June 14, 1996

To my dear brothers in the presbyterate:

As you know from his Letter to Priests (Holy Thursday this year) our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II celebrates this year his Golden Jubilee as a priest. His ordination to the priesthood took place on the Feast of All Saints, 1 November 1946, with the Church in Poland under communist persecution. On 29 June this day, the day we here in the Philippines annually set aside as Pope’s Day, I would want all of us to join him in remembering his fifty dedicated years of service in the priestly ministry.

Last year we celebrated two days of prayer for the sanctification of priests in our archdiocese on the Feast of the Sacred Heart and that of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This year I am asking all of you, in union with Pope John Paul II on the golden anniversary of his ordination, to set aside the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, 29 June, as a special day of prayer for the Holy Father, and also for the priests in our archdiocese and in the Church.

When Pope John Paul II made his first visit to France, he said that the day of his ordination to the presbyterate was, he believed, the most significant day of his life: not the day of his consecration as bishop, nor that of his elevation to the cardinalate or even to the papacy. No, it was the day when he received the sacrament of the priesthood. Surely every ordained priest will echo the sentiments of our Holy Father. Well do I recall my own priestly ordination on 3 April 1954, that morning when I felt Bishop Frondosa’s hands on my head, my eyes blinded with tears of a joy that was truly an undeserved gift of God.

As the Holy Father reminds us in his Holy Thursday letter, our first duty as we reflect on our priesthood is that of gratitude, gratitude from the deep heart for the gift of our vocation and that “second gift” which is ordination itself. How can we ever thank God enough for such gifts? gifts whose value beyond all earthly price we can only glimpse and wonder at, but can never adequately appreciate? To be counted among the Lord’s closest friends (“I shall not call you servants... instead, I call you my friends,” Jn 15:15); to receive the gift of the Spirit which marks us with the seal of the Good Shepherd, so that we may give ourselves and our lives more and more fully to Jesus and His own flock (Jn 21:15-19); in the midst of His holy people to be His visible sacraments above all at the Eucharist, truly for us, our priesthood is “the joy of all our days” and the very meaning of our lives.

Two years ago, on the occasion of my 40th anniversary of ordination, I shared with you, my dear brother priests, my reflections on “the priest: shepherd and representative of Christ.” I may perhaps be allowed to send you back to that small booklet which many of you (as you were kind enough to tell me) found helpful for meditation and prayer.

For this year’s feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, let me first suggest for your reflection that moving text from the First Letter of Peter:

Now I have something to tell you presbyters (elders, presbuteroi): I am an elder myself and a witness to the sufferings of Christ, and with you I have a share in the glory that is to be revealed. Be shepherds of the flock of God that is entrusted to you. Watch over it, not simply as a duty, but gladly, because God wants it; not for sordid money but because you are eager to do it. Never be a dictator over any group that is put in your charge, but be an example that the whole flock can follow. When the chief shepherd appears, you will be given the crown of unfading glory (1 Pt 5:1-14).

That passage, so rich in doctrine and also so very down-to-earth in its counsels, may be fruitfully joined in prayer to the address which Luke gives us as St. Paul’s parting message to the presbyters at Miletus in Acts 20:17-37 — beautiful and deeply moving words on what being a servant leader and shepherd means, following in the footsteps of Jesus and also of Paul, — words which deserve to be read and prayed over again and again by us.

And lastly, we must return to that scene by the lake of Galilee in John 21:15-19, which some spiritual writers liken to an ordination event, when the crucified and risen Lord commissions Peter to be the first of the shepherds after Him, when He so wisely demands from Peter the threefold profession of his own faithful love, when He foretells that Peter — as disciple of the Good Shepherd — will also be asked to lay down his life for the flock.

If you will allow me to repeat what I wrote in my letter to you (1994):

I want, with you, to go back to that scene, so beloved by all of us... Placing ourselves with Peter at the lakeside, we walk again with Jesus. We hear again the words, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Jesus is exacting from Peter a threefold avowal of loyalty and love, to make up for his threefold denial. This “re-take examination” reaches into our hearts with a certain pain, because we know only too well how often, in small or even great ways, we ourselves have denied the Lord. We too have looked into His eyes as He goes through His passion, and we have wept bitterly also for we too are sinners like Peter. And haltingly, we answer Jesus with Peter’s words, “Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you!” Jesus has to know all things, to know that we love Him! This avowal of our love we must make to the Lord again and again, and it must be an unfailing part of our daily prayer. Each day on our knees, each day at the altar, each evening before the eucharistic presence of the Good Shepherd, we must repeat Peter’s words, so that those words will be more and more the constant refrain of our existence, the song of songs of our lives. “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you!” If we do this, He will give us the grace to really love Him, in our hearts, with all our being, in our lives. His Holy Spirit can work that miracle in us, my dear brothers. Let us believe it; let us desire it. Let us make it the one great longing of our souls.

