In answering the call, a priest responds by accepting
a priest's special role in life
and in society to be a kind of paradox to others.

Christian paradoxes

By Victor B. Brezik

n One of the most noticeable and memorable Christian paradoxes came from the lips of Christ himself. "He who saves his life will lose it; he who loses his life will save it" (cf. Mark 8:35). But there are many others.

A paradox is an apparent contradiction which upon closer examination turns out to express a truth. G. K. Chesterton mastered the use of paradox as a literary form of expression. Long before Chesterton, however, St. Paul knew well the force that paradox gives to the meaning of words. The message of the cross, he said, is foolishness to some; to others it is the power of God. He asks: "Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish? For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength" (1 Cor. 1:18-25).

The Christian faith is prolific with paradoxes. The central Christian paradox is that of death and life. It says that one must die in order to live. The sacrament of Christian initiation is founded on this paradox. Baptism symbolizes a dying and a rising to new life. It expresses death to sin, life for God; putting off the Old Adam, the old man of nature, and putting on the new man of grace; dying with Christ in order to rise with Christ. If the grain of wheat sown in the ground does not die, it remains only a seed. It does not germinate and sprout up into a living plant.

There is already a paradox for Christianity in the opposition of nature and grace. To be saved one must have a human nature but one cannot be saved by one's human nature. Admittance to the eternal banquet requires another wedding garment. There are no natural saints in heaven. It is not that nature is bad. On the contrary, nature is good but not good enough. For salvation, nature needs to be perfected, uplifted, transformed by grace.

Adulthood and childhood bring another Christian paradox. The Christian must grow to full stature of Christ. St. Paul writing to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 13:11) said: "When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things." Yet, on the other hand, Christ said: "unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 18:3). To grow to the full stature of Christ, to become an adult Christian, one must become as a little child. That is the paradox.

The opposition between humility and pride also contains an apparent contradiction. To strive to be somebody, one must take pride in being somebody, otherwise no effort will be made. But Christian teaching says that to become somebody, one must in a certain way become a nobody. St. Paul counted himself as nothing to be with Christ, "the world's rubbish," he said, "the scum of all" (1 Cor. 4:13). "God," he said, "chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something" (1 Cor. 1:28).

This paradox must be properly understood. If to be somebody means being one's own man, self-sufficient, completely independent, even of God, in this sense being somebody is the very epitome of the pride listed at the head of the capital sins. This pride comes before a fall. It is the pride from which issued the cry long ago: non serviam: I refuse to be subservient. I will not obey.

Opposite this bad sense of pride stands humility. God gives grace to the humble but resists the proud. St. Paul asks: "What do you possess that you have not received?' (1 Cor. 4:7). For the Christian to be somebody is to acknowledge utter dependence on God, the primary source of all being and goodness. But in being dependent on God, the Christian participates in the very independence of God. Thus the Christian must be independent of all that withdraws one from God. The paradox is that one must be lowly in order to be exalted. Mary said: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord . . . . The Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is his name" (Luke 1:38,49).

There is a kind of paradox in the apparent opposition between penance and sorrow for sin, on the one hand, and joy and rejoicing in the Lord, on the other. St. Paul said: "Rejoice in the Lord always" (Phil. 4:4). Liturgically, the Church expresses this paradox through the contrasts of the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent and the joyful feasts of Christmas and Easter. Without the crucifixion there would be no resurrection. Asceticism precedes the mystical union of the soul with God. Our Lord said: "Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted" (Matt. 5:4).

There is also a paradox in the Christian's attitude to the world. The Christian is urged to shun the world as something dangerous and bad, yet save the world as something good and worthwhile. This ambiguity toward the world is already discernible in the behavior and teaching of Christ who did not pray for the world which is already judged, yet loved the world enough to die in order to save it. In living out this paradox, the Christian is advised to be in the world but not of the world. Worldliness is opposed to holiness.

At the root of these Christian paradoxes is Christ himself. In himself Christ was a sign of contradiction. "And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, 'Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted'" (Luke 2:34). Christ was not just a man. He was also God. He was the unique Man-God or God-Man, the Word Incarnate. "In the beginning was the Word . . . and the Word was God . . . And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us" (John 1:1, 14).

After Christ, every baptized Christian bears within himself a sign of contradiction: he is human by nature, divine by grace, by the waters of baptism which impart grace even while cleansing from sin. The Christian's very mission in the world is to be a sign of contradiction, contradiction to the ways of sin and to a culture centered simply on the here and now. A Christian's life on earth must witness to the reality of an afterlife. His faith in the teaching of Christ must give testimony to hope in the promises of Christ. Christ said: "I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live" (John 11:25).

Christ did not promise ease and comfort in this life. He promised the cross. He said, "whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me" (Matt. 10:38). "How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matt. 7:14). By accepting the cross with a willing heart, the cross paradoxically becomes a comfort because in Christian eyes the cross of Christ is a saving cross.

Christ did not promise his followers that they will be loved in this life. "If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first" (John 15:18). Here is another paradox: to be loved is to be hated. To be loved by Christ is to be hated by the world that is opposed to Christ. Christ said: "if you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you" (John 15:19).

In the Eucharist itself lies another paradox. The Bread of Life is not really bread. Christ said: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world" (John 6:51). The wine of the altar is not actually wine. It has become the blood of Christ. The people asked: "How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?" (John 6:52). He does this by giving us his body and blood under the appearances of bread and wine. As he said: "For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink" (John 6:55). "Then many of his disciples who were listening said: 'This saying is hard; who can accept it?'" (John 6:60). In reply Christ asked: "Does this shock you?" "It is the spirit that gives life," he added. That is, only those believe this who are moved by the spirit. Faith is a divine gift. "And he said, 'For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father'" (John 6:65). The Eucharist is nourishment only for believers. St. Thomas Aquinas echoes this teaching in the familiar verse: Praestet fides supplementum Sensuum defectui: Faith for all defects supplying / Where the feeble senses fail.

What do these paradoxes signify for the Catholic priesthood? A priest who has not thought about and accepted these paradoxes and their application to the priesthood can hardly understand fully what it means to be a priest.

How can a priest represent Christ to the people, how can he be an alter Christus, a man who makes Christ present in the world, witnesses to Christ and acts among others in persona Christi-at Mass, in the confessional, in the pulpit-and not like Christ be a sign of contradiction in the world, not only to non-believers but even to believers who, too, have to grapple with the mystery of the Catholic priesthood?

The priest is not merely what he appears to be. He is, of course, a man, a human being, much like other human beings. At the same time, he is not just like other human beings. He is not a layman in the canonical sense. By ordination and by divine calling he is a man set apart. For the remainder of his life, even if unfortunately he lapses into infidelity to his priesthood, he will always in a mysterious way, in a way best known to God, be a man set apart.

Christ said: "You have not chosen me. I have chosen you." In the case of a priest, this is a personal call. Each priest has been called by name through the voice of the bishop. Adsum. Here I am. In answering the call, a priest responds by accepting a a priest's special role in life and in society to be a kind of paradox to others, to be like Christ, someone who while mingling with others and administering to them, witnesses to the things that count most in life because they are the things that count in the life to come. n