Vocations

Hello, all,

Yes, I know--this blog's a ghost town.  Wasn't planning on posting today, either, but I've had a few things going around in my head that I want to work out on electronic paper.

Our shortage of vocations in America (and most of the developed world, for that matter) is well known.  Over at Lifesite, Anthony Esolen suggests a few causes.  I won't argue too much, though I think we've done the whole "it's-the-liturgy-stupid" thing to death.  But I did note his point that we don't offer as much challenge as perhaps we ought.

It's certainly true with every recruiting effort for the clergy I've ever seen.
Here's a ten-minute clip from a larger project aimed at teens.  Two young priests tell the stories of their discernment.

Now, I'm not dissing these priests.  I have no doubt their stories are genuine, and their love of the Church is clear.  But look at the filmmakers' subtext, and you'll see things common to every religious appeal to young people (apart from World Youth Day itself).

Apparently, there are just oodles of young, single Catholics out there thinking:

"Golly gee - I'd really like to join the religious life, but I'm afraid they won't let me play sports anymore!"

Really?

I'll grant, priests come in all varieties.  Some are introverted and scholarly.  Some are mushy sentimentalists.  Some (mercifully few) are downright effeminate.  Insofar, then, as this may be some young people's only experience with priests, it might not hurt to see a couple from more humble beginnings, doing "guy" things.  Street cred.  I get that.

On the other hand, we've got the pop soundtrack, and the edgy camerawork, and from all we see, they spend more time working out than they do in prayer.*

All this seems to say:  See?  God's not really asking that much of you.  You'll still be the same person, doing the same things.  For someone like my teenage self, they'd have said, "You can still have your booze, and your cigarettes, and your ponytail, and your Zeppelin albums.  C'mon, be a priest; it'll be really keen!"

It's all fun and games, until someone loses the Faith.

And I would have run the other way.  As, in fact, I did.  Because that's not the Christ I was looking for.

I wanted a Christ who'd say, "Put those things away.  Sell them and give to the poor.  Leave your nets on the boat, and come follow me.  It's the greatest adventure you could ever imagine!"

If we try that, I think, they will come.

It certainly works for the enemy.  Look at ISIS.  Young people from all over the civilized world are running to join a barbarian horde in the desert.  Why?  Because it offers something to believe in.  Something to which they can sacrifice everything.  Something that shows their contempt of a world full of pornography, political correctness, consumerism, and an overblown notion of fair play that refuses to let them risk anything.

How do we answer them back?  One-up them.  If young people will go to those lengths for something that offers them death, how much more will they give to something that offers them resurrection?

Let me show you something now that put me in a very good place this week.


This is who's getting vocations these days.  Note, for example, that their Prioress is nearly ten years younger than I am.  Note the joy.  Note the faith.

"But they're Traddies!" I hear you cry.  Yes, but they're the joyful kind.  They're traddies because they love their Catholic heritage, not because they hate everyday Catholics.  But if you're really disposed to argue, here's some Ordinary Form Dominicans getting even more vocations.


Yes, they play sports, too, but note what attracted the young novice from Australia:  The sisters walking around campus in their habits.  Post-Vatican II modified habits, but still set.  Apart.  From.  The.  World.

A modest proposal:  If you want to recruit young people, don't tell them how much they can keep.

Tell them how much they can give.


*Not to mention the stereotypes.  Fr. White's running through the hills to a Pure Moods-ish movie anthem - or is it a Zyrtec commercial?  Meanwhile, Fr. Not-So-White's walking through the inner city to a brooding hip-hop track.  Racist much?

Tu Es Sacerdos

Today's second reading, from Chapter 5 of the Epistle to the Hebrews, centers on the subject of Christ the High Priest.

Paul* references the Psalm, Dixit Dominus (Ps. 109 or 110, depending which version you use), verse 4:  "The Lord hath sworn, and he will not repent:  Thou art a priest forever, according to the order of Melchisedech."   Reading that at Mass last night got me thinking again about something I'd been pondering over in meditation earlier in the week.

