3. SIGN, SYMBOL, & SONG: Learning to Celebrate Beyond Our Discouragement

Stephen Rosetti, (2005) a Catholic priest himself who is also a psychiatrist, gives me the perfect opening lines for this reflection:

Sometimes people ask me if ministering to priests in difficulty discourages me or assails my love for the priesthood or the Church. Of course, there are moments when I feel upset by what I have heard or I am saddened by their grief. If I lose the ability to be touched by genuine tragedy or if I am no longer angered by egregious behavior, then I have overstayed in this work. But, such moments have been fully overshadowed by a stronger grace.

I have grown in my admiration for our priests. I have been given a stronger love of the priesthood and the Church. In their weakness, these men have shown me the immense dignity of the priesthood and the beauty of the Church. In vulnerability, grace shines more brightly in the human spirit. I have come to know, even more clearly, that the priesthood is a great blessing for the people of God and for those who are its recipients. The laity have instinctively known this truth for centuries. Sometimes we priests forget this reality. We ought never to forget.” (p.10)

We ought never to forget. Forgetfulness is a dangerous disease. Forgetfulness is a vice we, as priests and religious, cannot afford to have. Our Christian faith, we must recall, is based a whole lot on the fundamental ability to remember, on our capacity to look back, look into ourselves and our present-day realities, and look far into the future … our future, God’s future, our future in God. Christian life is nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else but a life of gratitude to God who is the source and origin of all that is good. And gratitude thrives best in remembering. Remembering is what we Christians do best.

No wonder that as religious, as members of the clergy, we are at our best when in the context of the Eucharistic celebration. Years of formation, training and studies have drummed it into us and made it almost second nature to us when we are engaged in sign, symbol, and song – when we celebrate what we commemorate, when we narrate to each other and to the world what we commemorate and celebrate.

We are a people of the narrative. We are men and women with a story. And although, at times, what people read into our life narrative is not worthy of the meta narrative that is salvation history that we have offered our lives for, still when in the context of sign, symbol, and song – the liturgy – we are in our best element. Garbed in the full sign of our priestly, prophetic, and kingly roles, we priests take on the role that is not ours by right, but by vocation – to act in persona Christi capitis, to be an alter Christus, to do as Christ did, teach as he taught, heal as he healed others, and journey with others as he did.

I would like now to unpack these three important words that sum up who and what we are vis-à-vis the task of remembering that is ours as a community of believers.

SIGN

We live and move and thrive in a universe of signs. The Church is a sign, a big one. The big word for it that we know all too well is sacrament. It is essentially a sign, let me add, an effective sign of salvation, a sign of God’s continuing presence in the world, a presence that saves.

We are extensions of that one big sign. By virtue of holy orders, by virtue of the original consecration at Baptism, we were not only signed. We were sealed – sealed with character, an indelible mark on the soul that sets us apart, in the Biblical sense of being sanctified, being set apart by, and for, God, and for people. In a very real sense, we are SIGNED, SEALED, AND DELIVERED!

Our being signs, and our being marked are not meant to be terminal goals. We were not called to be frozen delights. We were called and chosen to go and bear fruit – in plenty, not in want. It might do us good this time to look at the many times our being signs (pardon the tautology) loses its significance. And how do we lose significance? We have to go back to Scripture. Christ said it long ago. When salt loses its taste, what good is it for other than being thrown and trampled underfoot? (cf. Mt 5:13)

We blunt our nature as signs when we allow our unredeemed selves to take over even those activities that we do best, when our human nature and its tendencies take the better of us and wreak havoc on our relationships, our work, and everything else we do. As professionals, we are subject to the so-called “rule of thirds.” A high proportion of us clergy and religious are at risk for present and future difficulty. Conrad W. Weiser (1994) writes that “the attraction of less-than-fully functioning persons to religious professions is not new.” High proportions, Weiser goes on to say, of professional populations are psychologically damaged and at risk. His estimate is as high as 30 per cent. Sperry (2000) corroborates this. He writes:

The reality is that individuals with a narcissistic pattern are attracted to ministries, particularly high visibility ministries and positions of leadership. Furthermore, narcissistic ministers are becoming increasingly common in religious organizations, including parishes, religious communities, and in diocesan and other ecclesial offices […] narcissism is one of the six common neurotic personalities in religious settings. (p. 13)

In the manufacturing world, tools are not meant to last forever. Even planes are subject to what is known as metal fatigue. Every part, every sinew, every rivet and joint is checked periodically for wear and tear, and those parts that are worn and torn are rehabilitated, rejuvenated, or replaced.

We ought to give a little more attention to our materiality as signs. We ought to look at ourselves from the point of view of the wear and tear aspect even of our personhood, our abilities, our efficiencies. At some point in our formation, formators ought to have helped us identify and name our humors, our antipathies, sympathies, affections, and angers within the wider context of our sexual and relational selves( Wister, 1994).

