Note: the video of the conference above has automatic subtitles in the original language (Spanish), which can be translated automatically to English. The full text in English can be found below.
As we celebrate the centenary of Saint Josemaría’s priestly ordination, I would like to focus primarily on a few of his writings that explore various aspects of the relationship between the priesthood and the Eucharist. These texts, while rich in doctrinal content, also convey the lived experience of his deeply priestly soul.
I will begin by considering the priesthood as ordered to the Eucharist; then I will reflect on the importance of the Eucharist in the sanctification of the priest; and finally, its role in the pastoral mission to which the priest is called.
A priesthood for the Eucharist
The Eucharist – specifically, the Eucharistic sacrifice – holds a central place in the Christian life. Saint Josemaría expressed this using the phrase “centre and root,” as in the following passage from one of his letters: “I have always taught you, my very dear daughters and sons, that the root and the centre of our spiritual life is the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar, in which Christ the Priest renews the Sacrifice he offered on Calvary, in adoration, honour, praise and thanksgiving to the Blessed Trinity.”[1]
This idea was so deeply engraved in his heart and soul that he repeated it frequently, both in speech and in writing.[2] At the same time, he would add that if the Eucharistic Sacrifice is the “the centre and root of our lives as Christians, it must be so in a special way in the priest’s life.”[3]
It must have been a profound joy for Saint Josemaría when, years later, a text as significant as the Second Vatican Council’s Presbyterorum Ordinis would echo this very expression in referring to the relationship between the priesthood and the Eucharist, affirming that the Eucharistic Sacrifice is “the root and centre of the whole life of a priest.”[4]
a) The centre and root of a priest’s life
It is only natural to emphasize this point when speaking about priests. As Benedict XVI wrote: “The intrinsic relationship between the Eucharist and the sacrament of Holy Orders clearly emerges from Jesus' own words in the Upper Room: ‘Do this in memory of me’ (Lk 22:19). On the night before he died, Jesus instituted the Eucharist and at the same time established the priesthood of the New Covenant. [...] No one can say ‘this is my body’ and ‘this is the cup of my blood’ except in the name and in the person of Christ, the one high priest of the new and eternal Covenant (cf. Heb 8-9).”[5]
Pope Francis has highlighted how this identification with Christ the Priest extends to the priest’s entire life. A priest, he says, “cannot say, ‘Take this, all of you and eat of it, for this is my Body which will be given up for you,’ and not live the same desire to offer his own body, his own life, for the people entrusted to him.”[6]
The priest’s profound transformation is intimately linked to the Eucharist. Saint Josemaría expressed this in a homily: “The sacrament of Orders, in effect, equips the priest to lend our Lord his voice, his hands, his whole being. It is Jesus Christ who, in the Holy Mass, through the words of the consecration, changes the substance of the bread and wine into his Body, Soul, Blood and Divinity. This is the source of the priest’s incomparable dignity.”[7]
b) Dignity and weakness
These reflections on the relationship between priesthood and Eucharist help us understand why the Eucharist is both the centre toward which all things converge and, inseparably, the root of that convergence. It is the centre because it is God who draws everything and everyone to Himself in Christ, and the Eucharist is the place where the offering of the world to the Father takes place, through Christ, with Him, and in Him. At the same time, “Christ Himself is placed in the hands of priests who thus become the ‘stewards of the mysteries’ – of the wonders – ‘of God’ (1 Cor 4:1).”[8]
Is there any action on earth more exalted? The act most proper to Christ, the merciful and faithful High Priest, mediator of the new covenant (cf. Heb 2:17; 9:15), is entrusted to his creature. Through the priest, the worship of adoration rises to the Father, and through Him, divine gifts reach the faithful.
