An
assignment at the Casa Santa Maria offers a priest the opportunity
to deepen his priestly identity not so much based on what
he does – teaching, sanctifying and
governing – but on who he is. One way this identity
is deepened comes from the awareness of our hands. Last spring
a brother priest came to the Casa to train for the ministry
of exorcism in his diocese. He asked me at the breakfast
table one morning to accompany him to a church in the city
to observe the work of one of Rome’s exorcists. The
priest wanted help translating from Italian so that he could
better understand the exorcist’s extemporaneous words,
and the words being hissed or shouted at him. That morning
was an extraordinary experience in which my own priestly
identity was deepened. About twenty minutes into the session,
the exorcist asked the five priests in the room to raise
their hands from a distance in a type of epiclesis and to
quietly invoke the Holy Spirit over the victim. The reaction
was strong. The demons cursed, writhed, begged, raged,
whimpered and threatened. A low, sinister voice cried out
again and again, “Get them off! You are burning
me!” To the demons the hands of a priest seared as
though on fire, yet to the victim those same hands soothed
as though still wet from holy chrism. The demons were painfully
aware of a reality to which we are often blind: these hands
are configured to those of the incarnate Son of God. They
are His hands. Our chrismed, burning hands reveal the
hidden depths of the priesthood He has given us. They remind
us of who we are.
Yet a priest’s
hands also remind him of who he is supposed to become for
they are also a sinner’s. Though
our hands are configured to Jesus’, places in the heart
have yet to give their complete Yes to Him. The priest who
manfully strives to embrace his calling knows the difficult
and often muddling work of subjectively appropriating his
objective consecration. This work, as we know, means nothing
less than undergoing a death and resurrection, first in the
purification of the senses and then in the purification of
the spirit. Priestly hands remind us of the need for
a more purified priestly heart.
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A
story from the life of St. Francis of Assisi illustrates
how the awareness of a priest’s hands can
help bring about a deeper purification in the heart. The
saint was close to the end of his life, unable to walk and
suffering from an eye disease and the stigmata. As he was
brought through a region, some people from a nearby town
came to ask for his help with their parish priest. They had
discovered that their priest was involved in a scandalous
relationship with a woman of that town. The saint was brought
to the town and placed before the priest in front of everyone.
They thought that the saint would upbraid the fallen priest. St.
Francis instead fell to his knees, took the priest’s
hands into his own stigmatized hands, kissed them and said, “All
I know and all I want to know is that these hands give me
Jesus.” It was said that the priest was converted.
An
even more incredible story about a purified priestly heart
comes from Father John Houghton, the Carthusian monk and
prior, and English martyr. He was a graduate of Cambridge,
and described as “slight
of stature and shy in look”.
Refusing to take Henry VIII’s Oath of Supremacy, Father
Houghton was sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered at
Tyburn in London on May 4, 1535. After being hung, cut down
and allowed to recover his senses, he was eviscerated. The
executioner experienced some difficulty in locating Father
Houghton’s heart, and when he did so the saint looked
at it pulsating in the man’s hand and said, “Sweet
Jesus, what will You do with my heart?” One can only
imagine Our Lord’s response to him at that moment.
His heart and entrails were then thrown into the fire that
burned nearby.
Our hands were configured
to Jesus’ in ordination.
They reveal the hidden depths of our priesthood. These
priestly hands remind us of who we are, and who we are supposed
to become – a priest whose heart as well as hands are
conformed to Jesus.†
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