sober indeed, even stuffy. He must be above reproach, temperate, sensible, dignified, hospitable, an apt teacher, gentle, not quarrelsome. His task is to organize, to stabilize, to prevent dangerous innovation. “He must hold firm to the sure word he was taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and confute those who contradict it.” (Tit 1:9) His task calls for authority that does not dominate, that is softened by being wonderfully warm and human.
The point is, the priest does represent an institution. No matter how charismatic, how prophetic, even if called to protest the sins and corruption of institutions, of the Church itself, the priest must represent more than his personal insights. Lit it or not, I am a churchman. I cannot, as a priest, stand outside my institution; I am an official part of it. Not that the institution is always right, is beyond criticism or censure. Rather that this institution is the setting where faith is born and grows; this institution is the locus and focus of worship; the institution is the community of love. This is what the priest represents.
Fourth, a priest presides at the Eucharist. It is not my total task, but it is a central preoccupation of priesthood. For here the priest does what St. Paul insisted must be done: “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Cor 11:26) I have a sacramental ministry that revolves around the bread of life and the cup of the new covenant. Around this liturgy the Church has built the access of man and woman to the life that is Christ, from the water of baptism through the ashes of penance to the oil of a final anointing. In this process the priest plays a unique role — a role that comes to focus each time I proclaim, “This is my body, which will be given for you…. This is the cup of my blood.”
Here, in a very real sense, is the heart of my priesthood. Even if a priest works at much else besides — in school or slum, in collective bargaining or the halls of congress — at some point (ideally) the priest gathers God’s people around an altar, around a table, to share with them a thanksgiving where the work of redemption is accomplished and in unparalleled fashion man and woman are made one with their God.
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… the Church has come to a point in development where certain functions are regarded as special responsibilities of the ordained priest. I shall mention four in generic terms, to distinguish them from a much more arguable area: the specific means different priests may take to implement these roles.
First, I have been ordained to proclaim God’s Word. Not simply — in a pluralistic society, perhaps not primarily — by formal preaching. The model of proclamation may be dialogue; it may be priestly presence; it may be prophetic speech and action in the tradition of Isaiah and Jesus.
Second, I have been ordained to build up the Christian community. Here lies my responsibility for leadership. But a leader in our time is not one who commands; a leader is a man or woman who can move hearts and minds. It is mine to co-ordinate the charisms of the community as found in the individual members. I am accountable because mine is the office that looks not merely to the care of individuals but more broadly, as Vatican II put it, “to the formation of a genuine Christian community.”
Third, I have been ordained to serve humankind. Here, Vatican II opened up new vistas: “Because the human race today is joining more and more into a civic, economic, and social unity, it is that much more necessary that priests…wipe out every kind of division, so that the whole human race may be brought into the unity of the family of God. My parish is indeed the world, for the Church’s mission is simply the human person. With the passage of the years I have slowly come to see what Vatican II proclaimed so simply to priests: Although I have obligations to all manner of men and women, “the poor and the lowly” have been “entrusted to [me] in a special way.” It is summed up in the opening words of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World: “The joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the men and women of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.” Hence the project of my final years, Preaching the Just Word … is an effort to move the preaching of justice issues more effectively into all the Catholic pulpits and congregations of the country. [And surely all pulpits everywhere through his contributions to The Living Pulpit — the editors]
Fourth, I have been ordained to preside at worship, especially the Eucharist. Here is my cultic role at its most proper. Here I effect the Church’s most powerful expression of unity — the unity of the worshiping congregation within itself, with the diocese, with the universal Church, and with all humankind. Here is foreshadowed and promised the Christian hope; that the earth and all who bleed and joy thereon will be transformed into the kingdom of God and His Christ.
Here is where my whole life as a priest is coming to a final focus. I mean the words I murmur each morning or evening to the crucified images of God: “This is my body… [and it is] given for you.”
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Fifty-eight years a priest, I stand week after week thankfully and humbly in the midst of my fellow priests. From experiences ecstatic and excruciating, I can sense to some extent what have been their Tabors and their Gethsemanes, the hills of their thrills and the gardens of their agonies. But no one save God and the individual priest really knows what the call to discipleship has cost him. I would only ask each to reflect on the thousands, most of them unknown to him, who are grateful to him for the impact he has had on their lives, who thank him in their hearts for playing Christ to them with such crucifying fidelity, for years of Godlike gentleness, for living every day the Eucharistic words of Jesus on the eve of Calvary, “This is my body [and it is] given for you.” (Lk 22:19)