The basic point I am trying to make is this. If material tools and machines get their furlough time in the garage, a time for re-tooling, a time to be honed up, the sign aspect of our personhood, with all its warts, faults and foibles, also needs to have a chance at being redeveloped.

Weigel (2002) refers to this as “reform.” He speaks of such as what the French word “ressourcement” points to, which means, trying to get back to one’s originating form, that is, going back to the basics. Among other things, it means going back to such basics as prayer, asceticism, self-denial, holiness of life, etc. He writes: “Christian communities that maintain their doctrinal identity and moral boundaries flourish. Christian communities that fudge doctrine and morals decay.”

Heher (2004) affirms this and traces out a similarity between the Old Testament High Priest and the ordained minister of today, as one who should divest himself of so many things in order for him to do what he is called to do:

We are aware of how much we have to put on to be priests: the mythic image, the weight of representing the Church, the outrageous demand that we act in persona Christi. But perhaps we have lost the sense of how much we have to take off as priests. No one talks much about asceticism nowadays, but it is essential to anyone trying to live a spiritual life, for it is the hard, human work of getting free of all unnecessary claims, especially of getting past our various illusionary images of ourselves, our fig leaves, if you will.

We all have projections of ourselves that block us from seeing that unique wonder God created and loves. But to strip off all those things is not easy. A narcissist looks in the mirror and sees what he wants to see, or at least, what he wants others to see. A masochist sees just what he fears. Only a saint looks in the mirror and sees what God has wrought (p. 22).

SYMBOL

Let me go now to the second word. I refer to the Greek meaning of the word which is a little richer than the English. A symbol, etymologically, cannot be taken apart by itself, disconnected with something else. A symbol is literally something “thrown together” with something else. It means to be united to some other reality, to be one with that other thing. As such it is the opposite of something thrown or wrested apart from something else. Symbol refers to a perfect fit, a perfect adequation between two distinct realities. Its opposite (dia-bollon) connotes disunity, brokenness, difference, and separation.

In our narcissistic-prone postmodern world, in our individual-individualistic world characterized by the so-called Filipino culture of insecurity, many a time, the symbol that religious life ought to be, that priesthood is supposed to be – the symbol of communion and unity, is blunted and rendered meaningless. Sometimes, the fit between the individual and the community is no longer there. There are so many “lone rangers” roaming around the religious landscape here and all over the world. There are far too many of us who go it alone, do it our own way, and do it with impunity. For a good number of us, religious life effectively has become a perfect launching pad for our own versions of the Challenger spaceship. For some of us, the only reminder that we are connected with the congregation, if ever we can talk of such, are the three letters that follow our names – our passport to donations, our entitlement to receive the praises and the purses of the unwary rich who offer us money in the spirit of misguided trust that we are still in good graces with the Church, with the Congregation, with the Superiors.

The challenge for everyone is to maintain that symbolic nature of our lives, of our persons, our works, and all our initiatives. And that symbolic nature has to do essentially with what the Lord himself prayed for, at a difficult moment in his public life: “that they may be one, even as you and I, Father, are one” (Jn 17:22).

SONG

The third word has to do more with what can help us bind ourselves a little more to each other and to the Church and people that we serve. I refer to the riches of the liturgy that is known as the “fons et culmen” – the source and summit of our Christian life. There is identity in the two realities that the liturgy is. It is not just one and the other in varying proportions. No, it is both, at one and the same time. If it is the source, then it is where being sign and symbol is expressed, nurtured, and is developed. If it is the summit, it is there where our being sign and symbol reaches its fullness and perfection.

We are at our best when we celebrate singly in the presence of other people. Or so we claim. But I would like to suggest that we are at our fullest selves as acting in persona Christi capitis, when we celebrate together with our brother priests and religious, not only in the presence, but also together with the people we journey with. Melody is just idea floating in the mind’s ear. Melody can exist of itself even without being heard. Melody can remain as such even when it is not hummed. But a song is never a song until it is sung. And when sung, it is a picture and reality of bondedness, of oneness, of collaboration and cooperation. Words and tunes coalesce. Poetry and music collaborate. And the end product is a unified object of art and beauty, greater than the sum of its parts, because it has become a distinct and unified whole.

We religious and priests as individuals are a motley lot. Each of us is great in our own right. Each of us is important in our own right. We are each distinct melodies in the symphony of life. But melodies alone, no matter how beautiful, can ever make a symphony. Tunes alone can never make a song.

The Lord, too, has said it long ago. “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (JN 12:24).

I would like to propose that we re-appropriate what we have been doing so often in the course of our communal lives. I propose that we make of our daily exercise of sign, symbol and song – the liturgy – a perfect launching pad of the Challenger Spaceship of our religious and apostolic lives.