So, some 25 willing Wollongong Clergy and I did not regret being stimulated to consider the changing face of the priesthood through the lens of the Risen Christ. As one of my priests commented, “the input was relevant, contemporary and challenging.” Another said, “we had a wonderful opportunity to reflect on important and serious matters together.” The extra bonus was connecting with priests from all over the country, a number of whom I certainly hadn’t seen for years.

David Tacey articulated for me the context in which we, clergy, are today called to witness Christ, when he said faith has evaporated on the surface, often it is nowhere to be seen, yet in the deeper regions of mind, the mechanisms of faith and the longing for God can still be discerned. So he believes religion has to be approached differently. We cannot assume anymore that the dynamics of faith are clear and intelligible to the majority of people. Our more difficult task is to lead people within themselves, into the lives of their hearts to find that part of them that is capable of developing faith. I found David echoing Pope John Paul II’s beautiful 1999 Letter to Artists, when he said that through poetry, music and art the deeper spiritual reality within us can be evoked and led to God the source of all we have and are.

As I get older, it is becoming clearer than ever to me that our humanity is key to our priestly personality and evangelising initiatives. I heard Bishop Geoffrey Robinson stress again that to be a priest, the necessary foundation is a balanced human being who can relate easily to other human beings of both genders. Personally, I‘ve found this a skill I continue to learn, as I was fairly shy when first ordained. It is over our human personality that the Grace of Baptism infuses a Christian personality which strives through prayer, scripture, sacraments and charity to be open to the Spirit of Jesus. As the Baptised, we try to show in our life the fruits of the Holy Spirit as described by St Paul in Gal 5:22-23 “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control.” These are the evidence that the Holy Spirit is active in our lives! My great learning from constantly celebrating Confirmation is that these fruits of the Holy Spirit are the very touchstone of holiness.

It is on top of this, human, Christian personality, as a third tier or layer that the Grace of Priesthood is bestowed to develop us into a priestly, Christian, human being!

The scourge of clericalism, which sadly makes some clerics act as if they are a cut above everyone, so often becomes evident when our priestly reality is over emphasised to the detriment of the human and Christian aspects of our lives.

One of my golfing partners, Fr Aub Collins msc, who this year celebrates 60 years as a priest, (so he has a lot of runs on the board) told me he was playing golf in a Veterans’ Competition with his brother and two men he hadn’t met before. In the clubhouse over a drink afterwards, one of the players said, “what do you do Aub?” Aub said, “I am a Catholic priest”, and the man said, “You can’t be, you’re too normal and ordinary!”

The point I want to make is that if we, as priests, don’t connect in a normal human way with ordinary people, we are missing the opportunity to be the leaven of the Gospel in their lives. Life, the business world, as well as the apostolate are all fruitful when we cultivate good relationships with other people, with customers, with parishioners,

A great mentor in my life was the late Cardinal James Freeman. I was only 33 years old when I went to be his private secretary for six years. He used to say wise things like, “Pete, you never want to take yourself too seriously!” There is a lot of the Gospel in that bit of advice.

I well remember once taking him to a very life-giving Mass and parish BBQ at Narraweena. As we drove out of the parish, the Cardinal said of the parish priest, the late Fr Bill Vogt, “Bill is so patently dinkum, people can’t help but be attracted to God and the Church through him.”

Let me finish with these quotes from David Tacey:

• “The role of religion in dark times is to draw faith out of people …… the art or science of spiritual education.”
• “We cannot assume anymore that the dynamics of faith are clear and intelligible to the majority of people.”
• “The head or intellect has pushed faith away with its belief it can get on well without it.”
• “The light of the divine is lost in the darkness of the human interior and we have to be prepared to go in there, make contact with it, and lead it out (educare).”

Peter Ingham