The Function of a Priest

What is a priest, a full-functioning, mystic priest? What does he or she do? Is there anything at all that a priest creates or causes to happen by his own will? Can a priest by "taking thought" or speaking the Word make anything happen in this world? Can she cause the planets to spin or the sun to rise or a baby to be born? No. All of these things were here before we got here. We cannot by any efforting on our part make something that was not already here, already existent in the mind of God. We are co-creators, creating with a power that flows through us, not from us.

When I get out of the way, I feel my consciousness naturally rise into the awareness of God's love. I feel completely taken care of. And as I open up to it, I feel my atmosphere fill with the Light of Christ; my being fairly glows, so much so that the world cannot help but recognize it and respond. It's not me, but it's happening through me. It's not my presence, but the presence of God. I am there, but as a delivery boy, not the author.

And here's the interesting part: if I have an agenda, or if I'm angry at someone and I'm thinking that I'll just "bless" them into submission, or if I think that the world is broken and I'm going to fix it, then nothing happens. No presence, no light, no love. If it were possible for me to do any of those things, that would not be God. That would be me. I would be attempting to create the world in my own image. If anything besides grace and forgiveness comes from me, I have no power to change anything, and the world is made worse by me adding more of what it already has too much of.

Grace and forgiveness are a priest's stock-in-trade.

So what is it that we can do? Well, we can open up to the grace of God and let that be what flows through us to other human beings. We can be the conduit, the mediators for the forgiveness of God to all people everywhere. Jesus asked God to forgive his torturers, "for they know not what they do." And when his disciples asked how many times they should forgive someone, he told them, "Seventy times seven."