This is how the Second Vatican Council puts it: “[Priests] exercise their sacred function especially in the Eucharistic worship or the celebration of the Mass by which acting in the person of Christ and proclaiming his Mystery they unite the prayers of the faithful with the sacrifice of their Head [...], Christ offering Himself once for all a spotless Victim to the Father (cf. Heb 9:11-28).”[9]
It is easy to see why nothing else can be the true centre of a priest’s life. In fact, one could say that the Holy Mass is the primary purpose of ordination; the act in which “the priestly ministry encounters its fullness, its meaning, its centre and its effectiveness.”[10]
Of course, the dignity of the priesthood stands alongside each priest’s awareness of his own unworthiness. This very awareness becomes the first reason to strive to live in close union with the Lord.[11] During the celebration of the Eucharist, the prayers the priest says quietly – prayers addressed to the Lord in his own name – help him, as the Roman Missal reminds us, to become more aware of his mission and to carry it out with greater attention and reverence. These prayers often have a penitential tone and are placed at key moments in the Eucharistic celebration: before proclaiming the Gospel, at the conclusion of the Offertory as he prepares to enter the great Eucharistic Prayer, and before receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion.
The priest is conscious that, by the grace he received at his ordination and the Holy Spirit’s action in the Church, when he approaches the altar, it is not he who prepares to worship the Father, but Christ Himself who, in him, “renews on the altar his divine sacrifice of Calvary.”[12]
The outward gesture of vesting himself in priestly garments reminds the celebrant of this truth. Indeed, in putting on the sacred vestments, he manifests the inner reality and the mission it entails: to clothe himself in Christ, to offer himself to Christ as Christ offered Himself for us. The vestments are not signs of power or superiority; they are symbols that remind everyone – especially the priests themselves – that they are no longer acting as private individuals, but in persona Christi and also in persona Ecclesiae. In this way, the sacred garments also serve as a reminder that celebrants are not the masters of the liturgy or the community, but their servants.[13]
c) The Eucharist and other priestly functions
The centrality of the Eucharist in the life of the priest does not prevent us from affirming, as Presbyterorum Ordinis does, that priests “have the primary duty of proclaiming the Gospel of God to all.”[14] This is not only because, chronologically, the preaching of the Gospel precedes the celebration of the Eucharist, but also, above all, because preaching leads toward the Eucharist and draws the the strength to be a word of eternal life (cf. Jn 6:68) from it; from Christ who gives Himself to the Church.[15] In fact, as we will consider later on, all a priest’s activity flows from the Eucharist as its deepest source. The celebration of the Eucharist is not the priest’s only function; nevertheless, it is clearly his principal and most essential mission, also because in it all the mysteries of the Christian faith are summed up.
The Eucharist and the priest’s sanctification
Considering what the Eucharist is, one understands well why Saint Josemaría wrote: “Because of the priesthood’s sacred functions, it requires much more than an honest life: it demands a holy life of those who exercise it, for they have been constituted mediators between God and mankind.”[16]
a) The Eucharist and conformity with Christ
In the configuration with Christ the Head, proper to the ordained ministry, the Presbyterorum Ordinis decree points out that “by the sacred actions which are theirs daily as well as by their entire ministry which they share with the bishop and their fellow priests, [priests] are directed to perfection in their lives.”[17]
The Eucharistic Sacrifice, in which the priest fulfills his primary role or mission, is at the same time – for the priest and for every Christian – the principal means of sanctification and identification with Christ. In Benedict XVI’s words, “If celebrated in a faith-filled and attentive way, Mass is formative in the deepest sense of the word, since it fosters the priest's configuration to Christ and strengthens him in his vocation.”[18]
This deep formative aspect of the celebration itself makes sense if we remember that the “words and rites [of the liturgy] are a faithful expression, matured over the centuries, of the understanding of Christ, and they teach us to think as He Himself does; by conforming our minds to these words, we raise our hearts to the Lord.”[19] The Holy Mass thus becomes a school of life.
Moreover, this identification with Christ during the celebration can at times lead to moments in which “our Lord may show us aspects of our lives in which each one of us must improve, vices we must conquer, and the kind of brotherly attitude that we should develop with regard to all men.”[20]
Thus, through the celebration and in various ways, the priest’s life is gradually transformed into a Eucharistic existence, not only because he is nourished by the Eucharist and because its celebration is the central act of his life, but also because, in all things, the priest seeks to live with the same disposition with which Christ becomes the food of his brothers and sisters.
