September 18, 2009
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hen The Anchor asked me to write this article about my experience of the priesthood, I was at a loss about what to write. After all, as I write this, I have been a priest for less than a year, during which I have mostly done exactly what I did for the past 20 years of my life: study. The most time I have spent in a parish since I entered seminary is a couple months, and so I haven’t had so many of those rewarding experiences that priest so often reflect upon. I have never witnessed a marriage; though I carry the oil of the sick everywhere, only once have I used it; I have a mere three baptisms under my belt, and not even one confirmation. For me, the priesthood is still a daily surprise, so what aspect of the priesthood can I speak about? After much thought I realized that although I have not yet experienced many of the things people associate with the highpoints of the priesthood, I have experienced its heart — at Mass and in the confessional — and with those people I have met along the way, I have experiences the friendship of Christ. A priest offers sacrifice for
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ith some 60 million adherents, Lutheranism is the largest branch of Protestantism. Most Lutheran denominations belong to the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), founded in 1947 in Sweden and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Well over half the world’s Lutherans live in Germany and the countries of Scandinavia, where Lutheranism originally took root. A distinguishing feature of Lutheranism is its affirmation of both “evangelical” and “catholic” ideas: a passion for the biblical and preached Word and the proclamation of forgiveness through faith in Christ’s saving work, synthesized with a spiritual life centered on baptismal regeneration and belief in the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Traditional Lutheran worship is liturgical to a greater degree than that of most Protestants. The Lutheran Divine Service resembles the Catholic Mass from which it was adapted, minus the sacrificial vocabulary. On the altar of a typical Lutheran church is either a crucifix or a plain cross, candles, the Bible, and flowers. Ministers wear the historic chasuble for the Divine Service and the cassock with surplice and stole for other liturgical ceremonies. An ecclesiastical calendar determines the liturgical color of the altar frontal and vestments: blue or purple for Advent, white or gold for Christmas and Easter, purple for Lent, scarlet for Passiontide, red for Pentecost, green
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The Anchor
Priestly friendships
that started with getting to know, the sins of the people interceding being and living with humanity, for them with the Father as Jesus does for us on the cross. Ministe- but that culminates with the gift of his life for his friends, for all of rial priests are “other Christs,” us, on Calvary. As a priest I have who stand in for Jesus, offering experienced Jesus’ friendship so the sacrifice that Christ offers. More than just offering sacrifices, often offering the Eucharist and however, they also show the faith- hearing confessions. The immensity of the gift being offered ful why and what Jesus offers by preaching the good news of God’s desire for friendship with man. Year For Priests We priests are ordained Vocational Reflection to show people the love of Christ, which we do when we celebrate Mass, By Father showing the people the Ron P. Floyd symbol of Jesus’ love for us, his Body and Blood; when we hear confessions speaking Jesus’ words, “My by our friend Jesus for us on the friend go and sin no more”; when cross each time I celebrate the holy Mass always amazes me as celebrating the other sacraments, I think about what my hands are demonstrating that he is with us always; and in the friendships we touching and my tongue is speaking as I say Jesus’ words: “This is develop with those whose souls my Body, my Blood.” entrusted to us. This sacramental friendship St. Aelred of Riveaux tells us in turn manifests itself in our true friendship is the perfection everyday life. One of the most of love (caritas). A friend is one rewarding parts of being a priest who wants and does what is truly is offering the sacraments for the good for the other, no matter the people and then being with them personal sacrifice involved. Thus, as they live the new life they have Jesus on the cross is the model received. Sitting with people of true friendship — a friendship
around their kitchen tables talking about the faith as it affects their lives is one of the most life-giving experiences of my priesthood thus far. For so many faith can seem dead, a system of rules and factoids that are foreign to our experience of reality. A fundamental part of what it means to be another Christ as a priest is to show people that the offer of friendship with God given by our faith and in the sacraments is a living reality. I can’t count the number of times I’ve sat late into the night talking with the faithful, as Jesus talked to his disciples, explaining to them what God is doing in their lives. This is such a privilege for a priest, especially when people open their hearts to God’s voice and his actions in their lives. Of course, true friendship is not always easy, as Jesus’ friendship with humanity demonstrates. Being with people during their joys and when they are filled with enthusiasm for their faith is simple, but friendship also means calling them to task when they stray and being with them in those hard times when faith is not
easy. In all the difficult aspects of friendship, however, helping people to see that what is being asked of them is being asked out of love is essential. I remember once sitting with a dying man and his wife, both deeply in love with each other, and marveling at the strength of their faith while sharing in the profound sorrow of their impending separation. As a priest, another Christ, my friendship with them didn’t mean dismissing the reality of the sorrow, but showing them that Jesus weeps with them. It meant showing them the promises of the friendship Jesus offers, a promise that I make present to strengthen them when I offer the Mass. The friendships I have developed as a priest with the faithful, but also with those who are faithfully searching for God, have been an inspiration to my priesthood thus far, and I look forward to many more life long friendships in Christ with those whom I am sent to serve over the course of my life as a priest. I carry these friendships with me daily. Father Floyd, ordained in 2008, is parochial vicar at St. Patrick’s Parish in Wareham.
