Missionary Priesthood

Who will take up the challenge of ministry today, building God's kingdom through dialogue with the poor, the religions and the cultures of the world?

By Fr. Jack Lynch, S.F.M.
March/April 2007

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Over the last four years whenever the three of us on the Scarboro General Council have been together, often the following comments or ones similar to them have been made:

"I love my priesthood."

"I love what I do."

"I would encourage anyone who is thinking about priesthood today."

"There are incredible challenges and satisfying rewards in ministry and they are going to increase in the years to come."

"A candidate for priesthood will have to have their eyes wide open and know exactly what the commitment will mean in this day and age."

These statements express what the three of us profoundly believe.

Yet, there are times when we have felt somewhat at a loss to understand exactly what is transpiring. In recent years, there have been very few candidates for the priesthood in Canada and for Scarboro Missions. We know, too, that missionary institutes in Colombia and Mexico, which previously had not experienced a decline, today have only about 25 percent of the candidates they had ten years ago.

This leads us to ask ourselves about the witness we give as well as the perception that people and particularly younger generations have today of the Church, its ministries and consecrated life.

I would love to see the vision of Vatican II fully realized and lived out. I would love to see the Canadian Church engage in a wide-ranging discussion about priesthood and ministry, the needs of the Church and its future outreach and evangelization. It is such a serious issue that the entire Canadian Church should be invited to reflect on the future of the Church and its ministries.

Many times I have felt the discussion and its scope should not be limited to those of us who are Bishops, priests, and women and men religious. The promise and presence of the Spirit of God should allay any fear or anxiety. Let us not be afraid to engage the entire Church in a discussion about future priests and ministers for our Church. We must confidently trust as we remember the words of Jesus, "I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, that Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him for he is with you and will be with you."

As members of the General Council, we have even heard it said that Scarboro is more interested in promoting lay missioners than priest candidates. That could not be further from the truth. While we are committed to the promotion and rightful participation of the laity in the life of the Scarboro community, we are also profoundly committed to a renewed priesthood and ministries that ensure that Scarboro always will be a Eucharistic community.

There have been profound changes in the understanding and role of the missionary since Vatican II and obviously that affects the missionary priest and his role. The word "missionary" is a much wider concept today than it was before Vatican II and it is rightly applied to every baptized Christian to describe their role and vocation as a follower of Jesus.

Monsignor Fraser, the founder of Scarboro Missions, was clear about the initial outreach of Scarboro: the evangelization of China and the establishment of the Chinese Church and clergy. I continue to congratulate so many of the most senior priests who contributed to the building up of the local Church in the many countries where they served so generously. I believe Scarboro and other mission institutes have accomplished that objective. Today, the Church is present on every continent with its own priests and hierarchies, and in many instances is sending personnel to the Church in the north.

Jesuit Father Michael Amaladoss, a missiologist from India, would articulate mission for the future as follows:

"Mission is no longer seen as church extension, but as an ongoing dialogue with the poor, the religions and cultures of the world, building the Kingdom of God. Mission will have to be witness and dialogue."

Mission is first and foremost God's presence and activity in the world. The Church is neither the source nor the primary agent of mission. God is. That is the first and primary principle. John Paul II reminds us that the Spirit of God is the source and author of mission. We are called to participate in an historical project that comes from God and belongs to God.

God's mission continues to call for our ongoing participation and presents Scarboro and other mission institutes with a new challenge for the service of a priest in the global mission of the Church. He is called to be at the service of the Reign of God and of the Church. I would outline the following as essential qualities of the missionary priest:

Prayerful disciple of Jesus

Our primary responsibility is to seek out and discern how the Spirit of God is present in our world today and ask the same Spirit to inspire and guide our actions. We are called to be disciples like Jesus, in harmony with the will of God who sends us to mission. We need to be evangelized for our own ongoing conversion. We need to be humble, not arrogant, and realize that God is present and active before we ever arrive and that God continues to be revealed before we proclaim or celebrate. We need to recognize that God is revealed in and through "the other" and that a dynamic process is occurring-we are evangelized in and through the work of evangelization.

At the service of the Kingdom of God

The Kingdom of God is the focal point of the teaching of Jesus. In order to understand and articulate mission today we need to reflect through discernment and prayer on how the Kingdom is present in our world and what needs to be done so that it comes closer to becoming a reality. We must be Kingdom people who promote and practice justice and peace. As one theologian puts it, "We must understand justice in the Kingdom as RIGHT RELATIONS or even better still as LIFE-GIVING RELATIONS. To do that is to be a builder of the Kingdom of God. We are called to build life-giving relationships in four directions: with God, with oneself, with the neighbour as both individual and part of society, and to creation as a whole."

Open to dialogue

Dialogue is the most important word today to understand our role in God's missionary agenda. God speaks and we listen and respond to God's invitation. In this context, interreligious dialogue is vital for mission today. It is essential that the missioner have a deep relationship that I would call a friendship with Jesus and that he easily articulates and communicates his belief in Jesus, the Kingdom and the Church at the service of God's mission. In a dialogue there must be the ability to speak in the first person so that the personal belief of the missioner is expressed in order to be genuine, authentic and allow the faith of each to be the focus of the dialogue.

Time and again I return to a text from Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner, who writes very clearly about the role of the priest:

"He is a man chosen from among men, a member of the Church, a Christian. Remaining man and Christian, he begins to speak the word of God. This word is not his own. No he comes to you because God has told him to proclaim God's word. Perhaps he has not entirely understood it himself. Perhaps he adulterates it. But he believes and despite his fears, he knows that he must communicate God's word to you. For must not some one of us say something about God, about eternal life, about the majesty of grace in our sanctified being; must not some one of us speak of sin, the judgement and mercy of God? So friends, pray for him, carry him so that he might be able to sustain others by bringing to them the mystery of God's love revealed in Christ Jesus."

Fr. Jack Lynch is Superior General of Scarboro Missions.

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