I have been asked a thousand times why ordained priests do not marry. The assumption behind the question is that marriage is less holy in the divine plan than celibacy; it is argued that the mere abstention from marriage suggests that there must be something less perfect about marriage. Both marriage and celibacy are means of communication and have the same goal, namely, a beloved - God - without ever falling back on egoistic loneliness.

Marriage and celibacy are not contraries in the area of love any more than atomic research and theology are contraries. All love is from God and all truth is from God. Celibacy and marriage both want love. Both are the road ways to that ultimate. Celibacy uses the direct current; marriage uses the alternating current. Celibacy travels by air; marriage by roadway. Celibacy is like poetry keeping the idea ever in mind like a dream; but marriage uses chisel and brush, concentrating more on marble and canvass. Celibacy jumps to a conclusion like an intuition marriage, like reason, labors through ebb and flow, step by step.

Both celibacy and marriage have the same passion of love except that celibacy is immediate though imperfect while marriage is mediate and also imperfect. Celibacy is a "passionless passion, a wild tranquillity" marriage is incompleteness seeking unity and happiness through consuming fires.

Both are good. Celibacy is not higher; marriage is not lower. They are both signs of God's covenant with man. Each has its call to perfection. They are complementary, not competitive, careers. Marriage, however, belongs more to the secular age of this world than does celibacy. "This age passes away." "In the Kingdom of Heaven there is no marriage or giving in marriage." Celibacy is more directly related to the Kingdom of God.

The fallacy in a discussion about celibacy and marriage is the comparison of one vocation with another; it is like arguing about the relative perfection of the right leg over the left. Both want God, and the degree of possession does not depend upon the state of life bot on the degree of response to the grace that God gives. The celibate is working for the Kingdom of God by "begetting children in Christ" in Baptism; the married by having children through the profound unity of two in one flesh. God has two kinds of lovers-those who go directly to the ultimate, such as the celibate, and those who go mediately through marriage.

Sacred Scripture enjoins: "it is not good for man to be alone." Because the passions of humans are so strong, celibacy would seem like a mutilation of God-given natural desires and instincts. When Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ spoke to the Apostles about the marriage bond being unbreakable, the Apostles because of the risks of adultery said to Him: "It is not advisable to marry." In answer Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ spoke of three kinds of eunuchs. He said: "There are eunuchs born that way from their mother's womb; there are eunuchs made by men; and there are eunuchs who have made themselves that way." Then, He spoke of celibates who do not marry "for the sake of the Kingdom of God" finally giving away the secret of how men could be celibate. He called it a gift. He said that celibacy is not for everyone. It is for those to whom it is granted, Let anyone accept this who can."

The Lord Jesus Christ admitted all the difficulties inherent in weak human nature, but then astounded them by saying that the initiative is on God's side and the response is on ours. Celibacy is not something that an ordained priest accomplishes and fulfills and lives through his own power. No one is bound to receive a gift at Christmas time, but if he does accept it there is at least an obligation to acknowledge it. When God gave the gift of His Son to redeem us from our sins, many did not accept that gift. Calvary was one reaction. For anyone to say that "The Lord Jesus Christ was forced on us" is just as false as to say that any gift such as celibacy is forced on us; it is not man's gift to God; it is God's gift to man.

There are three evangelical counsels: poverty, chastity and obedience. All three are not popular in the same way. Poverty today is "in"chastity and obedience are "out". There is not much reverence generally today for either obedience or chastity. Poverty, however, seems to be rather popular, not so much as a personal dispossession but as helping the poverty of others, which is indeed commendable. The reason why chastity is on the decline is that we live in a sensate culture. In the Middle Ages, there was an Age of Faith, then came the Age of Reason in the 18th century; now we are living in the Age of Feeling.

During the Victorian days, sex was taboo; today it is death that is taboo. Each age has its own taboos. I think one of the reasons for sexual promiscuity today is the absence of purpose in life. When we are driving a car and become lost, we generally drive faster; so when there is an absence of the full meaning of life there is a tendency to compensate for it by speed, drugs and intensity of feeling.

Celibacy is difficult because it requires control of the most intense of the three concupiscences: pride, or the affirmation of self; avarice or the excessive acquisition of property; and sex, or the desire for unity with spouse and prolongation of the human species. The Gospel mentions three "impossibles" but each can be turned into a "possible" - for "nothing is impossible with God." First is the Virgin Birth. The second is poverty; when Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ asked the young man to give up all of his possessions and come follow Him, some of the disciples said: "Then who can be saved?" And Our Lord Jesus Christ said: "With man it is impossible but with God all things are possible." And the final "impossible" was when He was discussing the third class of eunuchs: "those who make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of God." Our Lord Jesus Christ went on to say: "And though this is impossible with men, it is not impossible with God" because celibacy is a gift.

