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CHICAGO STUDIES
or talking in tongues, or prophecies, and they ask the question: "What does this mean?" Only then does an apostle explain this experience through Jesus Christ. The Word of God comes as explanation of a present experience. Most radically, what the priest is called upon to communicate is this experience, this Spirit, that which is possessive of his own life. So the priest is not simply one who is "for God," God as an object of choice and direction; nor is he simply one who is "from God," God as originator of inspiration and institutions. The first of these alone leads to fanaticism, crusades or the "management of God ;" the second, to historical and legal justification. Most profoundly, the priest must be a man "of God,'' a man whose own presence carries about some sort of sense of God, some sort of coincidence of his spirit with the Spirit of God. When we speak of one as being "of the people," or "of common sense,'' we speak of a qualitative modification of his whole person, something that characterizes everything he does, something that is around him and permeates his judgment, his values, and his speech. So also, with being "of God." Such a man speaks of God, carries about his reality, simply by what he is, by what he is identified with. The contemporary priesthood, the priesthood as a radically religious experience, is moving us to be "of God." The mystery of our own future increasingly identifies with the mystery of God; it is from him that we receive definition and hope. And in this, there is a merger of significance: for us to be, he must be. ¡The ruins around us are but the dark side of grace: the collapse of the career-priesthood, the permeating questions of our times, the inabilities to define and to justify. In this new poverty, we can once more find God, and at a more profound level perhaps than if distracted by support, and security, and by conceptual agreements. At peace and open to any question and to any evidence we find that God has become God: "For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from his; he alone is my rock and my salvation; my fortress. I shall not be shaken" (Ps. 62 :5). As the choice of the priest comes out of this experience of God, so he moves into the lives of other men. For what he communicates is not a promised program of the future, but rather the experience and presence of God.