Beginning in 1979, Pope John Paul II took up the habit of writing an annual letter to priests which would be published on, or just before, Holy Thursday. These letters allowed John Paul II an outlet for repeated meditation on the nature of the priesthood. Read together, they provide a detailed account of his understanding of the priesthood and thus, necessarily, of both himself and the Lord.
The tone of these letters was always fraternal. He wrote, not as a superior addressing his subordinates, but as a priest writing to priests about common concerns, hopes, fears, and joys. These were letters among brothers.
As he put it in his first letter, “I think of you all the time, I pray for you, with you I seek the ways of spiritual union and collaboration, because by virtue of the sacrament of Orders, which I also received from the hands of my Bishop. . . .you are my brothers.” He went on, cribbing from St. Augustine: “I want to say to you today: ‘For you I am a Bishop, with you I am a Priest.’”
Holy Thursday, of course, is a natural occasion for reflections on the nature of the ministerial priesthood, being the day on which Christ Himself instituted both the Eucharist and the order of the priesthood which flows from and serves that same reality.
And as one might expect, writing to the same audience every year on the same occasion, in the same liturgical setting, leads to some thematic repetition. But reading these letters together allows us to see, precisely in that repetition, what Pope John Paul II saw as most important to share with his brother priests.
In his first letter, in 1979, John Paul wrote of the importance of priestly perseverance, not only as a matter of personal fidelity, but as an example and witness to those whose vocation leads them along a different sacramental path:
[O]ur brothers and sisters joined by the marriage bond have the right to expect from us, Priests and Pastors, good example and the witness of fidelity to one’s vocation until death, a fidelity to the vocation that we choose through the sacrament of Orders just as they choose it through the sacrament of Matrimony. (Emphasis original)
This theme of perseverance and fidelity emerges again and again in the Holy Thursday letters. When one remembers that tens of thousands of men voluntarily left the priesthood in the decade following the Second Vatican Council (and the subsequent collapse in Catholic marriage rates across most of the West) Pope John Paul II’s words take on an added significance.
During the Great Jubilee of 2000, Pope John Paul II wrote his Holy Thursday Letter from the Cenacle, the Upper Room, in Jerusalem. This letter is especially poignant, both because of the setting from which it was sent – the physical space with all its tangible reminders of the historical events we commemorate in this season – but because of his sense of the human inadequacy of the men God calls to be priests:
Many times, the human frailty of priests has made it hard to see in them the face of Christ. Here in the Upper Room why should this amaze us? Not only did the betrayal of Judas reach its climax here, but Peter himself had to reckon with his weakness as he heard the bitter prediction of his denial. In choosing men like the Twelve, Christ was certainly under no illusions: it was upon this human weakness that he set the sacramental seal of his presence. And Paul shows us why: “We bear this treasure in earthen vessels, so that it might be clear that this extraordinary power comes from God and not from us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7)
The frailty of men was not a stumbling block for Pope John Paul II’s view of the priesthood; it was an entry point into the mystery of Christ’s own priesthood. The Word Incarnate washes the feet of sinners. He pays out his life in service and sacrifice. And He invites us all – and his priests in a unique way – to do the same.
Great indeed is the mystery of which we have been made ministers. A mystery of love without limit, for “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (Jn 13:1); a mystery of unity, which from the source of Trinitarian life is poured out upon us in order to make us “one” in the gift of the Spirit (cf. Jn 17); a mystery of divine diakonia which prompts the Word made flesh to wash the feet of his creation, thus showing that service is the high road in all genuine relationships between people: “You also should do as I have done to you.” (John 13:15)
That particular line from the Gospel of John – “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end” – touched John Paul II deeply and he returned to it over and over again in his Holy Thursday letters. In fact, his very last letter to priests, written from the Gemelli Hospital just a few weeks before his death, begins precisely with that passage.
Jesus loved them to the end. So, too, does the good priest loves those given to him. John Paul II understood this. What is more, he lived it. And for having been given the grace to pay out his life for those entrusted to him, he was filled with an overwhelming gratitude. What Christ gave to him, he was able to give in turn.
Pope John Paul II’s Holy Thursday letters to priests are a remarkable testament to a priesthood well-lived. A saint is someone who lives in such a way that Christ shines through them; a saint is transparent to Christ. St. John Paul II was transparent to the beauty and mystery of the priesthood: a great priest, modelling the Great High Priest.