b) From the Trinity and toward the Trinity
Widening our perspective, we understand that we receive “the gift of the Blessed Trinity to the Church”[21] in the encounter with Christ in the Eucharist. In fact, the Holy Mass is the action in which the love of the Trinity is most fully manifested. “In the Mass,” Saint Josemaría explained, “our prayer to God the Father is constant. The priest represents the eternal high priest, Jesus Christ, who is, at the same time, the victim offered in this sacrifice. And the action of the Holy Spirit in the Mass is truly present, although in a mysterious manner. ‘By the power of the Holy Spirit,’ writes Saint John Damascene, ‘the transformation of the bread into the body of Christ takes place.’”[22] The human person is divinised in the Eucharist, and joy – the fruit of the Holy Spirit, a hallmark of Christian life – flows from the Eucharist.
The Eucharist is therefore the reality around which a priest’s spiritual life is structured: it is his root and his centre, his source and the sacramental anticipation of his ultimate goal. This centrality and foundational role grants all Christians – and in particular priests – the capacity to transform all daily activity into worship of God. Saint Josemaría especially highlighted this teaching when speaking to ordinary faithful living and working in the middle of the world, since it concerns all who share in Christ’s priesthood, whether it is the common or the ministerial priesthood.
Priests know that they have been chosen from among their brothers and sisters to present the offering of the Church, which Christ Himself takes up and makes his own, to the Father. Thus Saint Josemaría strove to make the whole day a kind of Mass, seeking to let that act of worship overflow – as he taught others to do – into aspirations, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, and the offering of work and ordinary relationships.[23]
c) A gift and a task
The fact that the Eucharist is truly the centre and root of a priest’s life is not only a gift but also a personal task, a response to what he has received from God. In one of his Holy Thursday Letters to Priests, Saint John Paul II wrote: “May we always celebrate the Holy Eucharist with fervour. May we dwell long and often in adoration before Christ in the Eucharist. May we sit at the ‘school’ of the Eucharist.”[24]
There are countless expressions of this desire to care for the Holy Mass, as creative as the human capacity to love. What is most important is not to lose sight of the fact that, as Saint Josemaría preached, “the liturgical life is a life of love: love for God the Father, through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit, with the whole Church.”[25] This love is not something abstract but very concrete, incarnate. The founder of Opus Dei liked to say, “We must be very human, for otherwise we cannot be divine,”[26] and he explained this in striking terms: “note that God does not say: ‘In exchange for your own heart, I will give you a will of pure spirit.’ No, he gives us a heart, a human heart, like Christ's. I don't have one heart for loving God and another for loving people. I love Christ and the Father and the Holy Spirit and our Lady with the same heart with which I love my parents and my friends.”[27]
A priest can manifest his love for the Holy Mass – his effort to give it the central place it objectively deserves – in many different ways. For example, Saint Josemaría often divided his day into two parts: the first half to give thanks for Communion, and the second to prepare for the next day’s Mass.
Another point worth highlighting is his frequent invitation to celebrate the Eucharist unhurriedly. This suggestion is especially relevant in today’s world, marked as it is by distraction and haste. Speaking very personally, he once told a group of priests about something he had recently experienced during a university ceremony: “While I was waiting for my turn to speak, I found myself thinking a lot about the love priests have for our Lord, and how poorly we express it because we are almost always in a hurry. Too much so! People in love are not in a rush. Notice how they stay together, again and again… They can’t bring themselves to part.” And he encouraged them: “Celebrate the Holy Mass slowly. Let them wait! Afterwards, we’ll carry out splendid work, if we have known how not to rush, because in truth, in persona Christi, we are carrying out a profound priestly task.”[28]
d) Accompanying the Lord in the Tabernacle
Alongside the celebration of Holy Mass – in which the priest’s personal relationship with the Eucharist is realized in a special way – Christ’s permanent presence in the Tabernacle is a constant reminder to give one’s whole life a definitively Eucharistic orientation.
