Baptism calls us to be three things that many of us
likely have forgotten.
In uniting us to Christ, baptism calls us to share
in his offices of king, prophet, and priest, as the catechism
suggests (as does Father Jacques Philippe in his work Interior Freedom). This is really incredible if we just give it a
few moments of thought. We are all kings. We are all prophets. We are all
priests. What does this really mean?
Kings
There are many different expressions of Christian
kingship. In Interior Freedom,
Philippe offers one interpretation: kingship as spiritual freedom. “We are
kings because we are children and heirs of the King of heaven and earth. But
also in the sense that we are subject to nothing and everything is subject to
us,” Philippe writes (Interior Freedom,
79). What he means is that nothing—others, troubles in life, any kind of
exterior circumstance—can dislodge faith, hope, and love in our souls. We are
masters of ourselves because we let Christ reign in our hearts. Philippe calls
this “royal freedom.”
There is a twofold exterior freedom that comes with
this reality as well. First, we have no need to hoard earthly possessions since
we already ‘possess’ everything through Christ. There is a certain kind of
freedom that comes in this poverty. But the other side of is that we are also
rich in Christ, by sharing in His kingship we have access to whatever He
chooses to give to us from the abundance of creation.
St. John of the Cross beautifully spoke to this
wonderful reality in his poem, “Prayer of the Soul in Love,” which Philippe
cites:
Why do you hesitate? Why do you wait? For you can from this instant love God in your heart. Mine are the heavens and mine is the earth, and mine are the peoples, the just are mine, and mine are the sinners; the angels are mine, and the Mother of God, and all things are mine, and God himself is mine and for me, because Christ is mine and wholly for me. What do you ask for, then, and what do you seek, my soul? All of that is yours, and for you.
Prophets
We are not just kings. We are also prophets. Our
culture tends to think of prophets as predictors of future events. But, in the
Old Testament, prophets also spoke to the present, bringing words of judgment
and mercy to their contemporaries. Certainly we are called to be prophets in
this sense, preaching the gospel in our words and deeds to those around us.
But there is a deeper calling at work here. Being a
prophet means that we directly encounter the word of God. That was something
reserved for a privileged few in the Old Testament—just about everyone else had
to listen to what the prophets said. But since we are all prophets we are not
in need of such intermediaries.
What does it mean to have a personal relationship
with the Word? Colossians 3:16 says to “let the word of Christ richly dwell
within you.” The prophet Jeremiah gives us a gripping portrait of what this
looks like in practice:
When I found your words, I devoured them;
your words were my joy, the happiness of my heart (Jeremiah 15:16).
As Christians we don’t need to actually physically
hear the words of God to experience what Jeremiah did—the words we can devour
are the contents of Scripture. And in so doing we may find they exert a kind of
power over us, driving us into agony and ecstasy, as they did Jeremiah:
You seduced me, LORD, and I let myself be seduced;
you were too strong for me, and you prevailed. …
I say I will not mention him,
I will no longer speak in his name.
But then it is as if fire is burning in my heart,
imprisoned in my bones;
I grow weary holding back,
I cannot! (Jeremiah 20:7-9).
Ultimately the relationship with the words of God
center around a person: the Word Himself. Only that explains the drama of what
Jeremiah is going through. We too are called to have that radical encounter
with the Word, tasting both the joy and fire in the depths of our being.
Priests
There is the particular priesthood, for which only
some men are ordained. But then there is the universal priesthood, to which we
are all called. 1 Peter 2:9, quoting Isaiah 61:6, states, “But you are ‘a
chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that
you may announce the praises’ of him who called you out of darkness into his
wonderful light.” This sound like a continuation of the prophetic role, which
it is. But the priesthood is specially associated with the idea of sacrifice.
As priests, this is something we are all called to do, as St. Paul states in
Romans 12:1, “I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer
your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual
worship.”
In this, the particular priesthood exists as a model
of all of us. At Mass priests, through the power of God, consecrate the
Eucharistic bread and wine, transforming it into the body and blood and
divinity of Christ. We too, in our own ways, are to make God present in the
ordinary moments and things around us.
Lumen Gentium, the Vatican document on the Church, sums up the
relationship between the two priesthoods in this way:
Though they differ from one another in essence and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are nonetheless interrelated: each of them in its own special way is a participation in the one priesthood of Christ. The ministerial priest, by the sacred power he enjoys, teaches and rules the priestly people; acting in the person of Christ, he makes present the Eucharistic sacrifice, and offers it to God in the name of all the people. But the faithful, in virtue of their royal priesthood, join in the offering of the Eucharist. They likewise exercise that priesthood in receiving the sacraments, in prayer and thanksgiving, in the witness of a holy life, and by self-denial and active charity.
What Lumen Gentium says about the priesthood of all is quite extraordinary: though certainly not in any way identical to what the ordained priest does, we in our own way, participate in the Eucharistic offering. Put simply: we participate in Mass as priests—and while we may not be standing at the altar offering sacrifice we can certainly join the sacrifices offered on the altar of our hearts to it.
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Photo by David Jakab from Pexels
