Baptising with water - A meditation on priesthood

Some years ago, Prof Tom Groome of Boston College spoke to a group of priests at the Regional Seminary on the topic of ministry. He said most priests of his generation exercised their ministry according to the “messianic” model.

In this model the priest was encouraged to be a “messiah” to his parishioners: he was to visit every sick, heal every wound, counsel everybody, hear every confession, celebrate every Mass and answer every telephone call.

Leisure was a luxury he could ill afford; he was to be totally available to his people, twenty-four hours a day. This model led the priest to think he was a superman, a kind of god even, who held the well-being of his parish in his hands.

Fortunately for us priests, that kind of model can no longer work in today's world. The work is too much, with too few priests. Ministry has also become more specialised, with lay people being just as competent and, in many instances, more competent than priests.

The demise of this “messianic” model of priesthood was providential because it encouraged priests to be humble.

It made us aware that professional lay people (e.g. psychologists, trained counsellors etc) can counsel people better than we can; that bankers, businessmen and accountants are better at finances than we are; that married couples offer wisdom we cannot offer when it comes to healing broken marriages or setting the wayward teenager back on track.

It made us aware of the role of John the Baptist and our own role, that we are but “ messengers ”, nothing more. John no doubt commanded people's attention: his strange home – “ the wilderness ”; his austere diet – “ locusts and wild honey ”; his unusual clothing – “ camel skin. ” The people thought him great, yet all he was called to do was “ prepare a way for the Lord. ”

We, too, sometimes think we are great: we build grand churches and parish halls; we raise millions of dollars; we found NGOs and are sought after as a preacher or teacher; we have presided at the weddings of the nationally famous and have influenced government policy in certain fields.

The life of John Paul II comes to mind: his great gesture of reconciliation to the Jewish people, his monumental strides in inter-religious dialogue, his influence in the collapse of the Iron Curtain, his universal appeal to the young and his indefatigable world journeys.

Yet his final days were the epitome of dependency: having to be assisted while walking, needing people to read his speeches, to be fed via tubes and, finally, like so many common folk, to be crushed under the weight of Parkinson's disease.

Yet even such a great life was but the life of a “ messenger ”, a John the Baptist - “ a sign of contradiction ” - called to prepare the way and nothing more. We need to remember we are not the Messiah. All we can do is “ baptise with water ”; only Jesus baptises “ with the Holy Spirit. ”

I also think of the great Angelic Doctor, St Thomas Aquinas, that unrivalled intellectual giant of western theology. After his prodigious output he had a vision of the Lord, which so humbled him that all he could say after the experience was: “All that I have written seems like so much straw.”

He discovered more profoundly than ever before that all he could do was “ baptise with water ”, like me, like you.

Lord, we thank you for the moment when we recognised that we were but messengers called to prepare your way. We thank you for the people we baptised, those we called to repentance and those whose sins you forgave through us. We thank you for humiliating us and making us see we are sinners like everybody else, searching for grace.

We ask you to forgive us for the times we wanted to be more than messengers, when we wanted to be messiahs, misled by illusions of grandeur, thinking that the world rested on our shoulders. We forget that there is someone more powerful than we are and we are not fit to kneel down and undo the strap of his sandals.

We pray that after we have gazed over all our successes and achievements we shall say “all we were really able to do was baptise with water”. Teach us to stand back and allow the Spirit of Jesus to baptise the little work we have done and the few lives we have touched. Amen.

Gospel meditations for the month of December are by Fr Martin Sirju, parish priest of Princes Town.