A 'eulogy' for celibacy?

By Msgr. Pedro Lopez-Gallo

Eulogy, from the Greek, means to speak well of. Also in the English dictionary, eulogy is defined as a speech or a writing in praise of a person, an event, or a thing, but it is not exclusively reserved for funeral orations, as it is commonly understood here in North America.

In my column today, I would like to raise a grateful hymn of joy and jubilation for the splendid gift of celibacy God has given to His Church and to us priests through our ordination. Celibacy is indeed an enriching donation to build up the kingdom of heaven on earth.

In the beginning God created Adam and Eve in His immaculate image. After their fall, He wanted to restore and redeem humankind through His Son, Jesus, born from the purest and sinless Mother Mary through virginal birth: a virgin gave birth to this Child.

The Church prays, "Father, You allowed no stain of Adam’s sin to touch the Virgin Mary. Full of grace, she was a worthy mother of Your Son. Purest of virgins, she was to bring forth Your Son, the innocent Lamb Who takes away our sins" (Preface for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception). To assist her, St. Joseph was chosen to be her chaste spouse.

We priests, similar to Mary, make Jesus present and cradle Him in our hands at the moment of the Consecration. Through the miraculous words of the transubstantiation: This is My Body, This is My Blood, the presence of Jesus on the altar becomes reality.

In the same way that Mary introduced her Divine Child to the shepherds and the Magi, the priest also presents Jesus to the community, saying, "This is Jesus, the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world."

It is no wonder, therefore, that the Church wants her priests to be celibate and chaste, because all around Jesus must be immaculate, free of blemish or impurity. Would it be possible to honour God in any better way than by giving up, to Him and for Him, our potential faculty to beget children from the flesh? Instead, we consecrate ourselves to generate children spiritually, to the point that the whole parish calls us Father.

Blessed be God for having given us this charismatic gift of our priestly celibacy! Our prayer should be, "God, we thank You for giving us this gift, because through this charism we are more fully consecrated to you and to our Christian faithful. Through our celibacy we are able and disposed to embrace all our faithful, male and female, Jews and Gentiles...."

These days, television programs and movies are full of scenes of indecent exposure and gross pornography. It is difficult to find a show without coarse language, violence, and nudity. Fashion for men and women is provocative.

Our celibacy, therefore, upsets today’s sexually oriented society. We priests are a reproach to its promiscuity, and hence the world hates us, as they detest and reject Jesus.

What better example than the impious book The Da Vinci Code, which describes Jesus as the lover of a prostitute! If mere cartoons about Mohammed can create such horrendous riots in the Muslim world, we can only imagine what the universal repercussions would be if Dan Brown described their holy prophet in the same way.

Yes, this desire to desecrate Mary Magdalene and to parody her holiness was directed against what Jesus loved the most, chastity and purity. According to the canonical Gospels, it is clear that Jesus was celibate and capable of friendships with women and men, always with the respect and dignity they deserved. The four Evangelists speak about at least 10 women.

Certainly Mary of Magdala was a beguiling and intriguing woman who was very attached to Jesus, but to her passionate vehemence, Jesus remained distant. "Toward dawn on the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala went to visit the sepulchre and saw the stone removed and did not know where the body was moved. Thus, she stayed outside the tomb weeping, until somebody, who she thought was the gardener, asked, ‘Woman, why are you weeping. Whom are you looking for?’ And she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where and I will take Him.’"

Jesus said only one word: "Mary!" and she recognized Him and said, "Rabbuni," meaning dear little Teacher. In her spontaneity, she wanted to embrace Him, but Jesus rebuffed her: "Stop holding on to Me, but go to My brothers and tell them I am going to My Father" (John 20:11-20).

Nothing intimate, nothing that shows sexual or sensual attraction. Brown will invoke apocrypha and spurious books of dubious authenticity to create a porno romance to ridicule our Christian religion.

However, "pain in vain," because omnia munda mundis, meaning: "all is clean to the clean." We Christians will hold firm to the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God" (Mt. 5:8).

Msgr. Lopez-Gallo’s columns are available in two volumes for $20 each from St. Andrew’s Church Supply, 275 E. 8 Ave., Vancouver, V5T 1R9, or toll-free at 1-800-663-7161. Proceeds will go to Hogar de Nazareth Orphanage in Mexico, which he sponsors.