"Power in the sense of the authority of Jesus Christ is power that arises from a relationship; it is power that is imparted in obedience and returns in responsibility. If this is true, then it follows that priests and correspondingly Christians in general must be people who live from and in a relationship--the relationship with God. The priest must be a believer, one who converses with God. If this is not the case, then all his activities are futile. The most lofty and important thing a priest can do for people is first of all being what he is: a believer. Through faith he lets God, the other, come into the world. And if the other is not at work, our work will never be enough. When people sense that one is there who believes, who lives with God and from God, hope becomes a reality for them as well. Through the faith of the priest, doors open up all around for the people: it is really possible to believe, even today. All human believing is believing-with, and for this reason the one who believes before us is so important. In many ways this person is more exposed in his faith than the others, since their faith depends on his and since, at any given time, he has to withstand the hardships of faith for them. This is the reason why crises of the Church and of faith often make themselves felt sooner and more acutely among priests and religious than among the laity. There is also the danger that a priest takes the world of faith for granted or that it irritates him, that he becomes tired of it, first like the younger brother in the parable and then like the older. When this happens, people in the world, especially those who have found their way back to faith after experiencing the emptiness of the world, can do for him what the homecoming of the younger brother did for the older. They have experienced the deserts of the world and rediscovered the beauty of the house which has become a burden for the one who stayed. In this way there is a mutual give-and-take in faith in which priests and lay people become mediators of the nearness of God for one another. The priest must also nurture the humility of such receiving in himself. He must not allow that pride to awaken in him which we detect in the older brother: this good-for-nothing who is now enjoying home knows nothing about the burden of faithfulness. In our situation this pride often appears as a kind of arrogance that is typical of a specialist: What do these believing people in the world even know about the questions of biblical criticism and all the other kinds of criticism? What do they know about the misuse of power in the Church and about all the misery that is part of the Church's history? The arrogance of the specialist in matters of faith is a particularly intractable kind of blindness that is part of every know-it-all attitude. The faith that rediscovers the fresh water of God's word in the desert of a world emptied of God, at the pigs' trough of entertainment sprees gone hollow, such a faith may be inferior to the specialist in terms of knowledge about biblical text criticism, but for discerning the real that can be drawn from this well it is often infinitely superior to him. There will always be the fatigue of the older brother, but it should not lead to that intransigence which is no longer capable of hearing the wonderful words of the father: Everything I have is yours. The priest has to believe before others, but he also must be humble enough again and again to imitate and to cooperate with their faith. He strengthens their faith, but he also constantly receives faith from them.
"By no means do we take it for granted when we say: We first let God's strength into the world by believing in him. The first 'task' a priest has to do is to be a believer and to become one ever anew and ever more. Faith is never simply there automatically; it must be lived. It leads us into conversation with God which involves speaking and listening to the same degree. Faith and prayer belong together; they cannot be separated. The time spent by a priest on prayer and listening to Scripture is never time lost to pastoral care or time withheld from others. People sense whether the work and words of their pastor spring from prayer or are fabricated at his desk. Above and beyond all activity, he must carry his congregation in prayer and into prayer and thus entrust it to God's power. Mutual give-and-take is certainly necessary here as well: praying always means praying with the whole praying Church, and hearing the Scriptures properly can take place only when listening with the Church."
Joseph Ratzinger, A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today, New York: Crossroad, 1997, 46-48. (From "God's Power--Our Hope", a lecture given in Dresden, 1987.)
_Painting_by_Philippe_-_(MeisterDrucke-1002935).jpg)