I have suggested, my dear brother priests, these three texts for our prayer as we renew our gratitude to the Lord for the gift of our own priestly ordination. Now I would like to touch on three points in our priestly life as “points for renewal in our day-to-day” existence. They are our prayer before our Lord in the blessed sacrament, our faithful reading of the breviary, and our need and duty to constantly update ourselves through “ongoing formation,” especially in our knowledge and understanding of Church teaching (the most recent pronouncements of the Holy Father first of all), of contemporary developments in theology and canon law. Let me address, very briefly, these three points.

Prayer before the Lord in the Eucharist

We know, dear brother priests, that prayer for us is not an “optional matter”; in a true sense it is a “matter of life and death” for our priesthood. It is prayer which keeps our mind and heart in contact with the Lord and His Spirit; it is prayer which constantly keeps us present in the world of faith. Without prayer our faith dims, and the attitudes and values of “the world” take over our minds and hearts. If through the absence of prayer in our lives we become secularized (in the wrong way!), how can we be “salt of the earth and light of the world”... true men of God in a “worldly world?”

Let us be down-to-earth about our prayer; let us take practical resolutions. We know we have to make time for our prayer. How? How often we have been reminded in our retreats that St. John Baptist Marie Vianney, that model of parish priests, “was fascinated by the mystery of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist and spent long hours before the altar in silent and intense adoration.” This was a man who had no time even to take his meals, a priest to whose confessional people flocked from all over France. Yet he found time, he made time, for hours of prayer before the blessed sacrament. So must we. Not despite our busyness and the demands of our ministry, but precisely because of them. Now that many of our parishioners spend an hour or even more in our “blessed sacrament chapels,” should we not resolve to make a Holy Hour daily, either at the first hour of our waking day or at its last hour, before we turn in for sleep? Let us realistically consider how much time we spend before our TV sets or at — useful, even necessary — meetings. And how much time do we spend before our Lord in the Eucharist? It is a matter of setting priorities, faith-priorities. Believe me, what our faith tells us about this is right, and if we give the Lord our time, “make time for the Lord” — our work will gain, in the effectivity and depth that really matter, because it is the Lord who will enable us to think and speak and act in His Spirit.

You yourselves know this and believe this. What we lack is just the doing of it.

Reading the Divine Office

We all know of priests who find the recitation of the Divine Office a real burden; we know of some who have convinced themselves that “there is no point” to praying the breviary and either omit it all too easily or have abandoned it altogether. This is truly very sad. Not only is it the official prayer of the Church. There is also the encouraging thought that in reciting psalms we pray as Jesus prayed. It is also true that in praying the hours of the Divine Office we pray with our fellow-priests, with religious and lay people in the Church all over the world, and in a true sense Christ prays in us and through us in the Church. Once again we are reminded of this each year in our retreats. We make resolves to pray our breviary with attention and devotion, but perhaps find it hard to be faithful to these good intentions. Let us begin again, if we have failed.

It has been well said that one of the great gifts of praying with the Church [at Mass and with the breviary] is that it puts us “in tune with the will of the Father” and thus slowly creates in us “a vision of the whole Church of what it is called to be”:

a community in tune; in tune with the continual intercession of Jesus in heaven; in tune with all the movements of knowing and loving and sending that are taking place at the heart of the mystery of the Trinity. The call of God to the Church is to be a community of believers, in tune with the deepest desires of the divine persons, of the whole communion of saints, of the whole human family. The call to Christian unity on every level is a call to be in tune (Thomas Lane CM, A Priesthood in Tune, 138).

Thus, the prayer of the Church as Christ’s own body, is a very true and very deep sense the very prayer which Christ now addresses to the Father.

In the Divine Office, “our voices re-echo in Christ and His in us.” In the fully harmonized prayer of Body and Head is the source of personal prayer for the individual and the prayer of the intercession of a Church inseparably united to the interceding Christ (ibid, 140).

Much, much more could be said on our need of prayer, and on the peace and joy which prayer itself becomes, if we strive to be faithful to it. Because God blesses us, mostly gradually and slowly, but sometimes suddenly, with the gift of prayer. And then prayer becomes the joy of all our life as priests of Christ Priest and Shepherd, who intercedes on our behalf always and forever at the right hand of the Father (cf. Heb cc. 8-10).

“Updating” and Ongoing Formation

Lastly, one word about ongoing formation for us priests.