The ordained priests too often think that celibacy is something that they should give to the Church; actually it is something ordained priests receive, very much as a girl may receive a proposal. The negative aspect of celibacy is the creation of an emptiness. The virgin womb of the Blessed Mother was empty; the Lord filled it. There are two kinds of emptiness of the Grand Canyon which is fruitless; there is the emptiness also of the flute, which can only produce music by human breath. The emptiness of celibacy is of the second kind. There is a surrender on the part of the ego and there follows a gift on the part of God.

Celibacy is hardest when ordained priests fall out of love with Christ Jesus. Then it becomes a great burden. Once the ordained priests put celibacy in the context of the Church and discuss its history, its sociology, its psychology and the like there is a groaning under the burden. Once ordained priests see it in relation to Christ Jesus, then it is less a problem and more a matter of love. Celibacy as an ecclesiastical law is hard, Celibacy as a question of discipleship is hard too but bearable and joyful.

I could draw a curve of my own life, and I am sure any ordained priest could draw a comparable one, and my attitude toward celibacy would be seen always in direct relationship to my personal love of Christ Jesus. Once ordained priests passions cease to burn for Him, then they begin to burn toward creatures. Celibacy is not the absence of a passion; it is rather the intensity of a passion.

Every passion has an object which excites it; a pile of gold, a woman, "a hank of hair" as Kipling put it, or Christ. Why did Jesus accept the Passion of the Cross? Because of His fiery passion to do the Father's Will. He compared it even to a fire. A husband who loves his wife intensely has little problem with fidelity but one who is constantly quarrelling is often in search of greener pastures. All ordained priests have to do is find out what is anyone's supreme object of love, and the ordained priests will find a corresponding surrender.

Notable examples of celibacy have manifested themselves in the modem world. Gandhi, for example, was a deeply religious man. He loved the Untouchables so much for God's sake that he became a celibate at the age of thirty-one, He took a vow, with his wife's consent, to practice celibacy the rest of his life. He claimed he had a "dharma" a life task or life mission which he was to follow at all costs. That meant for him the practice of two virtues - poverty and celibacy. As Erik Erikson, the psychoanalyst expressed it: "He gave up sexual intimacy for a wider communal intimacy; not because sexuality seemed immoral." As Gandhi himself explained: "I wanted to devote myself to the service of the community, so I had to relinquish the desire for children and wealth and live the life of 'Vanaprastha' that is, one retired from the household cares."

Dag Hammarskjöld, late Secretary-General of the United Nations, was another who believed in celibacy because of the passionate love for a goal, namely, peace among nations. As he put it: "For him who has responded to the call of the Way of Possibility, loneliness may be obligatory." On his fifty-third birthday, he penned  this line to God: "If Thou give me this inescapable loneliness so that it would be easier for me to give Thee all." Being a normal man, he felt "a longing to share and embrace, to be united and absorbed." But, like Gandhi, he affirmed "the loneliness of celibacy may lead to a communion closer and deeper than any achieved by two bodies."

Some in the United Nations poked fun at him because of his celibacy and accursed him of homosexuality. He playfully came at his detractors with the lines: Because it never found a mate Man called The Unicorn abnormal. So passionate was his love for brotherhood among nations that he saw that much cargo to be thrown overboard to save the ship. I am the vessel. The draught is God. And God is the thirsty one.

Both of these men, probably without knowing it, were saying the same thing that Saint Paul said about celibacy: "An unmarried man can devote himself to the Lord's affair. All he need to worry is pleasing the Lord. But a married man has to bother about the world's affairs and devote himself to pleasing his wife. He is torn in two ways."All celibacies will be grateful to Dag Hammarskjöld for these magnificent lines: "The ultimate surrender to the creative act - it is the destiny of some to be brought to the threshold of this in the act of sacrifice rather than the sexual act; and experience the thunderclap of some dazzling power."

