The ordained
minister and vocations in the reciprocity of communion
22. "In many particular Churches,
vocations ministry still needs to clarify the relationship between ordained
ministry, vocations of special consecration and all other vocations. A unitary
vocations ministry is based upon the vocational nature of the Church and of
every human life as call and response. This is at the base of the Church's
commitment to all vocations and particularly for vocations of special
consecration".(47)
a) The ordained minister
Within this general sensibility, a
particular pastoral attention would seem to be needed, today, for the ordained
ministry, which represents the first specific way of proclaiming the Gospel.
It "represents in different times and places the permanent guarantee of
the sacramental presence of Christ, the Redeemer",(48) and
expresses precisely the Church's direct dependence on Christ, who continues to
send His Spirit to her so that she may not remain closed in on herself, in her
cenacle, but may travel the paths of the world proclaiming the Good News.
This vocational organisation is expressed in
three grades: episcopal (to which is related the guarantee of the
apostolic succession), presbyteral (which is the "sacramental
representation of Jesus Christ... the Shepherd")(49) and diaconal
(the sacramental sign of Christ the servant).(50) To Bishops is
entrusted the ministry of calling those who aspire to Holy Orders, so that they
might become their collaborators in the apostolic office.
The ordained ministry makes the Church to
be, above all in the celebration of the Eucharist, "the source and
summit"(51) of the Christian life and of the community called to
remember the Risen one. Every other vocation is born in the Church and is part
of its life. Accordingly the ordained ministry enjoys a service of communion in
the community and, because of this, has the compulsory duty of promoting
every vocation.
Hence the pastoral translation: the ordained
ministry for all vocations and all vocations for the ordained ministry in a
reciprocity of communion. The Bishop, therefore, with his presbyterate, is
called to discern and cultivate all the gifts of the Spirit. But in a particular
way the care of the seminary must become a preoccupation of the whole diocesan
Church in order to guarantee the formation of future priests and the
establishment of Eucharistic communities as the full expression of the
Christian experience.
b) Attention to all vocations
The discernment and care of the Christian
communities is extended to all vocations, whether to those already traditional
in the Church or to the new gifts of the Spirit: religious consecration in the
monastic life and apostolic life, the lay vocation, the charism of secular
institutes, the societies of apostolic life, the vocation to marriage, the
various lay forms of association related to religious institutes, missionary
vocations, new forms of consecrated life.
These different gifts of the Spirit are
present in different ways in the Churches of Europe; but all of these Churches,
in every case, are called to give a witness of welcome and care to every
vocation. A Church is alive to the extent to which its expression of the
different vocations is rich and varied.
In a time like our own, then, in need of
prophecy, it is wise to encourage those vocations that are a particular sign of
what we will be although it has not yet been revealed to us (cf 1 Jn 3,
2), such as the vocations of special consecration; but it is also wise
and necessary to encourage the prophetic aspects typical of every Christian
vocation, including the lay vocation, so that the Church, in the sight
of the world, may be an ever clearer sign of the things to come, of the Kingdom
which is "already but not yet".
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