CCBI News

Encourages Authentic Discipleship of Jesus
VATICAN CITY, FEB. 2, 2011 (Zenit.org).- In a circular letter recently publicized, the Congregation for Clergy is emphasizing the need for a renewal in the missionary commitment of priests as an essential element of their vocation. Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, prefect of the congregation, wrote a presentation, dated Jan. 21, for the circular letter on "The Missionary Identity of the Priest in the Church, as an Intrinsic Dimension of the Exercise of the 'Tria Munera.'" ZENIT will publish the circular letter in its Saturday document service. The "tria munera" refers to the clergy's ministries of teaching, sanctifying and governing, which correspond to Christ's threefold office of Prophet, Priest and King. The letter was the fruit of the congregation's last plenary assembly, which was held in March 2009. As a forward to the letter, the March 16, 2009 address of Benedict XVI to the assembly participants was included. In that address, the Pontiff affirmed, "In the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, that is, of the fact that God became man like us, lies both the content and the method of Christian proclamation." He continued: "The true dynamic center of the mission is here: precisely in Jesus Christ. The centrality of Christ brings with it the correct appreciation of the ministerial priesthood, without which there would be neither the Eucharist, nor even the mission nor the Church itself."

Cardinal Piacenza underlined the priority of renewing the commitment to missionary activity as stressed by the plenary assembly participants. He acknowledged that "the progressive pace of secularism, with its corrosive consequences for those social and cultural structures which facilitated the transmission of the faith, suggests a need for a genuine 'leap' of responsibility both in terms of mission ad gentes, as well as in the daily exercise of the ministry that must be lived in an authentically apostolic, and therefore missionary fashion." The prelate noted that this mission is "founded explicitly on the mission of Christ in which all priests share by virtue of sacramental ordination."