Author name: Molly Hostetler

In speaking about the discernment of desire, Pope Francis makes reference to our Lord himself, who in his encounter with the Samaritan woman “addressed her desire for true love, in order to free her from the darkness in her life and to bring her to the full joy of the Gospel” (Amoris laetitia 294). Jesus offers the woman living water, an inexhaustible spring that will definitively quench the thirst of anyone who drinks of it. She is immediately interested: “The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw’” (John 4:15).

It is often thought that priests are the only ones who accompany persons. In fact, this is not the case: the first place in which we are accompanied is the family. It is normally our mother’s hand that first accompanies us to Mass and helps us, in a loving, maternal way, to know the Church and the faith that enlightens us.

Before his Ascension, the risen Christ commissioned the apostles to preach, teach, and baptize all nations. This is often called the “Final Commission” or “Great Commission.” The contexts in the Gospels are varied. The commissioning of the eleven in Mark 16:14–16 occurs in the part of the Gospel (16:9–20) considered by most to be a later addition appended to give the Gospel a neater conclusion than the abrupt original ending of 16:8.

Jesus went to Calvary wearing a seamless undergarment or tunic, woven from top to bottom, beneath his outer garments (John 19:23). John sees great significance in this seamless robe, because he states in 19:23 that it was “seamless” and, at the end of 19:23, that it was “in one piece” (διʼ ὅλου), though the latter is not obvious in all English translations. It certainly was a unique garment, because the tunic worn daily by men and women in Palestine was not seamless but made of two pieces of fabric sown together.

The priestly people, although overlooked in most catechesis, precede the ministerial priests. Christ had called many disciples before he chose twelve apostles out of them. Similarly, those ordained to the ministerial priesthood in the Sacrament of Holy Orders are called out of the priestly people who are living the Sacrament of Baptism.

While the primacy of Peter is affirmed by the New Testament, the Petrine succession cannot be directly deduced from any passage of the New Testament, although from the beginning the bishops of Rome were recorded as successors. Nonetheless, we can infer Petrine succession in Scripture.

In many respects the celibate, supernatural fatherhood of priests finds a model in the paternity of St. Joseph. The Holy Patriarch uniquely reflected the paternity of God as the guardian of God’s Son. St. John Paul II remarked on this singular “covenant of paternity” between Joseph and the Father, both of whom were addressed by Jesus as “Abba.”

The risen Christ has given leadership gifts to the Church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers, and pastors, not to do the whole work of the Church but “to equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Eph 4: 12). The role of the priest, or lay people employed by the Church, is not to carry out the mission of the Church all by themselves but to activate baptized Catholics into lives of holiness and mission.