Beloved brothers in Christ:
Today as we gather again to remember the memorable day of our ordination, let us make a spiritual journey to those months preceding our ordination when we were scrutinized about our suitability for priestly ministry.
The seminary fathers questioned our maturity and tested our capacity to understand, retain, and transmit the basics of theology, canon law, and liturgy. They assessed us for our pastoral sensibility and evaluated our pastoral qualities, eloquence, emotional quotient, orthodoxy, and piety.
Today when seminary priests present seminarians to me for ordination, among the many questions I ask is, “Does this seminarian know how to cry? Have you seen him cry? What makes him cry? How is he when he sees others cry?” The answers to my questions reveal a vital glimpse into the character and inner life of the ordinand.
TEARS ARE POWER
Crying makes us vulnerable. Crying weakens our Superman image. Some people even mock men who cry. We were told when we were children “Boys don’t cry…Men don’t cry”. We hid when we cried. Crying lessened our machismo—we were taught. But real people do cry; men and women alike.
It is important that priests know how to cry and never lose that spiritual gift of crying. A priest who has lost the capacity to cry eventually compromises his ability to love like Christ who Himself cried. We need to see tears as gifts of the Spirit.
If tears swell from your priestly eyes, let them flow. As they flow, let your faith in God grow. As tears flow, let love even more glow. To cry without fear is to allow our loved ones to see how broken we are; and to trust that our brokenness will not stop us from loving. To cry is to believe that our loved ones will still love us even when they see who we really are—weak and broken and wounded and ugly and even rotten.
TEARS OF FEAR
We cry when we are afraid. Who is the priest who was never afraid? We fear God. We fear strong people. Maybe you are afraid of me too. We even fear ourselves and call the feeling “floating anxiety”. When the reservoir of fear is overfilled and overflows, we manage the fear by running away. We start many projects. Keep busy until fatigue. We run after many distractions that restaurants, resorts, gadget stores, internet sites, and car dealers offer us abundantly without fail. Then we still come home to our empty bedrooms and cry alone as we see again our dark closets that hide our dark selves. The self we cannot accept.
But we should not be afraid of our skeletons in the closet. We may be afraid of getting old alone and sick. We may be afraid of what others will say. We may be afraid of being accused and being judged guilty. We may be afraid of being shamed and calumniated. Let us confront these fears not as brave strong men but as weakling stumbled runners. Let the tears of fear and guilt and shame flow out; and cleansed by our tears, hear again the familiar voice we heard when we were ordained, “Do not be afraid. You are mine.” Our strength is from the Lord.
TEARS OF GROWTH
We want to be seen happy and smiling. We want others to think we are fulfilled and successful. Unfortunately, when we pray, we also want to show our Lord what we only feel comfortable with. We even resort to vague ambiguous obscure words when we make our confessions fearing that the confessor will think less about us. But in constantly doing this, our spiritual lives become shallower and our souls lose depth. We become callous. We lose our capacity to cry. We laugh loud from our emptiness. But we are more and more unhappy inside alone.
The irony of it all is that letting tears flow also deepens our wellspring of spiritual joy and peace. Crying deepens the well from which we draw our fulfillment as priests. The more we reveal our tears to the Lord, the more we sense His love and His assuring hand.
TEARS OF FAILURE
To cry is to let go of control. The mode of crying is the opposite of the mode of fixing and controlling. As administrators, our impulse is to fix. Our urge is to take control. Our mindset is to plan and set direction; define the success indicators and to monitor people as responsible executives.
But we know that not all in life can be fixed. Not all in life is ideal and perfect. That is why we cry when we admit honestly our faults beyond our control. That is why we cry when we forgive truly, knowing that revenge is useless. When you reach a dead-end road, when you can only breakthrough through the tears of seeking forgiveness and giving it, then you understand how tears of forgiveness are so essential for life. The valley of tears where we sigh and mourn and weep, that we pray at Salve Regina, is that attitude of acceptance when I cannot fix it, when I cannot explain it when I cannot control it, when I cannot understand it. It is that valley where the only lamppost is the tears of forgiveness.
TEARS OF GRIEF
What are my most important memorable lessons as a priest and bishop? I can say—the lessons I learned from grief. I grieve and cry at the death of every priest and bishop. Grief is a very cruel teacher. In the same way, when you do not allow grief to surface from your river of tears, you miss out on much in life. In grief, my muscles get sore, all food is bitter, my chest is heavy and my body lacks strength. I cannot control life. I cannot fix the ache of death. I just cry and let my tears purify me and make me ready to walk again, this time a bit stronger in the valley of darkness. No one leaves this world without lessons from grief. We know we are helpless. We cry helplessly.
PRIESTLY TEARS
Today let us thank the Lord for the gift of our priesthood. We can thank the Lord like the wise men and offer Him gifts of gold, incense, and myrrh. The Lord is the highest. Let us give Him our best.
But we can also offer Him the tears of the sinful woman whom the Lord allowed to wash His feet. We can bring him our tears of grief like the widow of an only son in Nain or in Golgotha. We can offer Him the tears of Peter who denied Him and who wept bitterly as he saw from afar how the Lord was mocked. Or we can join Him in Gethsemane and wipe His tears and His sweat of blood. We can join the tears of Mary Magdalene who failed to fathom right away what the empty tomb meant.
Choose any reason for priestly tears. Do not be afraid or ashamed of your tears. We are not just royal priests prohibited from showing emotions in public. We are also priestly victims like the Victim Lamb. When the Victim Lamb cries as its breast is slashed, love is complete. When we know we have given our all, we still cry but our tears have become tears of life-giving JOY!
Reflections by Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan on the occasion of Chrism Mass on March 28, 2024
