‘The self-imposed constraints on an effective priesthood’
On the last day of the 2025 school year, as is traditional at my school we started the day with a Christmas liturgy for all teaching and non-teaching staff, followed by farewell speeches for those not returning the following year. A congregation of over one hundred well educated, mostly catholic, mostly non-regular mass attendees. As I was retiring, I was asked to provide the reflection on the liturgy readings which were taken from the upcoming Fourth Sunday of Advent (Isiah 7:10-14, Matthew 1:18-25). Subsequently upon attending this Sunday Mass, I was able to compare my reflection with the homily given by our local Parish Priest. This comparison proved to be insightful.
Of course, my Parish Priest’s homily, as most Parish Priests homilies on that Sunday would have, incorporated an implicit belief in the doctrinal position captured in the Nicene Creed, that: “he (Jesus) came down from heaven, by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.” And while this orthodoxy may have been reassuring to some, to many it simply reinforces their rationale for not attending mass and not seriously engaging with the relevance of Christian scripture to their lives. And it was this later group I wanted to address in the following reflection.
Liturgy Readings:
Isaiah 7:14 – Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.
Matthew 1:18-25 – Joseph Accepts Jesus as His Son.
This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.
Reflection:
It’s very easy to let these sorts of fanciful stories, stories of ‘virgin births’ just wash over us, with minimal motivation to relate them to our lives today, precisely because they are so fanciful.
While there are understandable reasons why ‘virgin births’ are used in sacred stories, in the 21st century such ‘memory’ devices are a distraction from more relevant reflections.
Having faith in God is a challenge, but is the real challenge, about believing the unbelievable? No one is literally, biologically, conceived of the Holy Spirit! Or are there perhaps deeper faith challenges to ponder?
Joseph is presented as a man of faith, who had big problem! He knew Mary’s child was not his!
Initially, using his own reasoning and compassion for Mary, he decides for a quiet divorce, but that wasn’t the end of it. He is also presented as a figure who is humble enough to realise the limits of his own reasoning and as someone who accepts the value of an intuition, a revelation, an insight from a higher source.
So, stimulated by a dream, he decides to put aside his misgivings, and trusting this inner voice, marries Mary as planned and thereby providing a potentially better outcome for Mary and child.
Within the humanity of this dilemma, lies a useful reflection on the real challenge and nature of faith. Intuitions, revelations, dreams, are often vague, somewhat fuzzy, and of dubious authority, not to mention annoying, when they challenge our ego driven plans.
It takes courage to enact a significant change in one’s life, or one’s attitude, in response to such insights, it takes some faith; some trust, in a ‘transcendent providence’ that has ‘our back’. That says go this way, do this thing, it will work out OK!
A further reflection on these readings is to recognise that religions exist because of our questions about birth, life & death.
In the year 451, after centuries of theological debate, Christianity formalised the doctrine that Jesus was both fully Human and fully God.
First century Christians however, had no doubt Jesus was Fully Human. They lived with him or knew people who did. And it was the way he lived as a human being, just like them, that sparked their interest, and especially the way he handled his impending death by crucifixion, that had a big impact on them.
For second century Christians, martyrdom was common, and in the fulcrum of this context, death was viewed as a second birth and the final act in becoming a completed human being.
In the 21st century, we have a vastly expanded scientific appreciation of the cosmos, within which, all births are intimately tied to death, nothing escapes. The universe, galaxies, suns, planets, all life forms, pass through the birth, life, death process.
So, by nature, a human life entails a process of ‘letting go’, an acceptance that just as we were born without our consent or foreknowledge, our death is also a birth into another unknown, an experience to be embraced positively, despite the attendant suffering.
Like Joseph, to live in a way that:
- embraces our embeddedness with others,
- does not cling too tightly to an ego limited version of our self, and
- seeks to play a positive life-giving part, in life.
Before we to face our birth into, that which is currently beyond our full conception.
It was heartening to receive many positive affirmations of the above reflection from colleagues.
Whether living in the first or the fourth or the 21st century, Christians are always confronted with the problem of recognising the presence of God in the risen Christ. John Behr, Orthodox Theologian and expert in the patristic period, highlights beautifully the way the early resurrection accounts depict how disciples were unable to recognize him nor make sense of the meaning of his life and death until they went back to the Hebrew scriptures. In re-reading these sacred texts they found allusions and references to a new messiah, a saviour, which enabled them to make sense of their resurrection experiences and formulate some answers to their questions about Jesus.
As 21st century Christians, we do the same with the assistance of the Christian scriptures and the doctrines formalised during the 4th & 5th centuries. However, we do so within a vastly differing context and worldview. It appears to me that most parish priests constrain themselves within the confines of a narrow orthodoxy dictated by the language and contexts that gave rise to this orthodoxy and thereby limit the effectiveness of their homilies because they are not relating this to mature educated 21st century minds.
Constructively resolving the tensions arising from such differing time bound contexts, firstly requires a recognition of the normal life stages human beings travel through in their development of spiritual insight and wisdom and secondly requires a recognition of the power of both scripture and doctrinal statements to simultaneously address people who are at different stages of life. Children and young adults appreciate the value of a certain literal simplicity, while mature adults and elders can appreciate the spiritual and theological depth conveyed through language that is understood to be working metaphorically and symbolically, rather than literally. When it comes to humans trying to define a transcendent God, even when incarnate in the fully human Jesus, we need to humbly appreciate both the power and the limitations of our language.
Rather than trying to change or argue against the doctrines laid down in our creeds, as these historical artifacts contain an ongoing relevance as foundational references in the formulation of the Christian worldview, I suggest we realise within ourselves the deeper meaning of these texts for our lives today and encourage our priests to: unshackle themselves from their self-imposed constraints of sticking to simple literal orthodoxy, and integrate into their homily’s recognition of 21stcentury scientific cosmology and 21st century psychological insights into human nature. An appreciation of the multivalent nature of symbolic language makes it possible to pay respect to the tradition and our contemporary context at the same time.