In his lengthy apostolic letter, Pastores dabo vobis (I will give you shepherds), Pope John Paul II dedicates an entire chapter (185-218, in the Vatican edition) to “the Ongoing Formation of Priests.” He reminds us that we priests need “continuing personal growth” because “every life is a constant path toward maturity, a maturity which cannot be attained except by constant formation” (PDV, 187).

It is also demanded by the priestly ministry seen in a general way and taken in common with other professions, that is, as a service directed to others. There is no profession, job or work which does not require constant updating, if it is to remain current and effective. The need to “keep pace” with the path of history is another human reason justifying ongoing formation (PDV, ibid.).

Over and above these considerations are, of course, the theological motivations for ongoing formation, which the Holy Father constantly speaks of, when he addresses priests. Thus I refer you to the pages in Pastores dabo vobis where he exhorts all of us to undertake our own ongoing formation, this “rekindling of the gift of God that is within [us]” (2 Tim 1, 6) as our own personal responsibility (PDV, 190 ff.).

In a certain sense, it is the priest himself, the individual priest, who is the person primarily responsible in the Church for on-going formation. Truly each priest has the duty, rooted in the Sacrament of Holy Orders, to be faithful to the gift God has given him and to respond to the call for daily conversion which comes with the gift itself. The regulations and norms established by Church authority, as also the examples given by other priests, are not enough to make permanent formation attractive unless the individual priest is determined to make use of the opportunities, times and norms in which it comes. Ongoing formation keeps up one’s “youthfulness” of spirit, which is something that cannot be imposed from without. Each priest must continually find it within himself. Only those who keep ever alive their desire to learn and grow can be said to enjoy this “youthfulness” (PDV, 213-214).

Much more can be said, but I will not develop this further for now. The Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP-II) tells us that we priests must “update [ourselves] in areas... such as Scriptures, theology, Church social teachings and the use of various media for message and value communication, reflection and prayer for growth in personhood and shepherding” (PCP-II, 571). It also echoes the Holy Father’s insistence that for ongoing formation, “the responsibility of the Bishop, and with him, of the presbyterate, is fundamental” (PDV, 214, # 79).

Perhaps I need only add that the present Roman Pontiff has sent us documents of the most fundamental value for our theological and pastoral updating, such as Veritatis Splendor and Evangelium Vitae, texts which we must make our reading- and-study assignments. At this point I also want to urge our priests to read and reflect on Tertio Millennio Adveniente (TMA) where the Holy Father presents the Church throughout the world with a grand three-year program of intense preparation for the Jubilee Year 2000.

I believe we can give the Holy Father no more beautiful gift, a gift he would certainly appreciate, than to study and make our own this manifesto in which he sets forth what he considers “the hermeneutical key of [his] entire pontificate” — the preparation for the Third Millennium through a great renewal of Christian life and witness all over the world.

We will note too that he dedicates the year 1997 to Jesus Christ better known, loved more intensely and followed in discipleship ever more closely and radically. The Pope asks us to make the coming year a year given over to proclaiming Jesus Christ and His Gospel with a renewed love, fervor, enthusiasm and all our energies. He challenges us, us Filipino Christians especially, to “tell the world of His love”! How can we, as priests of Jesus Christ, respond to the Pope’s clarion call to make Our Lord better known, more greatly loved, more generously followed?

What I had begun as a fraternal letter to you, my dear brother priests, has grown longer because there is so much which my mind and heart wish to share with you. As I end, let me return to what I said at the beginning. I would ask all of you, my dear priests in the archdiocese, to set aside “Pope’s Day,” 29 June 1996, as a day of special prayer for His Holiness, our beloved Pope John Paul II, recalling his day of priestly ordination fifty years ago. (The actual anniversary date, as I noted earlier, is 1 November, but surely it is not too early to keep his jubilee in our prayers and in our hearts!) Let this commemoration be also a re-kindling “of the holy grace of the priestly ordination” of each of us. Let it be a re-dedication of our priestly hearts and our priestly lives to our Lord the Great Shepherd and the one High Priest, and to His holy Church. Let it be a moment of renewed gratitude, of renewed commitment, of renewed hope, for each one of us and for all of us.

As the Pope, that greatly loving son of Mary, always does, let us end by turning to Our Blessed Mother, Mother of Jesus the Priest, Mother of all priests, and ask her to accompany us in our Day of Priestly Prayer for the Holy Father and for all priests. May she bring us priests day by day ever closer to her Son.

As I close, I embrace each of you, my dear brother priests, fraternally and with much affection, in the Heart of Jesus, on whose feast day I send you this, and on the eve of the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary His Mother.

I love you all very dearly, in these Two Hearts!

(Sgd.) + JAIME L. Cardinal SIN, D.D.

Archbishop of Manila

June 14, 1996