In the Catholic tradition, we usually speak of the “evangelical counsels” of poverty, chastity, and obedience, as if they were literally only “counsels,” that is, conduct or attitudes that a Christian may or may not choose.
But they are called “counsels” because the Lord Jesus, in the passage of the rich young man (Luke 18: 18-27), proposes them; respecting man’s freedom, he does not impose them. That does not mean that they are unimportant to us.
On the contrary, every Christian is called to live these counsels because they are specifically Christian virtues. The married person, for example, lives the spirit of poverty through the detachment towards the material things he needs and has to use; he lives in chastity through physical and heartfelt fidelity towards his spouse, and lives in obedience listening and following the plan that God shows through the church.
The priest, however, is called to live these counsels more visibly and radically. In the priest, obedience is expressed in his unity of spirit with the ministry of the bishop, chastity becomes celibacy embraced for the sake of the Kingdom, and poverty, a choice to have only what is indispensable for a decent life and for the exercise of his ministry.
In his letter on the occasion of the Year for Priests, Pope Benedict XVI reminded us of the exemplary life of the patron saint of parish priests, St. John Mary Vianney -- the Curé of Ars -- and showed how his priestly ministry and his holiness were closely linked to this saint’s ability to live the evangelical counsels with joy and generosity.
Pope Benedict also said that one his predecessors, Blessed John XXIII, had stressed in an encyclical written on the occasion of 100 years since the death of the Curé of Ars, the importance for priests to live the evangelical counsels: “even though priests are not bound to embrace these evangelical counsels by virtue of the clerical state, these counsels nonetheless offer them, as they do all the faithful, the surest road to the desired goal of Christian perfection.”
The Holy Father reminds us that the Curé of Ars did not live poverty as a monk withdrawn from the world: as a diocesan priest, especially when he became very famous in France as a confessor, he had to manage donations which were substantial in more than few occasions. However, as the pope says, “he realized that everything had been donated to his church, his poor, his orphans, the girls of his ‘Providence,’ his families of modest means. Consequently, he ‘was rich in giving to others and very poor for himself’. As he would explain: ‘My secret is simple: give everything away; hold nothing back.’ When he lacked money, he would say amiably to the poor who knocked at his door: ‘Today I’m poor just like you, I’m one of you.’ At the end of his life, he could say with absolute tranquility: ‘I no longer have anything. The good Lord can call me whenever he wants!’” (Letter from Pope Benedict XVI to the Priests).
His chastity was also what is expected of a priest: a total chastity, expressed in celibacy lived with an awareness that his hands will touch God himself in the Eucharist, and that his eyes not only will contemplate God when raising the consecrated Host, but must also transmit God to the faithful.
With respect to obedience, Pope Benedict XVI reminds us in his letter how St. John Mary Vianney was an example of one who has put his whole life in God’s hands: “We know how he was tormented by the thought of his inadequacy for parish ministry and by a desire to flee ‘in order to bewail his poor life, in solitude.’ Only obedience and a thirst for souls convinced him to remain at his post. As he explained to himself and his flock: ‘There are no two good ways of serving God. There is only one: serve him as he desires to be served.’ He considered this the golden rule for a life of obedience: ‘Do only what can be offered to the good Lord.’”
Many people believe that the evangelical counsels are “antiquated” and should disappear. It is not surprising that this way of thinking is popular in today’s world, that sees many of the Christian virtues as “defects.”
But every Christian, especially our priests, is constantly encouraged by the certainty that being “signs of contradiction” is an inevitable part of Christian life.
Let us pray, brothers and sisters, with special intensity at this time of Lent and in the context of the Year for Priests, for our priests, so that they will be blessed with the grace they need to live these counsels and all Christian virtues with absolute generosity, and they may become a testimony that it is possible to live in this world, being faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Mother of priests, pray for us. St. John Mary Vianney, pray for us.