It's story that appears in all three Synoptic Gospels.  I'll use the version from Luke, Chapter 6, because it's the one I was reading when the idea occurred:

And it came to pass on the second first sabbath that, as he went through the corn fields, his disciples plucked the ears and did eat, rubbing them in their hands.  And some of the Pharisees said to them:  Why do you that which is not lawful on the sabbath days?
And Jesus answering them, said:  Have you not read so much as this, what David did, when himself was hungry and they that were with him:  how he went into the house of God and took and ate the bread of proposition and gave to them that were with him, which is not lawful to eat but only for the priests?  And he said to them:  The Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.  (Lk. 6:  1-5)

Now the big point of this scene is Jesus declaring himself Lord of the Sabbath (for more on that, I recommend reading what Pope Benedict says on the subject in Jesus of Nazareth, Vol. 1).  Corollary to that is the message that Jesus makes more explicitly in Mark, Chapter 7:  Don't set your love of God at enmity with your love of neighbor.  Or, as St. Escriva said:  "Make sure your personal mortifications don't mortify others."

What I'm interested in here, though, is David doing something reserved to the priests.  The incident to which Our Lord's referring appears in 1 Samuel (or 1 Kings, depending which version, yadda, yadda), Chapter 22.  Now, David is in these straits because he's on the run from Saul, who knows he's going to lose his kingdom to David.  (Remind you of Herod at all?)  Why is God replacing Saul with David?
Because back in Chapter 14, Saul did something reserved to the priests.  He offered a sacrifice with his own hands, instead of waiting for Samuel to come and do it.

So here comes David and eats the holy bread that's reserved for the priests.  Why isn't this a deal-breaker?  Because David doesn't barge in and say, "Give me those loves of proposition!  I'm the Anointed, and I'm hungry!"  Instead, he asks the high priest for whatever he can spare, "though it were but five loaves" (1 Sam. 21: 3).

Five loaves . . . why does that sound familiar?

Oh, well.  Anyway, the point is that David doesn't take God's Law into his own hands.  He asks and receives.  The Son of David will take after him in this:

Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (Philippians 2:  6-7).

In other words, Saul's great sin was in trying to take that which can only be given.  Hence in today's reading from Hebrews, Paul* tells us, in regards to the high priesthood:

Neither doth any man take the honour to himself, but he that is called by God, as Aaron was.  So Christ did not glorify himself, that he might be made a high priest:  but he that said unto him:  Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.  As he saith also in another place:  Thou art a priest forever, according to the order of Melchisedech.

He goes on in Chapters 6 and 7 to explain the order of Melchisedech's priesthood, how his offering of bread and wine in Genesis 14 foretells a new priesthood that will supersede the Levitical priests of the Old Testament.  So when Jesus uses this story to refute the Pharisees, He's not just arguing from legal precedents.  He's showing us how David foreshadows Himself.  Just as David was granted to do that which was reserved for the priests, the Son of David would usher in a new priesthood, according to the order of Melchisedech.  How fitting, then, that David himself, who ate the holy bread, should also have written the Psalm prophesying the priesthood of his Divine Descendant.**

And the sacrifice of that priesthood, like Melchisedech's, would be under the species of bread and wine.  That, of course, is where David's five loaves come in.  For in prefigurement of that sacrifice, the Son of David would use five loaves to feed five thousand.

*Despite the militant agnosticism prevalent in contemporary scholarship, I subscribe to the tradition that ascribes authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews to St. Paul, and of the Gospels to the evangelists whose names they bear.  Said authorship cannot be conclusively disproven, and I will maintain this stance until the competent authority in Rome charges me under obedience to do otherwise.  So there.

**Yes, I know, David did not write all the Psalms, but we know he wrote this one.  Christ Himself tells us he did, in Matthew 22: 43-45.  So double there.