The men who were just ordained are human — and that’s a good thing

I’d say I know the four men who were just ordained to the priesthood at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul on May 27 better than most. And for good reason: I was actually in the same seminary class with three of them before I discerned out.

So let me let you in on a little secret: These guys aren’t angels. They’ve been known to do non-spiritual things like drink beer, play 500, shoot hoops, and even perform in a seminary rock band. To be clear, our new priests are very human. And that’s a good thing.

Here’s why: Men ordained to the priesthood have “awe”-some power and an awesome responsibility. In fact, the Church teaches us that they are conformed to Jesus Christ, the High Priest, at the level of their soul. It’s a lofty calling, to participate in Christ’s mediation between heaven and earth as his priest, to be the means through which God’s sacramental grace is poured upon his people — but it’s also one that never leaves behind the man’s humanity.

And when we forget the priest’s humanity, things can go wrong. Because as St. Thomas Aquinas famously taught, grace doesn’t destroy nature, it perfects it. A man’s ordination doesn’t remove his humanity but works through it in a way that makes him fit to be a channel of grace. Divine power and human instrumentality must hold together in the seeming paradox of the priestly ministry. Forgetting either part of that equation is a problem.

The Church, it could be argued, has at times lost sight of the human end of this “both/and” reality. This tendency manifests itself in the form of putting the man in priestly ministry on a pedestal, treating him as a kind of superhuman or demigod because supernatural works are, in fact, worked through him. As Pope Francis reminds us, this kind of clericalism can be a problem — perhaps especially when the laity are the ones guilty of it.

It might seem like a compliment to the clergy to have such a lofty view of the priesthood, to think that the men ordained are angelic beings, but it’s not. Losing sight of the priest’s humanity sets him up for failure — we forget that priests need community, exercise and some decent hobbies, and occasionally serious spiritual and psychological help. Burnout — and worse — are the products of forgetting the humanity of our clergy.

But the counterreaction to this exclusively spiritual view of the priesthood is also a problem: reducing the priest to “just one of the guys.” A priest is not the same as a layman. If he is, I have no idea why I’m confessing my sins to him. Priests are human, but they have been “set apart” for service and their power is genuinely not their own. Christ truly works through them, and they are meant to be truly conformed to him and his ministerial priesthood in a way that the rest of us aren’t. Prayer is important for all of us, but it takes on an added significance in the life of the priest, because his is such a supernaturally dependent vocation. There is nothing more off-putting nor concerning than a priest who doesn’t pray.

In a similar way to how the early Church overcame a slew of Christological heresies by affirming that Jesus is fully God and fully man, we always need to recognize that our priests are both fully men, and fully sacramentally transformed to be divine instruments.

So next time you see your parish priest, keep this “both/and” in mind. Embrace the fact that he’s been called to God to serve the Church in a mind-blowing way and trust that sacramental power flows through him; but also keep in mind that he’s only human, and could maybe use a word of encouragement, patience on the occasional bad day, or maybe just a hearty, homecooked meal.

And make sure to pray for our new archdiocesan priests, Fathers Kyle Etzel, Wil Kratt, John Rumpza and Ryan Glaser. Because although their souls have been conformed to Christ, the High Priest, they still need his help.

Liedl, a Twin Cities resident, is a senior editor of the National Catholic Register and a graduate student in theology at The St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in St. Paul.