For the priest, the Eucharist is a living presence that consoles and strengthens. As Saint John Paul II wrote: “Through the centuries, countless priests have found in the Eucharist the consolation promised by Jesus on the evening of the Last Supper, the secret to overcoming their solitude, the strength to bear their sufferings, the nourishment to make a new beginning after every discouragement, and the inner energy to bolster their decision to remain faithful.”[29]
The long periods of time Saint Josemaría spent in evening prayer beside the Tabernacle of La Redonda, beginning in his teenage years in Logroño, form a significant part of his biography. Now, while we are in Zaragoza, it is impossible not to remember the nights he spent praying in one of the galleries overlooking the sanctuary of the Seminary Church of San Carlos. He maintained this same devotion throughout the years, and he is well known for the way he promoted Eucharistic worship, even at times when the Church’s faith in the Real Presence was being questioned in many places.
On one of his trips to America, he encouraged priests to spend much time in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. He wanted to see Eucharistic piety grow in everyone, and he told them, “Don’t do it merely so that the people in your church or the faithful in your parish will see you, but don’t mind if they do. If your heart is focused on the Lord and people see your love, they will ask you the reason, and then you can speak to them about this love that is meant to fill your entire life.”[30]
As these simple words make clear, the priest’s response to the Eucharistic gift, which is at the centre of his spiritual life, naturally overflows into action guided by pastoral charity.
Eucharist and pastoral charity
Pastoral charity leads the priest to be a servant of all. In one of his letters, Saint Josemaría wrote that priests, “following the example of the Lord – who came not to be served, but to serve: non veni ministrari, sed ministrare (Mt 20:28) – must know how to lay their hearts on the ground so that others may tread softly.”[31] This attitude does not stem from a mere ethical decision; it has its source in a personal relationship with God, the God who lowers Himself and gives Himself to the point of becoming nourishment for his creatures in the Eucharist.
a) A Eucharistic existence
The spiritual strength to live one’s life as a gift for others arises above all from union with Christ Himself in the Eucharistic sacrifice.[32] In it, the sacrifice of the Cross – Christ’s total self-gift to his Church, the supreme testimony of his being the Head and Shepherd, the Servant and Spouse – is made sacramentally present. In this way, the Eucharist is also the root and centre of the pastoral dimension of the priest. As Saint John Paul II wrote, “The priest's pastoral charity not only flows from the Eucharist but finds in the celebration of the Eucharist its highest realization – just as it is from the Eucharist that he receives the grace and obligation to give his whole life a ‘sacrificial’ dimension.”[33]
In other words, the priest is called to live a Eucharistic existence, a life modeled on the sacrifice of Christ, which he celebrates in Holy Mass. Pope Francis explained this during the Jubilee of Priests in 2016: “In the Eucharistic celebration we rediscover each day our identity as shepherds. In every Mass, may we truly make our own Christ’s words: ‘This is my body, which is given up for you.’ This is the meaning of our life; with these words, in a real way we can daily renew the promises we made at our priestly ordination.”[34]
Ultimately, pastoral charity, which is conferred on the priest in the sacrament of Holy Orders, is a gift renewed in every Eucharist, and must be reflected in his daily conduct.
b) Corresponding to the gift received, conforming oneself to it
In celebrating the Eucharist, we must strive to identify with Christ’s self-giving, incarnating it in our own lives. Saint Josemaría explained this vividly in one of his homilies: “If we do not work God's land, are not faithful to the divine mission of giving ourselves to others, helping them recognize Christ, we will find it very difficult to understand what the eucharistic bread is. No one values something which does not cost an effort.”[35]
He then expanded on this idea using an image from Scripture, focusing on identification with Jesus Christ: “In order to value and love the holy Eucharist, we must follow Jesus' way. We must be grain; we must die to ourselves and rise full of life and give an abundant yield: a hundredfold! Christ’s way can be summed up in one word: love. If we are to love, we must have a big heart and share the concerns of those around us. We must be able to forgive and understand; we must sacrifice ourselves, with Jesus Christ, for all souls.”[36]
Saint Josemaría concluded: “If we are to love in this way, we need to root out of our individual lives everything which is an obstacle to Christ's life in us: attachment to our own comfort, the temptation to selfishness, the tendency to be the centre of everything. Only by reproducing in ourselves the word of Christ can we transmit it to others. Only by experiencing the death of the grain of wheat can we work in the heart of the world, transforming it from within, making it fruitful.”[37]
If the Eucharist is for the priest the “central and radical” place of his identification with Christ and his salvific gift, pastoral charity will necessarily lead him to guide the faithful to this same source of life, in which the common priesthood of the faithful also finds its principal expression. The priest does this not only through preaching, but also by “living” the Mass with this same faith: he celebrates the Eucharist for the Church and in the presence of the Church – even when the people are not present – and for this reason his life is called to imitate the sacrifice of Christ, who “loved the Church and gave Himself up for her” (Eph 5:25).
