III. The Agents of Priestly Formation
The Church and the Bishop
65. Given that the formation of candidates for the
priesthood belongs to the Church's pastoral care of vocations, it must be said
that the Church as such is the communal subject which has the grace and
responsibility to accompany those whom the Lord calls to become his ministers
in the priesthood.
In this sense the appreciation of the mystery of the Church
helps us to establish more precisely the place and role which her different
members have - be it individually or as members of a body - in the formation of
candidates for the priesthood.
The Church is by her very nature the "memorial" or
"sacrament" of the presence and action of Jesus Christ in our midst
and on our behalf. The call to the priesthood depends on his saving presence:
not only the call, but also the accompanying so that the person called can
recognize the Lord's grace and respond to it freely and lovingly. It is the
Spirit of Jesus that throws light on and gives strength to vocational
discernment and the journey to the priesthood. So we can say that there cannot
exist any genuine formational work for the priesthood without the influence of
the Spirit of Christ.
Everyone involved in the work of formation should be
fully aware of this. How can we fail to appreciate this utterly gratuitous and
completely effective "resource," which has its own decisive
"weight" in the effort to train people for the priesthood? How can we
not rejoice when we consider the dignity of every human being involved in
formation, who for the candidate to the priesthood becomes, as it were, the
visible representative of Christ? If training for the priesthood is, as it
should be, essentially the preparation of future "shepherds" in the
likeness of Jesus Christ the good shepherd, who better than Jesus himself,
through the outpouring of his Spirit, can give them and fully develop in them
that pastoral charity which he himself lived to the point of total self -
giving (cf. Jn. 15:13; 10:11) and which he wishes all priests to live in their
turn?
The first representative of Christ in priestly formation is
the bishop. What Mark the evangelist tells us, in the text we have already
quoted more than once, can be applied to the bishop, to every bishop: "He
called to him those whom he desired; and they came to him. And he appointed twelve
to be with him, and to be sent out" (Mk. 3:13-14). The truth is that the
interior call of the Spirit needs to be recognized as the authentic call of the
bishop. Just as all can "go" to the bishop, because he is shepherd
and father to all, his priests who share with him the one priesthood and
ministry can do so in a special way: The bishop, the Council tell us should
consider them and treat them as "brothers" and friends."(202) By
analogy the same can be said of those who are preparing for the priesthood. As for
"being with him," with the bishop, the bishop should make a point of
visiting them often and in some way "being" with them as a way of
giving significant expression to his responsibility for the formation of
candidates for the priesthood.
The presence of the bishop is especially valuable, not only
because it helps the seminary community live its insertion in the particular
church and its communion with the pastor who guides it, but also because
verifies and encourages the pastoral purpose which is what specifies the entire
formation of candidates for the priesthood. In particular, with his presence
and by his sharing with candidates for the priesthood all that has to do with
the pastoral progress of the particular church, the bishop offers a fundamental
contribution to formation in the "sensus ecclesiae," as a central
spiritual and pastoral value in the exercise of the priestly ministry.
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