To say that fragility confirms the sacred function of priesthood takes real courage. Father Geffroy likes to remind us that faith itself bears this out—and so does his own work with the homeless of Paris.
Both priests and lay people share in baptismal priesthood, the foundation of all priesthood, which flows from Christ's unique priesthood—Christ the great priest, fragile in his Passion and mighty in his Resurrection.
To be a priest is to love as Christ loved, to enter into his compassion, and to strive in every way to become like him.
It is to see him in every person, especially in those who hunger, in strangers, the sick, prisoners, the poor (Mt. 25). The common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood find their perfect echo in compassion itself—compassion that springs from Christ's own compassion.
For the ordained minister, this compassion is Christ's compassion in a more direct way, acting in the person of Christ. The priest is his representative—Christ made present in the priest's person through sacramental actions and specific duties (teaching, responsibility for the works of charity, building up the Church).
How do we understand something we often notice: that people of great fragility seem to be revealers of this ministerial priesthood?
My priestly vocation was born from my own poverty. Gripped by deep sadness thirty years ago in a monastery, Christ revealed himself to me at the moment when the priest said: "Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lord." In that moment I experienced the power of life and liberation contained in the Eucharist. Words cannot say what I felt then. What happened is this: I passed from atheism to faith. The Lord began my vocation in that very place of my poverty.
The Meeting of Two Povertys
Must not the ordained minister also reconcile himself with the poor person who seeks to exist within him? But the image of the priest as he imagines he must be can become a handicap—lived out as fragile and vulnerable. He can use his ministerial priesthood like a real bunker, protecting himself from his own poverty, which he hides precisely in the name of his priesthood. The fragile person, with great spontaneity and without inhibition, through simple and genuine gestures, can reach him beyond his armor. He can help the priest accept that wounded part of himself which only asks to live in him and become integrated into his inner life. When a fragile person meets a priest, two povertys meet: the priest's hidden poverty and the more visible poverty of the handicapped person. These povertys can speak to each other, reach each other, and make each other fruitful. It is the mystery of a wonderful encounter—a true mutual initiation into compassion. People living in great fragility are our awakeners and guides, capable of drawing forth from priests their ministerial priesthood. A priest once told me about a funeral for a homeless man. The dead man's cellmate Alberto, drunk, was cursing the pastor loudly. The pastor sent the assistant priest, Father Luca, to handle it. Accustomed to this kind of suffering, as Luca approached Alberto, he asked the Lord to give him Christ's gaze. Within himself, Luca received a deep inner prompting of profound mercy—so intense that Alberto, in his despair, suddenly received that mercy and grew calm. At the moment of communion, Alberto, too timid to come forward alone, asked Father Luca to bring him the Eucharist. At that point, a second anointing of the Spirit filled him. Luca realized that in God's eyes, this man was not a drunken troublemaker but a suffering person loved infinitely and infinitely lovable, inhabited by Christ himself. By grace, that priest had become an icon of Christ and a channel of his compassion. Lytta Basset, a Protestant theologian, when speaking of fragility, prefers the term "fragilization." We begin to see that there are not some on one side who are normal and others whose "job" is to be fragile. Some carry permanent, visible fragility; others carry fragility yet to come; human fragility is often very visible, spiritual fragility less so—but we all share in this fundamental fragility of being. What answer do we give to this question? Lord, increase our faith. Someone told me about Cecilia, a girl with intellectual disability who, with remarkable insight, sensed that a priest visiting the family was not well. He was elderly, tired, and somewhat withdrawn. Cecilia—doing something unusual for her—began to care for that discouraged priest, offering him gestures of affection as if she had understood that her mission was to bring him back to himself. This young woman barely spoke, or spoke very little, but visibly drawn to him, she sought his company. At first he hesitated. But gradually, faced with Cecilia's persistence, a kind of bond formed between them: she took his hand for walks and convinced him to dance with her! The therapy bore fruit. That priest returned to the work of priesthood and left on his mission saying: "She comforted me!" Through her fragility flowed a strength drawn from the very heart of God. Here is the true common priesthood of the faithful—the treasure of the Church that Christ's ministers must guard and protect! Père Bernard-Marie Geffroy, 2010(pastor in Paris)