In short, the minister cannot simply be a passive channel through which the Church’s word and sacraments flow: his life must conform to the sacramental character he has received, which configures him to Christ and orients his entire existence toward that full self-giving which finds its centre and root in the celebration of the Eucharist for the good of the whole Church. “A priest,” Saint Josemaría explains, “who says the Mass in this way – adoring, atoning, pleading, giving thanks, identifying himself with Christ – and who teaches others to make the Sacrifice of the altar the centre and root of the Christian life really will show the incomparable value of his vocation, the value of that character with which he has been stamped and which he will never lose.”[38]
The more deeply we understand the logic of the Cross present in the Holy Mass, the more fully we will live the ministry as a total self-gift. Referring to the grace proper to the fullness of the priesthood, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “This grace impels him to proclaim the Gospel to all, to be the model for his flock, to go before it on the way of sanctification by identifying himself in the Eucharist with Christ the priest and victim, not fearing to give his life for his sheep.”[39]
c) Living for one’s brothers, living for the Church
Priests – imitating what they hold in their hands, namely Christ’s total self-giving – draw from the Eucharist the spiritual strength needed to joyfully sacrifice themselves in service to their brothers, especially to those in greatest need, those “discarded” by the world.
Indeed, the priest’s Eucharistic life is expressed in countless small gestures of care and attention. It is especially revealed in the mercy with which he receives those who come to the Church seeking reconciliation, and in the love with which he goes out to those who do not yet know Christ or have drifted away from him. Through every aspect of his ministry, he prepares and guides all people toward an encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist, fully aware of our deep need for a personal relationship with Him.
Finally, it is important to recall that the centrality and radicality of the Eucharist in the priest’s ministry – both as a gift and as a task – has an essential ecclesial dimension. “The Eucharist, in which the Lord gives us his Body and transforms us into one Body, is where the Church expresses herself permanently in most essential form. While present everywhere, she is yet only one, just as Christ is one.”[40]
The universal and particular dimensions of the Church are both reflected in the priestly ministry, and it is above all in the Eucharist that the priest can – and must – feel concern for the whole Church and, with the Church and in the Church, concern for the whole world. In this sense, the priest at the altar, like Christ on Golgotha, bears the weight of all humanity’s needs, challenges, and sufferings.[41] Pope Francis echoed this idea: “the priest celebrates by carrying on his shoulders the people entrusted to his care and bearing their names written in his heart. When we put on our simple chasuble, it might well make us feel, upon our shoulders and in our hearts, the burdens and the faces of our faithful people, our saints and martyrs who are numerous in these times.”[42] The Eucharistic Sacrifice is not only a great good for the priest; it is his principal ministry for the good of all.[43]
Conclusion
The only true High Priest is Christ, who, by the Sacrifice of the Cross, gives life to the community of the faithful and ensures his life-giving presence to the entire Church through the celebration of the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, the Lord visibly gathers his priestly People, destined to praise God by exercising their baptismal priesthood.
Christ, as Head of the Church, becomes present in it through his ministers; those who, by virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, are constituted as his instruments for the good of the entire People of God. The Church, once brought forth by the action of the Holy Spirit through preaching, Baptism, and the celebration of the holy Sacrifice, continues to live, grow, and spread thanks to the power of the Eucharist, which is the supreme act of worship and the primary source of salvation, of God’s self-giving to us.
“It is because of this, Saint Josemaría says, “that we can consider the Mass as the centre and the source of a Christian's spiritual life. It is the aim of all the sacraments. The life of grace, into which we are brought by baptism, and which is increased and strengthened by confirmation, grows to its fullness in the Mass.”[44]
I would not like to conclude these reflections without a reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the article Saint Josemaría wrote in 1974 about our Lady of the Pillar, he wrote: “For me, the first Marian devotion – I like to see it that way – is the Holy Mass.”
