For eternity : restoring the priesthood and our spiritual fatherhood / Cardinal Robert Sarah, Michael J. Miller.

"Some ask themselves whether the priesthood itself is not in doubt. Here and there we see proposals crop up to change the institution, to renew it, to modernize it. All these initiatives would be legitimate if the priesthood were a human institution. But we did not invent the priesthood; it is a gift from God. You do not reform a divine gift by loading it down with human ideas so as to conform it to current tastes. On the contrary, you restore it by removing from it the layers of whitewash that prevent the original from revealing its splendor. Unfortunately, some have used the priesthood to satisfy their desire to sin. They have hijacked the meaning of priestly ordination. They have perverted the very meaning of the words. For example, when we say that the priest is identified with Christ to the point of becoming "another Christ," we never give this statement a psycho- logical sense. The priest is by no means all-powerful. No one owes Introduction 3 him blind obedience. Being identified with Christ gives the priest no right at all to command others or to satisfy his whims. On the contrary, being another Christ obliges the priest to become the least of servants; being another Christ obliges the priest to have a chaste, unlimited respect for everyone; being another Christ obliges me to get up on the Cross. Ordination does not put us on a throne but on the Cross. Let us not allow a few perverts to steal from us the very beautiful and very demanding words of the Christian tradition. The mystical and spiritual identification of the priest with Christ leads to no abuse if it is lived out in truth. Let us not be afraid to restore to these very demanding words their profound meaning. The priesthood obliges us to shine with holiness. "Indeed," Saint John Chrysostom declares, "the soul of the priest must be purer than the rays of the sun, so that the Holy Spirit might never abandon him, so that he may be able to say: I no longer live, but Christ lives in me."1 The priesthood is the Church's most valuable possession. It should irradiate the world with the light and holiness of God. No sanctification is possible without the priesthood, "for just as no light would rise over the earth without the sun, so too without the priesthood no more grace or holiness would come to us in the Church. The sun pours out its luminous rays on the world; the priesthood works in all souls, lavishly bestows its gifts, and spreads over everyone the perfume of its holiness. The purpose for which Christ instituted it was that the Church might receive from it all her sanctification, all her beauty, all her splendor."2"--