The call to priesthood is a call to serve at the altar.

My friend and seminary classmate, Fr. Will Brown, was recently asked to preach at the ordination to the priesthood of another seminary colleague, Fr. Michael Cover. Fr. Will's excellent sermon, entitled "What are priests for?", can be found here. I highly recommend it.

One of the things that Fr. Will so eloquently points out is that many of the things that we commonly associate with being a priest are not the essential matter of priesthood. As a priest, I've been called to serve as pastor of a parish church, which is a wonderful calling that includes a variety of responsibilities that I could've never imagined when I first heard God's call. On any given day, I may find myself in the hospital holding the hand of a dying person, or blessing a newborn baby, or rearranging furniture in one of the Sunday School classrooms, or trying to understand and analyze complicated financial procedures, or sitting in a dunking booth and repeatedly finding myself submerged in water by small children, or talking via Skype with a missionary on the other side of the world. One of the great things about being a pastor is that I rarely ever have two days that look exactly the same. My work is dynamic and it puts me in touch with so many different people all along the stages of life. And yet, as Fr. Will points out, none of these things are essentially the work of priesthood. A layperson could do any single one of these just as well, if not better, than I do.

This extends even to those things that are commonly associated only with priests. As a pastor, and as the only priest in my parish, it is my responsibility to preach on a regular basis, at least every Sunday and often more than that. Much of the theological training that I received was so that I could preach and teach with clarity and authority. And it's certainly part of the work of a priest, as what the prayer book calls "a minister of Word and Sacrament," to preach and teach. But it's not a unique function of the priesthood. Lay people are quite capable of preaching and teaching.

I am also in charge of celebrating the sacraments. But in most cases, my role there is only partially unique. It is normative for a priest to baptize new Christians, but it's not absolutely necessary (in an emergency, any baptized Christian can baptize another). The same is true for the annointing of the sick, which the Church in recent decades has increasingly realized can be a ministry of the laity as well as the clergy, although again it's normative for the priest. In the celebration of a marriage or the hearing of a confession, my role as a priest is only partly unique. In the marriage rite, the couple enters into the sacrament together, with God, regardless of whether or not I'm there. My unique role is to bless the marriage on behalf of the Church. And in hearing confessions, I'm called to pronounce an absolution, which only the priest can do. Yet even in the case of confession, the prayer book makes clear that any baptized Christian might be called upon to hear the confession of another and to remind the penitent of foregiveness, even though they be not absolved. And while the blessing of a marriage and the absolution of a penitent are unique functions of the priesthood, they still do not strike at what is at the heart of a priest's ministry and calling.

When I was extended my own opportunity to preach at a friend's ordination almost two years ago, I told him that the most important thing that he could do to sustain his priesthood was to "be a man of the Eucharist." It is the calling of all Christians to be centered and focused on the Eucharist as the place in which Our Lord most intimately gives Himself to us. But as a priest, I'm called not only to receive that gift but to participate in the giving. To be a priest is to offer a sacrifice. Jesus is the great High Priest, as the Letter to the Hebrews so aptly tells us. He offers Himself to the Father on the cross. Those of us who are ordained priests do not have a priesthood of our own but share in the priesthood of Jesus. All Christians, by virtue of our baptism, are made one with Christ by being grafted into His Body. And so, in a sense, all of us, in our callings, are given some share in the ministry of Christ. For those of us who are ordained priests, it is a share in His priesthood, not because we deserve it or because of anything extraordinary about us, but in spite of our sins and our frailty. God's power works through us to allow us to lead the gathered community of the Church into the presence of Christ's sacrifice on Calvary. And the way we do that is through the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.

All of the other things I may be called to do aside, the thing that makes me a priest is that I'm called to stand at the altar and to lead the community in the Eucharistic prayer. I'm called to share in Christ's priesthood and consecrate the bread and wine that become His Body and Blood. I'm called to give my life to that. It is at the heart of what I do and at the heart of what every priest does. It is essential to priesthood. All the other functions of priesthood--including blessing and absolution--flow from it. Perhaps I could be a pastor without celebrating the Eucharist, but I couldn't be a priest without it.

I cannot begin to describe what a privelige it is to be able to stand at the altar. In the first couple of weeks after I was ordained, I could tell anyone who asks exactly how many times I'd celebrated. It was such a joy. Now, of course, I've celebrated countless times. And there are days when I'm less in tune with it, when my mind wanders or when I'm not feeling the closeness of God. And yet, in every Eucharist I've ever celebrated, there's always at least one moment when I become aware of the overwhelming awesomeness of what I'm doing, that my lips utter the words of Christ at the Last Supper, that my hands break the bread that is His Body. Sometimes it's hard not to shed tears when I realize how amazing this all is.

This is why I sometimes find it frustrating that so many people, including Episcopalians, will casually refer to their priests as "ministers." It's not that a priest isn't a minister. The priesthood is a ministry, and an essential one at that. And in the grand scheme of things, all of us are called to be ministers, to fulfill whatever ministry Our Lord gives to us. But the ministry of a priest isn't generic. It's specific. It is to celebrate the sacrifice at the altar, nothing more and nothing less. This doesn't make the priest more important than the laity by any means. All of us are called to ministries that are important and necessary for the life of the Church. The priest's calling isn't more important than others, but it is essential, because without the priest we are without the Eucharist, and without the Eucharist we are without Christ. "Unless you eat of the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink of His Blood, you shall not have life within you," says Jesus (John 6:53). This is literally a matter of (eternal) life and death.

The priesthood is a wonderful vocation, and I'm unworthy of it, but I'm so incredibly grateful that God has seen fit for me to serve anyway. I pray that God may raise up more priests in the years to come who have a heart for the Eucharist and who will give their lives to make the sacrament available to the people. In the age we live in, there's never been more need for faithful priests.