for the Sundays after Epiphany lished their own system of private and Pentecost, etc. Music – for the schools. They were latecomers to most part very good music – has the Protestant ecumenical movealways played a prominent part in ment that began a century ago. Lutheran worship. Luther himself And, most significantly, they manwas a musician of note (“A Mighty aged to avoid both the doctrinal Fortress Is Our God”), and not a laxity of the liberal Protestant few of Lutheranism’s thousands of mainline and the fundamentalism hymns were composed by Johann from which the evangelical moveSebastian Bach, a devout Lutheran ment emerged. whose biblically inspired music has been called “the fifth Gospel.” Lutherans make up The Fullness the third largest Protesof the Truth tant denominational family in this country, after By Father the Baptists and MethThomas M. Kocik odists. They are scarce in New England and the South, and strongest in the Midwest and Pennsylvania. The divisions in present-day The Evangelical Lutheran Church Lutheranism correspond to the in America (ELCA), with 4.8 milgeneral theological and political lion members, and the Lutheran divisions in American ProtestantChurch–Missouri Synod (LCMS), ism. From this perspective, the with 2.4 million, claim 80 percent ELCA fits comfortably with the of America’s nine million Luliberal mainline, while the LCMS therans. The ELCA was created looks like a branch of conservain 1988 after a series of mergers; tive evangelicalism. The ELCA German immigrants organized the ordains women and is squishy on much older LCMS in 1847. abortion, premarital sex, cohabitaWell into the twentieth cention, and homosexual conduct; just tury, American Lutherans were last month its leadership decided uncomfortable with their relation to permit homosexual persons in to other Protestants. Their relaxed “life-long, monogamous relationattitude toward drinking, smoking, ships” to serve as clergy and lay and dancing distinguished them leaders. ELCA Lutherans are in from Baptists and other sects of full communion with six other Puritan extraction. At a time when liberal denominations: the Episcomost American Protestants were pal Church, the United Methodist becoming strong advocates of Church, the United Church of public education, Lutherans estabChrist, the Reformed Church in
America, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the Moravian Church; these bodies agree to “pulpit sharing,” intercommunion, and common decision-making on important matters. Far less accommodating of modern secular culture is the defiantly orthodox and increasingly sectarian LCMS. Its original members were immigrants from Luther’s own province of Saxony who landed near St. Louis in 1839. These “Old Lutherans” opposed the merger of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in their homeland. Here they built their own parochial school system from kindergarten to university, and today they operate hundreds of schools, including Valparaiso University in Indiana and Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Insistence by some Missouri Synod leaders on biblical literalism caused a rupture in the mid-1970s, which eventually led to the formation of the ELCA. Some LCMS congregations have adopted the emotional and improvised style of worship commonly found in charismatic and nondenominational “Bible churches.” As the ELCA fades into the potpourri of liberal Protestantism and the LCMS edges toward evangelicalism, it remains to be seen whether Lutherans at both ends of the spectrum can or even want to maintain a distinct Lutheran
identity. In the struggle to hold the orthodox center, some Lutherans, especially those who style themselves “evangelical catholics,” have reached the conclusion that what makes Lutheranism Lutheran is ultimately unsustainable apart from Catholicism. As the Anglican C.S. Lewis keenly observed, in a divided Christianity, those at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those at the fringes. The Lutheran Reformation, unlike other Protestants who thought they were restoring the true Church, never intended to be anything but a reforming movement within the one Catholic Church. A momentous achievement in the quest for Christian unity was the “Joint Declaration on Justification by Faith,” signed in 1999 by representatives of the LWF and the Catholic Church. It emphasizes that God accepts us by grace alone through faith in the Gospel and not on the basis of our merit; yet God’s saving action in Christ calls us to live a life of faith, hope, and charity. There are kinks to be worked out, to be sure, and other Lutheran differences with Rome remain; nevertheless, substantial consensus has been reached on the issue that sparked the Reformation. The everpresent question is whether there are compelling reasons in those remaining differences for maintaining the separation. Father Kocik is a parochial vicar at Santo Christo Parish in Fall River.
Lutheranism: ‘The just man lives by faith’