LET US BE TRUE PRIESTS OF THE CHURCH FOR THE POOR
By RICARDO J. CARDINAL VIDAL
Archbishop of Cebu

(Homily delivered at the mass for the 75 th birth anniversary of Gaudencio B. Cardinal Rosales, Archbishop of Manila, on August 8, 2007 at the Arzobispado de Manila Chapel, Intramuros, Manila.)

Your Eminence Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales,
Your Excellencies, my Brother Bishops, my Brother Priests,
My dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

In this intimate gathering of Manila clergy, I feel almost an outsider. My affection and esteem for Cardinal Dency, however, enable me to be a part of this celebration with you in spite of being an outsider. I rejoice with Cardinal Dency on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, and I thank the Lord for sending us someone who has offered a new vision not only for Manila but also for the Philippines.

In the first reading today, we see the Israelites overcome by fear upon seeing the inhabitants of Canaan. “We felt like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” (Nm 13:33) The people then complained against Moses, wishing they had stayed in Egypt and died in the desert. They were a hard-hearted people, always clinging on to their old way of life even when God revealed to them His mighty hand. In the Gospel reading, we see Jesus taking on a significant step in His mission. No longer was he limiting himself to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel,” (Mt. 15:24), the faith of the Canaanite woman had “opened the door of faith to the Gentiles.” (Acts 14-27)

The shift of emphasis and the broadening of the mission were not always welcome events in the life of the Church. Early on in the history of the Church, the way to deal with the Gentile converts occasioned the Council of Jerusalem. Tension was palpable among the leaders of the early Church, but their desire to always do the will of God opened them to the new direction the Holy Spirit had indicated.

The Church in Manila is experiencing new and exciting things. Not only has it become smaller, it has also given greater emphasis to serving the needs of the poor. Manila has continued to lead among the Dioceses of the Philippines, this time, by taking the radical initiative of directly serving the poorest of its members. Nowhere is the ideal of becoming a Church of the Poor made more tangible than the initiative of His Eminence to organize the Pondo ng Pinoy.

The initiative, no doubt, has given a greater challenge to all of you, my brother priests. It is not enough after all, to simply preach to the people about the values of frugality, simplicity and generosity. One has to actually live what you preach in order to make people understand what you are saying. Stewardship, after all, is not possible if one thinks more of himself than the mission he has been tasked to do.

The mission of the priest is to act in the person of Christ so that the Lord’s mission of salvation may continue in the world. This mission does not mean to stand as substitute for the Lord, but to let go of one’s life so that the Lord will truly live in one’s self. As Saint Paul says in his Letter to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me.” (Gal. 2:20) The trouble with us priests is that sometimes, we do not live for Christ, we live for ourselves.

We begin to live for others when we make plans that exclude the Lord from our lives. We serve the Lord as an employee serves his employer, reporting for work on appointed times but going home to an entirely different set of relationships outside the ministerial duties. Sometimes, an employee treats his employer better than we treat the Lord. At least an employee, afraid of getting the boot, shapes up when corrected. Some priests take the Lord for granted; more like how an unfaithful husband treats his wife. A husband reasons he also needs to enjoy life, and sets aside his wife, as if the wife were a hindrance to his being human. Is this not the same treatment the Lord gets, when the priest reasons he also has to enjoy life, and sets the Lord aside as if the Lord were a hindrance to his being human?

This is the great confusion of our times, when human formation gets to be divorced from spiritual formation. St. Thomas Aquinas once prayed: “May all the joys in which You have no part weary me. Work done for you is pleasure. Relaxation without You is tedious.” If we live for Christ, there is no part in us that is not given to His will, no space that is not filled with His presence. We cannot slip in or out of our priestly identity. We are priests forever, everywhere and in every way.

Helping the poor therefore is not just a program. It is our mission. Being poor is not just a choice, it is a demand of our vocation. Young priests today need time to recognize the radicality of God’s call. Unfortunately, some older priests never realize it even in their old age. The Lord, for His part, continues to be patient with us. Like a faithful wife waiting for her husband to get out of his mid-life crisis, the Lord waits for his priests to get out of their attachment to the world and to their own selves.

Each day, the Lord guides us to seeing things His way. Each day He nudges us to become the priests he has called us to be. Whenever changes happen in the world, in the Church and in out dioceses, we are always called towards greater fidelity to our mission. May the shift in your pastoral thrust make you truly priests of a Church for the Poor. May you become good and faithful stewards in living what you preach. Amen.