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Priesthood in the Society of Jesus

On this day, the feast of St Mary Magdalene, in 1534, Blessed Pierre Favre celebrated his first Mass. Favre was the first of the Companions of St Ignatius of Loyola, soon to become the Jesuits, to be ordained priest. In this second article of a series marking the Church’s ‘Year of the Priest’, French theologian Bernard Sesbouee SJ explains how the specifically Jesuit model of priesthood evolved and was ‘confirmed and enriched’ by the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.As we reflect on priesthood over the course of this year, it is important to remember that it is a diverse phenomenon. In this article I want to explain how a renewed understanding of priesthood emerges from the life of St Ignatius of Loyola, finding expression in the Society of Jesus which he founded, and how this understanding has, I believe, an important contribution to make today, in the light of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.

It is often said that the Society of Jesus is a ‘priestly order’, and rightly so. But that can mean any number of things. In an address to the Congregation of Provincials in Loyola in September 1990, the then Father General Kolvenbach used the term ‘presbyteral’. The use of words is never neutral and his choice of vocabulary is very telling.

In fact, the Catholic tradition gives us a double vocabulary for referring to priests. On the one hand that of hiereus, or sacerdos, derived from the Old Testament and taken up again in the Letter to the Hebrews, in which Christ is called the High Priest of the New Covenant which abolishes the old sacrifices. On the other there is that of presbuteros, presbyter, used along with other words in the New Testament to express the originality of ministry in the New Covenant. Thus it suggests the mission of the apostles, marking a distance from the ‘old priesthood’. In some modern languages, this double vocabulary has been reduced to a single one. It is commonplace in France, for instance, to talk of ‘le sacerdoce’.

This goes back to a medieval development which for quite practical reasons strongly bound priesthood to the celebration of foundation Masses, drawing attention to its ‘sacrificial’ nature. This has left a strong imprint on the image of Catholic priesthood. The Council of Trent effectively set it in stone when it opposed the Lutheran understanding of the ‘priesthood of the faithful’ and the priority this gave to the ministry of the Word. This ‘sacerdotal’ model of a priesthood tied to the sacrifice of the Mass is still rather dominant in the Catholic imagination, in spite of a new emphasis in Vatican II.

Vatican II brought back the true significance of what is really sacerdotal: in the New Covenant there is a single priest (archiiereus), Christ, and a single priesthood, which is that of Christ. In the Church, the bishop (episcopos) and the priests (presbuteroi) exercise the ministerial mission of the sole mediation of Christ-priest in the sense that it is a gift from God, whilst all the baptised participate existentially in the one priesthood of Christ (hierateuma), by the grace which makes them able to offer themselves to God as a spiritual sacrifice (cf. Lumen Gentium 10).

So why should we think of Jesuit priests as presbyteral rather than sacerdotal?

The Ignatian sources are surprisingly sober when it comes to the mention of priesthood. Ignatius quite untypically does not seem to have entered into a long decision-making process about being ordained. What are we to make of this comparative silence? Was it the case, as some have thought, that it wasn’t important, perhaps just a necessity with which he went along without too much fuss because it was useful? Or was it was so central to the Jesuit vocation that it was not up for discussion? It is not immediately obvious. I think the real reason is more subtle.

The answer is that in Ignatius’ life a totally original way of combining presbyteral ministry and the religious life is evolving. In the combination each term undergoes a change in meaning. That is why the question is skewed from the outset if we either think of Jesuits as religious first, implying a ‘pure’ concept of religious life which has nothing to do with this ministry; or if we take the ideal of priesthood (which is to say ‘sacerdotal’ ministry) as the cornerstone of the Order. But Jesuits do not constitute a ‘society of priests’. To get an idea of what this new priestly-religious life looks like and how it arises, we have to look back at Ignatius’ life.

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July 22, 2009 Filed Under: Year for Priests

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