蜜芽传媒

A small story in the Telegraph caught my eye yesterday. The Church of the Sacred Heart, set in the lonely countryside of County Fermanagh, stands on the site of an early monastery and has probably witnessed continual Christian worship for over 1,500 years. But on the Sunday before last, perhaps for the first time since the sixth century, Mass was not celebrated in the village. The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has been experiencing a significant decline in the numbers of men offering themselves for ordination and, on that particular Sunday there wasn鈥檛 enough Priests to go round.

After I read this story, I wondered to myself what a village like this would lose if they didn鈥檛 have a priest. After all, the community could still gather in the church, they could read the Bible together and they could pray in the presence of God. Many Christians do not believe in the idea of priesthood. The only priest mentioned in the New Testament is Jesus himself and, as the letter to the Hebrews puts it, his was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. In terms of church leadership, the New Testament speaks of elders, not priests.

But as a priest myself, albeit within a slightly different theological tradition to the Church of the Sacred Heart, I nonetheless do share the belief that priestly ministry adds something to divine worship that cannot be fully articulated without it. For some, of course, a priest is little more than a professional Mr Nice Guy, a local community leader that convenes worship, visits the sick, and looks after the church鈥檚 roof. All of which is fair enough, but none of it has very much to do with priesthood.

Originally, in the Hebrew Bible, priests were those who supervised the provision of sacrifice, offering back to God the things that were originally from God, thus to restore a sense of balance in the created order. A bit like a cosmic scale thank you, priests are supposed to occupy that place where God and humanity are made right with each other. And for Christians, that place is supremely the cross, and the sacrifice of God on the cross.

I know, if you are a secular minded person all this will all seem like gobbledegook. And I wish I could explain it better. But the truth is, the only place that I can begin to explain myself properly is within the theological show and tell that is the Eucharist itself. This is where priests are called upon to re-create for their communities that breakthrough moment of sacrificial love through which - we believe - all created things are brought back into a right and peaceful relationship with each other. For some of us, this act - another cosmic thank-you - is the centre of our lives. And why in a traditional kind of place like County Fermanagh, the loss of a priest can feel like the heart has been ripped out of the community.

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