He went on to explain how he understood Mary’s presence in the holy Sacrifice: “Every day, as Christ comes down into the priest’s hands, his real presence is renewed among us, with his Body, his Blood, his Soul and his Divinity: the same Body and the same Blood he took from Mary’s womb. In the Sacrifice of the Altar, our Lady’s participation evokes the silent modesty with which she accompanied her Son’s life, when he was travelling through the land of Palestine. [...] In that unfathomable mystery can be glimpsed, as through a veil, the most pure face of Mary, Daughter of God the Father, Mother of God the Son, Spouse of God the Holy Spirit.”[45]
And so, he concluded: “Closeness with Jesus in the Sacrifice of the Altar necessarily brings with it closeness with Mary, his Mother. Whoever finds Jesus also finds the Immaculate Virgin.”[46]
Fernando Ocáriz
[1] Letter 10, no. 11 (emphasis ours). Any texts without an author cited are by St. Josemaría.
[2] Cf. for instance, Letter 25, no. 5.
[3] In Love with the Church, no. 43.
[4] Vatican Council II, Presbyterorum Ordinis, no. 14.
[5] Pope Benedict XVI, Sacramentum caritatis, no. 23.
[6] Pope Francis, Desiderio desideravi, no. 60.
[7] In Love with the Church, no. 39.
[8] Ibid, no. 34.
[9] Vatican Council II, Lumen gentium, no. 28; cf. Presbyterorum Ordinis, no. 2.
[10] Letter 26, no. 18.
[11] Cf. In Love with the Church, no. 39.
[12] Ibid, no. 44.
[13] The celebrant must conjugate the first-person singular (“I”) and plural (“we”). There is a twofold perspective to the priestly ministry: he sacramentally represents Christ, ‘the only mediator between God and men’ (1 Tim 2:5), who gathers and leads his people, and he also represents the Church, in whose service he carries out his action.
[14] Presbyterorum Ordinis, no. 4.
[15] Cf. Ibid, no. 5.
[16] Letter 2-II-1945, no. 4.
[17] Vatican Council II, Presbyterorum Ordinis, no. 12.
[18] Pope Benedict XVI, Sacramentum caritatis, no. 80.
[19] Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacrament, Instruction Redemptionis sacramentum, no. 5.
[20] Christ is Passing By, no. 88. With his mystagogical catechesis in this homily, St. Josemaría goes on to show that the Holy Mass is formative in the deepest sense of the word.
[21] Ibid, no. 87.
[22] Ibid, no. 85.
[23] Cf. The Forge, no. 69.
[24] St. John Paul II, Letter to Priests, Holy Thursday 2000, no. 14.
[25] Quoted in E. Burkhart and J. López, Vida cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de san Josemaría, Rialp, Madrid 2013, vol. III, pg. 472 (our translation).
[26] Christ is Passing By, no. 166.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Dos meses de Catequesis, vol. II, pg.755-757 (our translation).
[29] St. John Paul II, Letter to Priests, Holy Thursday 2000, no. 14.
[30] Quoted in J. Echevarría, Memoria de san Josemaría, Rialp, Madrid, 6th edition, 2016, pg. 239 (our translation).
[31] Letter 10, no. 20.
[32] Cf. Vatican Council II, Presbyterorum Ordinis, no. 14.
[33] St. John Paul II, Pastores dabo vobis, no. 23.
[34] Pope Francis, Homily, 3-VI-2016.
[35] Christ is Passing By, no. 158.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Ibid.
[38] In Love with the Church, no. 49.
[39] Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1586.
[40] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Communionis notio (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of the Church Understood As Communion), no. 5.
[41] Cf. J. Echevarría, Para servir a la Iglesia. Homilías sobre el sacerdocio, Rialp, Madrid 2001, pg. 58.
[42] Pope Francis, Homily, Chrism Mass, 28-III-2013.
[43] Cf. Vatican Council II, Presbyterorum Ordinis, no. 13.
[44] Christ is Passing By, no. 87.
[45] “La Virgen del Pilar,” no. 18; in Escritos varios, pg. 289-290.
[46] Ibid, no. 19.