2. Sacerdos et Hostia

Essential to authentic mercy is its gratuitous nature. It is received as an unmerited gift which has been freely and gratuitously given and which is completely unmerited. Such liberality is part of the Father's saving plan. "This is the love I mean: not our love for God, but God's love for us when he sent his son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away" (1 John 4, 10). The ordained minister, in precisely this context, finds his raison d'etre. No one can confer grace of himself; it is always given and received. This presupposes that there are ministers of grace, authorized and empowered by Christ. In the Church's tradition, the ordained ministry is referred to as "sacrament", since through the ministry those sent by Christ, by God's gift, effect and offer that which they themselves can neither effect nor give.(⁸⁹)

Priests should therefore regard themselves as living signs and bearers of that mercy which they offer, not as though it were their own, but as a free gift from God. They are thus servants of God's mercy. The desire to serve is an essential element of priestly ministry and requires the respective moral disposition in the subject. The priest makes Jesus, the Pastor who came to serve and not be served (Mt 20, 28) present to men. The priest primarily serves Christ, but that service necessarily passes through the Church and her mission.

"He loves us and sheds his blood to wash away our sins: Pontifex qui dilexisti nos et lavasti a peccatis in sanguine tuo. He gave himself for us: tradidisti temetipsum Deo oblationem et hostiam. Christ introduces the sacrifice of himself, ransom for our redemption, into the eternal sanctuary. The offering, the sacrificial victim, is inseparable from the priest".(⁹⁰) While only Christ is simultaneously Sacerdos et Hostia, his minister who partakes in the dynamic of the Church's mission, is sacramentally priest and permanently called to become a Hostia and thereby assimilate "the same sentiments that Jesus had" (Phil 2, 5). The effectiveness of all evangelizing activity depends on this unbreakable unity of priest and sacrificial victim,(⁹¹) or priesthood and Eucharist. Today, the work of divine mercy, contained in Word and Sacraments, depends on the unity, in the Holy Spirit, of Christ and his minister, who does not substitute for Him but relies on Him and allows Him to act in and through him. The significance of St. John's Gospel can be applied to this link between the ministry of the priest and Jesus: "I am the vine...cut off from me you can do nothing" (John 15, 14).

The call to become, like Jesus, a Hostia underlies the compatibility of the commitment to celibacy with the priestly ministry in the Church. It implies the incorporation of the priest in the sacrifice with which "Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her so as to make her holy" (Eph 5, 25-26). The priest is called to be "a living image of Jesus Christ, Spouse of the Church" and to make his entire life an offering for her".(⁹²) "Priestly celibacy, then, is the gift of self in and with Christ to his Church and expresses the priest's service in and with the Lord".(⁹³)