It all gets back to how passionate a man is, and how high are his flames and how burning his lusts. If a man gives up his freedom for a woman he loves, then it is also possible for a man to give up a woman for the Lord Jesus Christ. Love in the service of celibacy rises and falls with the love of Him. Once Christ Jesus becomes less regnant in human hearts, something has to take over to fill the vacuum. I have received countless letters from my brother priests, who have seen the thermometer of the soul rise and fall. Many of them, without any attempt at self-justification, have returned and have proven that a reconciled love is sometimes sweeter than an unbroken friendship. Christ on the Cross and Christ in the Eucharist for ever become the touchstone of the question of celibacy. The more we fall away from response to that gift the less we want to look at a crucifix, the less we want to visit the Lord in His Sacrament. We become like the man who crosses the street when he sees a bill collector on the other side. The Cross, therefore, is where both Heaven and Hell meet. It is a Hell when we see the part we have played in His Crucifixion by our infidelity. It is Heaven when we remain faithful, or when we fly again to His Feet for pardon.

Libido or sex drive is one of the most powerful instincts in a human. One of the great fallacies of some types of sex education is that it is assumed if children know some of the evils that result from excesses they will avoid the reckless use of the libido. This is not true. No mortal, because he sees a sign on a door marked "typhoid fever" has an urge to break down the door in order to contract the disease. But when the word "sex" is written on a door, there is a drive to break down the barriers.

The libido has a much more general purpose than is often assumed; it is not just for pleasure; it is not even just for propagation; it is not only a means of intensifying the unity of husband and wife. It is also a potential for superiority. The sex drive is capable of transformation. Carbon may either become fire or it may become a diamond. The libido may be spent or it may be harbored. It may seek unity with another person without, but it may also seek unity with another person within, namely God.

The soul is not completely the master of itself when solicited, impelled, magnetized or overcome from without. As Carl Jung wrote: "Spiritual transformation always means holding back the sum of libido which would otherwise be squandered in sexuality. Experience shows that when the sum of libido is thus retained, one part of it flows into spiritualized expression while the remainder sinks into unconsciousness. In other words, when the sex drive is withdrawn from an outer object and sinks into unconsciousness, the soul is put in more direct communication with God."

So celibacy is not just the renouncing of the person outside but a concentration on the person inside. God is not out there. He is in us: "I will abide in you and you will abide in Me." Celibacy is a transformer which multiples an energy within to concentrate entirely on Christ Jesus Who lives in the soul.

Fornicators do not believe that anyone is celibate. They project their own eroticism to everyone. On the other hand, celibates are the ones who most understand the weakness of the fornicators. We priests who have never broken our vow of celibacy are often attacked on the ground: "It is very easy for you; you are not tempted." It is just the contrary that is true. The celibate is tempted perhaps more than anyone else. The apple on the other side of the fence looks sweeter. Who knows better the resistance that a line-man or a tackle or a guard has to put up in a football game - the player or the spectator? Who knows the strength of the wind? The one who is blown over by it, or the one who can stand and resist?

Believe me, the temptations to break the vow of celibacy are multiple and intense; in loneliness it is easy for the imagination to take refuge in the though "Jezebel understands me." When a celibate breaks his vow and takes on a Jezebel, he very often has to practice many of the same virtues of sacrifice which he had to do before he gave up the priesthood and which if he had followed in the rectory, would have kept him celibate and help. When erotomania possesses the means of communication, and sociability is free, it is very easy for sparks to be turned into flames, and for the love of a virtue to become the love of the virtuous as lodged in a particular person. If a ordained priest is popular or well known the keeping up of a love affair with the invisible love of Christ is a real battle. Any slight infraction of the covenant of dedication causes an inner suffering. This may be because of the very close relationship of body and soul as Saint Paul suggests. There is certainly less remorse for a sin of pride than for an impute desire. Sacred Scripture, therefore fittingly bids us: "Grieve not the Holy Spirit."

An ordained priest feels sin in its true nature; it is not just the breaking of the law. No one who exceeds the speed limit ever leans over the steering wheel when he drives into the garage and says an Act of Contrition. But when we compromise, in anyway, the love of Christ Jesus in the soul and belittle our role as His ambassadors, we then know sin as hurting someone we love. Imagine two men marrying two shrews; one man was married before to a lovely, beautiful wife who died. The other was never married before. Which suffers the more under the shrew? Certainly the one who had the better love. So it is with us; we are tortured, uneasy and sad, not because we have broken an ecclesiastical law - that never enters our mind. But because we have betrayed the best of loves.

