SACRAMENTS
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his precise role and identity. His first task is to understand and appreciate the difference between ministry and the tasks of ministry. In doing so, the priest is not the lonely isolate figure in sole contact with God, but he becomes the leader of the community in calling upon others to share in his responsibility. His second task is to rellect on the experience of the secular and the sacred which is inherent in each sacrament. The priest is asked to add a reverse process to his religious task. Sacraments demand the use of the secular sign to effect the religious reality. The priest has the opportunity to take the religious reality and apply it to wider understandings of the secular experience. It might seem strange that in this era of emphasis on the ministerial expectations of the total Christian community, a cali is articulated to specify the role of the priest. Nathan Mitchell, O.S.R expresses an interesting insight into this question. "Ministerial roles have, then, a symbolic dimension which demands that the ordained person be more in the community than sim ply a nice guy among nice guys. To smudge or obliterate the distinction of roles in the Christian¡community is finally self-defeating, because it leaves everyone, ordained and non-ordained alike, in an amorphous, roleless condition. And without roles, people are quite literally nobody. If the theological content of Christian ministry implies the creation of a specifie set of relationships in self-emptying love, then role maintenance is essential for the continuing !ife of Christian communities. Ministry is as ridiculous in a roleless chm¡ch as marriage would be in a sexless society. In any community, the failure of adequate role-distinction and the absence of a credible symbolic center results in massive social dislocation. A church without a 'holy order' diverts itself into a collection of ecclesiastical drifters." (Worship, Vol. 48, No. 6). The traditional role of the priest as minitser of the sacraments offers the priest a unique opportunity to discover his own identity and to define his role in the Church today. If the opportunity is taken, the result could weil be not only an ever increasing experience of leading men to God, but also bringing God back to men.