It is often said in theology that grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it.1 There is, in fact, a curious phenomenon involving the natural and supernatural fields: ordinarily, the human being is created by God with a series of aptitudes that constitute a state of previous preparation for receiving the grace that He Himself will later give, so that the soul is predisposed to walk in the direction designated by Providence.
In the specific case of my priestly vocation, we need to consider two periods: an implicit one, in which the call existed but was dormant; and then the moment when it became explicit.
The implicit phase began with the first glimmers of my consciousness. As an only child, I was isolated, observing and philosophizing… I was very attracted by the beautiful harmony among the stars in the sky, to the point where I would spend hours and hours at night, while everyone slept, gazing at them. On the other hand, the physiognomic and temperamental characteristics of the people around me really caught my attention. Knowing what other people are like, their tendencies and propensities, their tastes and appetites, what they think or how they react, and correlating this with the timbre of their voice, their gaze, the placement of their hair on their forehead or the lack of it, the type of nose, their thick, thin or medium lips, their chin, their hands, their gait, entertained me enormously.
The analysis was tireless and gave me a very keen psychological sense, creating in my soul a habit that was perhaps already pre-existing as a twin of the synderesis of intelligence and will. These were the initial movements of a strong natural inclination – placed in me by Providence with a view to the priesthood – to get to know the depths of souls in order to help them in their shortcomings and needs.
Admiration for the Catholic Church and its ministers
In addition, I was born in a time when liturgical ceremonies were still celebrated with great splendour, so my first admirations were for the Church!
I vividly remember, at the age of five, being taken by a relative to the Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows, belonging to the Servants of Mary priests – located about four blocks from my house – in the Ipiranga neighbourhood of São Paulo.
It was evening, around half past seven, and the chapel was packed – mostly ladies, all kneeling and wearing black veils, as was the custom in those days, and a few gentlemen. I entered just as the singing of the Tantum Ergo was finishing, and absolute silence followed. The priest was about to give the benediction with the Blessed Sacrament.
I fell to my knees and thought: “I am not going to bow my head like everyone else, because I want to see what is going on here.”
The priest raised the monstrance and traced a huge cross, solemnly and slowly; the bells began to ring and everyone made the Sign of the Cross. My eyes were locked on the Blessed Sacrament. As a child, I had never been told anything about the Eucharist. I did not know what a monstrance was, nor did I really understand what a priest was, but I felt a strong inner consolation and concluded that there was the centre of the universe, the King of kings and Lord of lords, God!
This desire for God was so real and deep that later, when I went to school and prepared for First Communion, I fell in love with religion classes! The teachers, who taught them with great care, were the same Servite priests, and I thought of them as saints, because it seemed to me that every cleric should be perfect. They told me stories about saints and supernatural facts that delighted me and made me feel good, to the point that these principles and teachings would stay in my head from morning until night, because they were life to me!
Bitter and dramatic disappointments
However, shortly before the twilight of my childhood, maturity, along with the serious, consequential and serious aspects of life came to cross my path.
When I came face to face with the effects of original sin on the human process, the resulting trauma was bitter, dramatic and very disappointing… Especially when, because of my psychological sense, I realized that certain members of that clergy I admired so much did not entirely live up to the standard of holiness I had attributed to them, but had allowed themselves be dragged along by the relativism of the times, even in moral matters… I noticed the religious inadequacy of these people, and their consequent inability to solve the world’s problems. They were like a fruit whose beautiful skin was deceiving, but which was rotting inside.
Around the same time, some of my older cousins, who had unfortunately lost their faith, had harrowing arguments with me, defending the non-existence of hell and the fact that all people acted only out of self-interest.
I was both idealistic and radical. And when the controversy came to that point, it shocked my sense of innocence: how could the law of interest reign on the face of the earth? It was not possible! There had to be people who dedicated themselves for the love of others, to do good! If idealism was removed from the world, it would disintegrate; failing that, I would lose my desire to live…
However, all these disappointments served as a stimulus to launch myself with greater intensity in search of the best balance between creatures and the Creator. I had an idea of the need to resist relativism and a great desire to discover a form of moral perfection that was its opposite and would defeat evil. An inner certainty told me that there must be someone – alongside whom there were others, not many – who was entirely good and whom I could trust.
Therefore, I prayed to Our Lady that I would find that person, because I wanted to follow him and form a group to do good.
João in 1948
And so, even before I left childhood, when youth was just dawning, a predisposition for helping my companions soon became clear to me: I was taken with zeal for all my friends, in the sense of being a support to them as they embarked on the path of virtue towards perfection. I fervently wanted to somehow bring the sidereal harmony that I contemplated during my long sleepless nights to social interaction, with the added bonus of man’s harmony with God Himself, which was a truly unique and main focus of my day-to-day life. Hence my dream of founding an honest, upright association to connect young people with God. It was, in fact, the breath of the Holy Spirit inspiring me to serve others within the sacred walls of the Holy Church.
The encounter with a man of God
A few years later, I heard an exposition on Protestantism and the deviations of Luther’s life and mentality. In a logical concatenation, the speaker demonstrated that all heresies arise from the misrepresentation of the truth. With the help of grace, I understood the solidity of the Church and the uniqueness of the Catholic Faith in relation to other cults. I remember thinking: “What do I want to found a society for? The true society is the Holy Roman Catholic Church, founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ! I have to give myself completely to it!”
I left that talk with such a strong conviction of the integrity of the Catholic religion, and such enthusiasm for piety and virtue, that the next day I decided to change my life: I got up early, went to church, made a general Confession and attended Holy Mass. Then I prayed the entire Rosary, and never again failed to say my daily prayers and receive Communion.
