Called as Leaders, Mediators, and Servants
The specific, unique ministry of the ordained person is a sacramental one. Priests, bishops, and to some extent, deacons preside at celebrations of the sacraments. Furthermore, like all baptized Christians, ordained ministers are called to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ. But over the centuries ordained ministers have taken on other roles as well-the roles of leader, mediator, and servant.
Leaders:
Carrying on the Work of the Apostles
In the church's tradition, ordained ministers, as leaders, carry on the work of Jesus' Apostles, the first persons called to leadership in the church. Jesus designated Peter to be the head of the new Christian community. The other Apostles were to provide leadership to the church, too, but Peter was first among them. Soon after Jesus' death and Resurrection, missionaries such as Barnabas and the Apostle Paul spread out across the Roman Empire to preach the word of God, to heal, and to form local Christian communities.
Soon many local communities were thriving - the churches of Jerusalem, Rome, Antioch, Philippi, and Ephesus, to name a few. As a local church grew in size, one of the founding Apostles selected a leader, or bishop, to head that Christian community. Evidence exists that some of the Apostles moved to the larger cities and exercised leadership there. For example, Peter led the community in Rome. (On the basis of Peter's residence and martyrdom there, the bishop of Rome-later called the pope-traditionally has held the central position of authority and leadership in the Roman Catholic church.)
In the earliest days of the church, an Apostle worked with the local church to determine who in that community was most suited for leadership as a bishop. After all the founding Apostles died, the communities selected their own bishops, usually with the advice of a bishop from another local church.
Ordination in the early church meant that a person was expected to lead the Christian community, and this characteristic is still true for bishops, priests, and deacons in the church today.
Mediators:
Putting People in Touch with God
Ordained ministers traditionally have been seen as mediators, helping the members of the Christian community to be in touch with God. Ordained ministers carry the Christian community's concerns to God, praying on the people's behalf and offering sacrifice to God for them. But the ordained also speak to the community on God's behalf, reminding them of God's word and helping them discern how that word applies to their lives.
Fr. Jack Carroll, pastor of a parish in the Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey, expressed in an interview in U.S. Catholic his sense of how important it is to be a mediator between God and his parishioners:
"The greatest thing I can do for the people of my parish . . . is to give them a love for Jesus and an understanding of how much he loves them. . . .
"If I can bring them close to Jesus, make him more real to them, let them know he's always close to them, impress on them how much he loves them . . . I want them to see that in me, and then I hope it will be a little bit contagious, that they'll want to pursue a loving relationship with Jesus. If I do that and nothing else, I'll have done my job."
Servants: Becoming Like Jesus
In the church's tradition, the ordained ministry has always included the expectation that leaders should follow the model of Jesus, who came "not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). Above all, bishops, deacons, and priests need to be servants, people who spend their lives and energies for others. At the Last Supper, when Jesus performed the servant's role of washing the feet of each Apostle, he gave an example of the loving service that his followers must give to the community (John 13:1-15).
Fr. Clifford Norman exemplifies the servant role of the ordained ministry. His story was told in a 1992 issue of Catholic Digest.
Since 1976 Father Norman has run an orphanage in Colon, Mexico, for boys and girls, most of whom have been abused and discarded by their parents. Known for his great compassion for unwanted children, Father Norman has enlisted the help-financial and labor-of people in his home diocese of Pueblo, Colorado, to expand the work of the orphanage so that it can care for some two hundred children, tots to teens, in three facilities.
Of his work, he says, "I thrive on challenge. The more difficult things are, the more interesting they become." When a visitor says to this boundlessly energetic man, "I don't know how you keep up," Father Norman just smiles and shrugs. "It's love," he says. "That's all there is to it."
In recent decades, especially since Vatican Council II in the early 1960s, the church has renewed and broadened its understanding of priesthood, reemphasizing the meaning it had in the early church. Particularly in the first century, the whole Christian community was seen as sharing in Jesus' priestly function. By virtue of their baptism, all Christians were to act after the model of Jesus, the High Priest, who most clearly revealed God to human beings. But this understanding was somewhat obscured over the centuries of the church's history.
Today, however, Catholic Christians are rediscovering the sense that they, along with the clergy, are called to roles of leadership, mediation, and servanthood. Many aspects of the roles that for many centuries were considered exclusive to the clergy are now being shared with the laity, the laypeople. Thus the essential role of bishops, deacons, and priests-their leadership in sacramental ministry-has been able to stand out even more clearly.