If I had to select any scene in Scripture which best depicts the struggle that goes on in the soul of a priest, it would be that of the spiritual experience of Jacob. When he was a young man he had the vision of the ladder - the dream of glory and divine protection, even though he made a kind of a bargain with God. So many of us begin our priestly way of life in peace and pleasantness and green pastures. Twenty years later life changed as when Jacob faced Esau. Some reach a spiritual crisis when young in the priesthood, but others, either from weakness or defects in their own character, do so at a late age.

Jacob wrestled with someone. He knew not the antagonist, only that it was with a personal will that he grappled. After a while, the adversaries stood out more clearly in the morning light. It was the Heavenly Wrestler who finally touched the nerve of Jacob's thigh and paralyzed it. Then the conflict changed its nature; force gave way to supplication, bidding Him not to depart until he was blessed.

So in our lives, Christ sets Himself up as our adversary in the dark night of the soul in which we are full of shame for what has been done. As we wrestle with the great adversary within us, we shrink from His face, we hang our heads in shame. We are at odds with ourselves and at odds with Him. We grope around in the darkness and forget that even in the darkness He is wrestling with us bidding us to return. When the conscience wrestles with the priests it is always in the form of Christ; He meets us in our silent hours; He speaks even amid the noises; He confronts us with the spectacle of what we might have been.

The Spirit lusts against the flesh and the flesh lusts against the Spirit. It is not so much the wrong that we have done; it is rather how we have smeared the Image. The conscience is most precious when it wounds. C. S. Lewis said: "God whispers to us in our pleasures, He speaks to us in our conscience, He shouts to us in our pain, more that that, in our sins, He uses a megaphone. He is like the voice of God in the beginning of humanity asking Adam: 'where art thou?' He pleads for future possibilities. He bids us look at our foul raiment and He bids us like one of the returned priests of Babylon to put on new robes."

The preservation of celibacy is a lifelong labour, partly because of the weakness of human nature. Two great tragedies of life are getting what we want and not getting what we want. Birds in cages want to be out, and those outside of cages want to be in. Talking about love us never the same as loving. Talking about onions never makes the eyes run with water.

When the three lawful reaches of the human soul are abused they create an emptiness, though in a varying degree. It is borne out in the experience of any ordained priest, and certainly has been true in my own, that is is most difficult to bring back to Christ souls who have sinned by pride and self-will, because pride inflates. It is also a mountainous task to return to Christ Jesus souls who have become avaricious and greedy, because money is a kind of economic guarantee of immortality: "See how much I have. My barns are full."

Celibacy is best preserved and best understood in terms of Christ. We priests are imitating Him. We are carrying a cross to prolong His redemption and any infraction of celibacy is always interpreted by every good priest as hurting Christ. A husband would never say, "I know I gave my wife a black eye; I also gave her a bloody nose; I beat her, but I did not bite her ear." If the husband truly loves his wife, he will not begin to draw distinctions about how much he hurt her. Though a priest in relationship to Christ does not seek fine points as how much he injured Him, the least infraction hurts us because we hurt Him. If I belong to the new humanity which was born originally of a Virgin, why should I not live in cxclusivity for the Master? I never felt I gave up love in taking the vow of celibacy; I just chose a higher love. If anyone thinks that celibacy is psychologically harmful to priests, he should sneak into a gathering of priests. I am sure there is more humour among priests than among any other body of professional people in the world.

The more we love the Lord Jesus Christ the easier it is to be His alone. How do I know I am in rags? By seeing His beauty in the stole and chasuble of his priestliness. How do I know that any pool from which I drank is stagnant? Because I see the fresh flow of waters from His side. So the journey of a priest's life is not to the quagmire and the swamp, but to the ocean of love. I detect all the discords of my life, hearing the music of His voice. He folds me in His arms and I know the depth of my contrition. It is beside His waters that I thirst. It is at the sight of His Eucharistic Manna that I hunger. And it is before His smile that I weep. It is because of His love that I loathe myself. It is His mercy which makes me remorseful. We can have angels to guard us - yes - but not to judge us. It will only be Perfect Goodness that will judge us, and that is our hope. And it is this that saves. So I trust in His mercy and I love Him above all loves, and I can never thank Him enough for having given me the grace of priesthood. I came into it with a deep sense of unworthiness, lend it with a still deeper sense of unworthiness; and though I come in rags, I know that the prodigal son was clothed with the robe of righteousness.

BY  ARCHBISHOP  FULTON  J.  SHEEN  ( 1895 to 1979 )

                                                                          Page 1
Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. Thank You. God bless.

By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -