THE DECISION TO BE A PRIEST

Read John 13:31-35

Jesus changed our whole image of what we should be and how we should act when he gave us his "new commandment." When he said, "Love one another just as I have loved you," he altered the terms of our existence.

Isn’t it true that we start off taking responsibility first for ourselves, and only after that for others? Babies, for example, are 100% focused on their own needs and desires. But we don’t blame them for that, because a baby’s only task is to survive. As we mature we learn thoughtfulness and generosity, but we still look first to our own needs — especially on the level of survival — before we go out to take care of others. Exceptions to this are saints and heroes. For most of us, concern for others is an add-on.

God seems to have been taking this for granted when he gave the commandment which Jesus quotes earlier in the Gospel: "Love your neighbor as yourself" (see Matthew 19:19; 22:39). John Paul II interprets this as a teaching on "the duty to love oneself no less than others." And he offers it as "the basis of a true right to self-defense." John Paul does go on to say, however, that one can give up the right to self-defense "in virtue of a heroic love which deepens and transfigures the love of self into a radical self-offering, according to the spirit of the Gospel Beatitudes (cf. Mt 5:38-40). The sublime example of this self-offering is the Lord Jesus himself" (Gospel of Life, no. 55).

Obviously, now that Jesus has made it his "new commandment" that we are to love one another as he has loved us, we no longer have the option to love in any other way except "according to the spirit of the Gospel Beatitudes" and "the sublime example of... the Lord Jesus himself." We gave up the right to kill in self-defense when we became the "Lamb of God" through Baptism (see John Paul II, The Splendor of Truth, no. 21).

On a daily basis, we love others as Christ has loved us by seeing our lives on this earth as given to us for the purpose of serving others, the way Jesus came to earth, was born and lived, entirely and solely to express the love of God on earth by serving others. This reverses the priorities. Christians see life, not as something to hug tight and save, but as something to be used and given up for others in loving service (Mt. 16:25). And the greatest love of all is to "lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13). Obviously, if the greatest love is to give up life itself for others, we should find our daily experience of love in acts of giving up for others those things which are important to us in life: possessions, time, social position and prestige, power, even health. It is in losing our lives that we find life. And every time we give up anything in love for others, we hear our Lord’s voice in the background saying, "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over... for the measure you give will be the measure you get back" (Lk. 6:38) — both in this life and the next!

Baptism consecrated us to this by making us "priests in the Priest." As sharers in the unique priesthood of Jesus Christ we are committed to mediate the life of God to others by giving expression to our faith, our hope, our love, in physical, human, life-giving ways. As priests we are missioned, as Jesus was, to express the truth, the love of God to others, and to let our bodies be the medium of this expression as his was. When the invisible word of truth in our minds becomes an audible word on our lips, this human action communicates faith to others. Love expressed in physical actions becomes love received. Love received is healing and life-giving; it arouses love and communicates grace. But to express ourselves is risky. It is exposure; it is vulnerability. When we do accept the "ministry of self-expression," we begin to give and to lose ourselves in love — our flesh for the life of the world. This is Christian love.