Page 5 - The Priest, Summer 2015

Most Rev Athanasius Schneider ORC, auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, and a scholar in patristics, was keynote speaker at the 2015 national conference. This is one of three keynote lectures he delivered in Hobart.
There is a story in the life of the Holy Curé of Ars that goes like this: St Jean Marie Vianney, was on his the way to Ars, his rst assignment, when he came to a fork in the road. Not knowing how to continue, it so happened that a boy from Ars came along. The young priest asked the local if he could point the way to Ars. After the boy had obliged, the priest replied, “You have shown me the way to Ars; now I will show you the way to heaven!”
To show the way to heaven. That is the rst and foremost duty of the priest and the hierarchy. Christ alone is the way, the only way to heaven, because he alone is the Life and the Truth (cf. Jn 14:6). The priest leads men to heaven by giving them the divine life of grace by means of the sacra- ments, and the truth by means of the Mag- isterium of the Church.
The dogmatic basis for understanding the ministerial priesthood is the priest- hood of Christ himself, the Son of God made man. The mystery of the Incarna- tion — more properly speaking, the hypo- static union — is the key to understanding this. The human nature of Christ is pro-
vided with the highest grace possible: the grace of hypostatic union with the second Person of the most holy Trinity. Because of this grace, Christ is a priest forever. His most sublime priestly function is the offer- ing of the redeeming sacri ce of the cross, which has the endless expiatory value and the in nite value of divine adoration. Be- ing both priest and victim (sacerdos et hos- tia), he reveals, in a living and concrete way, his priestly dignity. The eternal Word, the second Person of the Trinity, possesses and sancti es the humanity of Christ, and thus his priesthood. The personal being of the Son gives in nite value to Christ’s sacri ce and to each and every holy Mass. The humanity of Christ is the instrument, united directly to the Godhead (instrumen- tum coniunctum Divinitati).
The need for personal holiness
To be the priestly image of Christ and his living instrument, on the part of the human priest, requires being an image and an ever more docile instrument of Christ, also as regards the priest’s per- sonal morality. In the traditional rite of ordination, the newly ordained are ad-
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Journal of the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy
The priest as instrument
of holiness and truth
by Most Rev Athanasius Schneider ORC