Baptism calls us to be three things that many of us likely have forgotten.
In uniting us to Christ, baptism calls us to share in his offices of king, prophet, and priest, as the catechism suggests (as does Father Jacques Philippe in his work Interior Freedom). This is really incredible if we just give it a few moments of thought. We are all kings. We are all prophets. We are all priests. What does this really mean?
Kings
There are many different expressions of Christian kingship. In Interior Freedom, Philippe offers one interpretation: kingship as spiritual freedom. “We are kings because we are children and heirs of the King of heaven and earth. But also in the sense that we are subject to nothing and everything is subject to us,” Philippe writes (Interior Freedom, 79). What he means is that nothing—others, troubles in life, any kind of exterior circumstance—can dislodge faith, hope, and love in our souls. We are masters of ourselves because we let Christ reign in our hearts. Philippe calls this “royal freedom.”
There is a twofold exterior freedom that comes with this reality as well. First, we have no need to hoard earthly possessions since we already ‘possess’ everything through Christ. There is a certain kind of freedom that comes in this poverty. But the other side of is that we are also rich in Christ, by sharing in His kingship we have access to whatever He chooses to give to us from the abundance of creation.
St. John of the Cross beautifully spoke to this wonderful reality in his poem, “Prayer of the Soul in Love,” which Philippe cites:
Why do you hesitate? Why do you wait? For you can from this instant love God in your heart. Mine are the heavens and mine is the earth, and mine are the peoples, the just are mine, and mine are the sinners; the angels are mine, and the Mother of God, and all things are mine, and God himself is mine and for me, because Christ is mine and wholly for me. What do you ask for, then, and what do you seek, my soul? All of that is yours, and for you.
Prophets
We are not just kings. We are also prophets. Our culture tends to think of prophets as predictors of future events. But, in the Old Testament, prophets also spoke to the present, bringing words of judgment and mercy to their contemporaries. Certainly we are called to be prophets in this sense, preaching the gospel in our words and deeds to those around us.
But there is a deeper calling at work here. Being a prophet means that we directly encounter the word of God. That was something reserved for a privileged few in the Old Testament—just about everyone else had to listen to what the prophets said. But since we are all prophets we are not in need of such intermediaries.
What does it mean to have a personal relationship with the Word? Colossians 3:16 says to “let the word of Christ richly dwell within you.” The prophet Jeremiah gives us a gripping portrait of what this looks like in practice:
When I found your words, I devoured them;
your words were my joy, the happiness of my heart (Jeremiah 15:16).
As Christians we don’t need to actually physically hear the words of God to experience what Jeremiah did—the words we can devour are the contents of Scripture. And in so doing we may find they exert a kind of power over us, driving us into agony and ecstasy, as they did Jeremiah:
You seduced me, LORD, and I let myself be seduced;
you were too strong for me, and you prevailed. …
I say I will not mention him,
I will no longer speak in his name.
But then it is as if fire is burning in my heart,
imprisoned in my bones;
I grow weary holding back,
I cannot! (Jeremiah 20:7-9).
Ultimately the relationship with the words of God center around a person: the Word Himself. Only that explains the drama of what Jeremiah is going through. We too are called to have that radical encounter with the Word, tasting both the joy and fire in the depths of our being.
Priests
There is the particular priesthood, for which only some men are ordained. But then there is the universal priesthood, to which we are all called. 1 Peter 2:9, quoting Isaiah 61:6, states, “But you are ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may announce the praises’ of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” This sound like a continuation of the prophetic role, which it is. But the priesthood is specially associated with the idea of sacrifice. As priests, this is something we are all called to do, as St. Paul states in Romans 12:1, “I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.”
In this, the particular priesthood exists as a model of all of us. At Mass priests, through the power of God, consecrate the Eucharistic bread and wine, transforming it into the body and blood and divinity of Christ. We too, in our own ways, are to make God present in the ordinary moments and things around us.
Lumen Gentium, the Vatican document on the Church, sums up the relationship between the two priesthoods in this way:
Though they differ from one another in essence and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are nonetheless interrelated: each of them in its own special way is a participation in the one priesthood of Christ. The ministerial priest, by the sacred power he enjoys, teaches and rules the priestly people; acting in the person of Christ, he makes present the Eucharistic sacrifice, and offers it to God in the name of all the people. But the faithful, in virtue of their royal priesthood, join in the offering of the Eucharist. They likewise exercise that priesthood in receiving the sacraments, in prayer and thanksgiving, in the witness of a holy life, and by self-denial and active charity.
What Lumen Gentium says about the priesthood of all is quite extraordinary: though certainly not in any way identical to what the ordained priest does, we in our own way, participate in the Eucharistic offering. Put simply: we participate in Mass as priests—and while we may not be standing at the altar offering sacrifice we can certainly join the sacrifices offered on the altar of our hearts to it.
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Photo by David Jakab from Pexels