It was in this atmosphere that, on July 7, 1956, I met a man of God, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, who enlightened my path, gave brilliance to my understanding and stable strength to the decisions made at the beginning of my tender youthful years, summoning me to the full integrity of a son of the Holy Church, at her service and for the benefit of my brothers and sisters in the Faith.
From the moment I met this man, a volcano of admiration for the Church erupted inside me, restoring the whole chain of “flashes” I had had since I was a boy: my first adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, the impressions of my First Holy Communion and First Confession, the reception of Confirmation, the enchantment with catechism classes and the idea of the existence of a supernatural world beyond our senses…
The doors to a life path dedicated to the apostolate then opened before my eyes, and I decided to abandon everything and everyone in order to better serve God under the wisdom and advice of Dr. Plinio.
From then on, everything that happened brought me closer to the priesthood: the guidance of thousands of young people from many different nations on the path of virtue, their collective formation and the origination of new methods of evangelization. Some I pulled out of the clutches of the devil, others I forgave, strengthened and saved, still others I attracted and encouraged to seek perfection, using the best of my strength and qualities to help those in spiritual need, in a true “anxiety for all the churches” (2 Cor 11:28).
Essentially, it was a priestly function, exercised as a layman and not yet made explicit, but which, given my desire to do good to others, I had always had from the use of reason.
A “fiat lux” as clear as the sun
Dr. Plinio’s death in 1995 brought me face to face with my dire need. I remember clearly realizing with joy how much the work he had left behind was growing; however, this prospect brought with it a sequence of apprehensions and worries of various kinds: How to obtain more grace? How to fully repair the faults committed in the institution, now and in the future? How to provide religious assistance to so many people entrusted to me?
It did not take me long to realize how substantially I depended on supernatural help: the best way to make this work holy was the Mass! Because Our Lord had always showed me His power most sensibly in the Eucharist, as if to say: “Here I am in My divinity, to fulfil the requests you make of Me.” So reparation, holiness, graces, development, all of this was impossible without the Blessed Sacrament.
Msgr. João in November, 2004
At a certain point, there was a fiat lux, as clear as the sun: we need to have a priestly branch in the Heralds! And it was then easy for me to discern God’s call to follow the priestly path, a call that had started with the first stirrings of my conscience.
It was not just the penetrating sense of my condition as a human creature and the desire to make amends for my weaknesses that led me to these strong yearnings. It was a mysterious restlessness inviting me to more and more, captivating my interior.
The best way of uniting myself to God, knowing and loving Him with greater fervour and thus serving the Holy Church and society with perfection, would be to become a priest. I wanted to be able to celebrate Mass for those intentions that were ardently burning in my heart; I wanted to be consumed like a host in the service of Jesus and in the endeavour to sanctify everyone. Above all, what drove me most to embrace this state was the desire to be Our Lord’s vehicle for absolving those I met in search of divine forgiveness.
God’s ambassadors to mankind
Finally, on June 15, 2005, I received the Sacrament of Holy Orders, thus culminating my journey of total self-giving to the cause of the Holy Church. With delight in my soul, I entered into a consideration of the obligations, sacrifices and virtues that pervade the life of a priest.
In fact, those who enter the priestly path are called to imitate the Supreme Priest, the One who, being “in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:6-7). Therefore, from the moment he is anointed and, following apostolic tradition, the Bishop’s hands are laid on his head, he must disappear, in a complete forgetfulness of himself and abandonment into God’s hands. In the confessional, at the altar, when administering the other Sacraments, his person does not matter, because it is Our Lord Jesus Christ who is there.
The priest is taken from the midst of men and raised up to be God’s ambassador to them, and their ambassador to God! St. Isidore gives us the origin of the word priest (sacerdos) in his book of Etymologies: “quasi sacrum dans.”2 In other words, the one who distributes sacred things, presenting the prayers of the people, which must rise to the divine ears, and interceding so that every good gift and every perfect gift that comes down from the Father of lights may be infused into souls (cf. Jas 1:17).
As the link between God and man, there is a certain parity between the priestly vocation and that of the Angel. It is not only through the never-interrupted practice of virginity that he must resemble the pure spirits, but also through the obligation to transmit to others the Goodness and Truth that is God: “The lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts” (Mal 2:7).
However, God’s ministers take precedence over the Angels of Heaven, because the latter can help and encourage the people they care for, as well as cast out the demons that surround them, but they do not have the power to break the chains that bind souls to sin, through the office of absolving in persona Christi.3
Inset, Msgr. João during his ordination to the priesthood on June 15, 2005. In the background, a view of the ceremony
Therefore, below the dignity of Mary Most Holy, Mother of God – who participates in a relative way in the hypostatic order4 – is the imposing, majestic and sacred figure of the priest.
And if, on the one hand, the priest is the one who sees himself as a mere instrument of God, ready for all holocausts and ready to accept humiliations as the perfume of incense, on the other hand, total fidelity to his high vocation demands that he be an example to others in his apostolate, according to the words of Our Lord: “You are the light of the world. […] Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in Heaven” (Mt 5:14, 16). ◊
Excerpts from letters written in 2004 and 2005,
and from oral expositions given between 1992 and 2009
Notes
1 Cf. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. Summa Theologiæ. I, q.1, a.8, ad 2.
2 ST. ISIDORE OF SEVILLE. Etymologiarum. L.VII, c.12.
3 Cf. ST. ALPHONSUS MARIA DE LIGUORI. La dignidad y santidad sacerdotal. La selva. Sevilla: Apostolado Mariano, 2000, p.15-16.
4 Cf. ROYO MARÍN, OP, Antonio. La Virgen María. 2.ed. Madrid: BAC, 1997, p.101.
