“Who is this Melchizedek guy?”

I am such a sap. Yesterday I attended the ordination for the Joliet (Illinois) diocese, and today the first Mass of one of the new priests, and at both events I couldn’t fight back tears. The priesthood started in Old Testament times, was perfected in Christ, and has continued since he ordained the apostles and they have passed on Holy Orders by the laying on of hands, to this time. Whenever I try to write about this, I can’t quite capture the awe of the sacrament. Here’s one attempt I made:

Imagine a huge news story of a father who abused his children for years, a terrible story that exploded into deeper revelations of that father’s sickness, along with emerging cases of other fathers who committed such grievous acts, reported and analyzed by vast numbers of media outlets with the help of social, criminal and mental health experts. They would reveal the allegations, expose the accused, dig up the past and all available facts surrounding these cases and explore culpability, and, by the way, provide generous coverage to the critics of fathers in general. They would exhaustively examine every angle imaginable in this shattering and sensational story of failed fatherhood. Except one. What is fatherhood? Since that relationship has existed from the beginning of creation, what was it intended to be?

Such is the state of coverage of the priesthood over the past year and a half in examining the pathology of a scandal. Where in all the rivers of ink or frequencies of airwaves was it asked: What is priesthood? It has existed for millennia. In the right order of things, what was it intended to be?

Astounding, in a word, as one traces priesthood from its first recorded manifestation in the Old Testament, through its change in practice during the time of Moses, to that established in the new covenant by Christ, the eternal high priest. Times, in grand and breathtaking understatement, have certainly changed in nearly every sweeping way civilization can alter them. But the priesthood remains.

It’s easy to get distracted by the goings on around you in a church today, but to consider the impact of what’s happening is to transcend the universe and enter a deep mystery. The more you understand its history and gravity, the more you are ovewhelmed.

Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand was one of countless scholars, saints and even sinners who saw in the office of the priest a sublime sanctity that renders his sacredness above others who might be seen as holier. Reflecting on his own deep reverence for the priestly office, Hildebrand once quoted Saint Francis of Assisi as saying “If I were at the same time to meet a priest and Saint Laurence the Deacon, I would first kiss the hands of the priest and say: ‘Forgive me, Saint Laurence, but the hands of the priest touch the body of Our Lord each day”. He continues: “the priest’s unimaginable gift and grandeur is to glorify God through the sacrifice of the Mass and to bring Him to men through sacramental communion and the preaching of the Word of God. This is the same sublime vocation the Son of God lived during His sojourn on earth. Thus, the priest establishes the kingdom of God in souls for whom his whole life is dedicated. He is called to be the father of the poor, the persecuted, the humiliated. The sanctification of souls is his whole mission”.

Pope Pius XII put it so simply: “You cannot lie down at night in peace, unless you can say with humility and sincerity of heart: Lord, today I have done everything that depended on me for the salvation of souls”.

Seeing the priestly call that way today is heroic, given the need it implies for that obedience the Holy Father refers to in Pastores Dabo Vobis. And the atmosphere in this culture of self-will. “Obedience has become a pejorative in our age”, says Father Francis Mary Stone, MFVA, one of the priests of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word, (founded by Mother Mary Angelica at Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Birmingham, Alabama). “The individual is so exalted, which is why a vocation is a gift of the Church. Obedience, the giving of self, makes one authentically free. The call to priesthood requires a renewal, a submission to formation. You have to be formed into the Church’s notion of what the priesthood is. You have to be radically changed to get to the point of seeing that as Christ intended it, as that of a priest/victim”.

As such, the Eucharist has to be at the center of a priest’s life. “The grace of Holy Thursday will be transmitted unto the end of time, unto the last of the priests who will celebrate the last Mass in a shattered universe”, writes Mauriac. “Holy Thursday created these men; a mark was stamped on them; a sign was given to them. They are like to us and yet so different — a fact never more surprising than in this pagan age. People say that there is a scarcity of priests. In truth, what an adorable mystery it is that there still are any priests”.

Both of those truths struck me in the past two days. There is a scarcity of men hearing the call to the priesthood. And it is amazing to watch these men who do hear the call lay down their lives for the people.

My son will be ordained to the priesthood in exactly three years. The Kleenex company ought to contact me about an endorsement of some sort.