By Cameron Ryan
Recently I had a conversation with a priest, who recounted his experience from before becoming a priest, of witnessing his father on his deathbed. As death drew near, a priest came in to administer the Anointing of the Sick, with the whole family were gathered around. After the sacrament, the priest leaned in, and said something rather powerful: “You can go now.”
This priest gave a grown man, older than himself, a green light to commit his wife and children to the care of their wider family. Reassurance that they would be alright after he was gone. He gave him permission to die.
There is an unsung power of permission in the living Christian life: instances where a priest can validate people in their feelings and provide them the room. In so many instances, shepherding souls is not about enforcing a rule, or instructing, but giving people permission.
Permission to suffer without being thought less of. Permission to cry or not always be happy. Permission to hold principles that others have moved on from. Permission to be lonely.
I’m not talking here about giving licence or making excuses for sin. That would be clericalism, beyond the authority of the priest.
Nor is this power merely contrived or imputed to priests based on the social clout they once had. It comes from Jesus, who himself gave permission to roam among lepers and tax collecters, who mourned among mourners and rejoiced among the joyful, and who, in today’s Gospel, takes up his cross. These forms of immersion in the world lost all scandal because our Lord immersed himself in them wholeheartedly, and set the example of how to love.
But for so many people, the living of a faithful Christian life today, often among fraught families and workplaces, can feel like those last Japanese soldiers whom they discovered holding out in the Philippines, who thought WWII was still going on in the 70s. To bear the cross in a world that has given itself permission to cast it off, can feel isolating and burdensome; like holding out for a ridiculous lost cause.
But how far a word of encouragement can go in validating the struggle of another person! Or better still, company, sympathy, and support in endurance. That is giving permission – to put into words what others are thinking, and assure them that they are not the first or last one to think it.
And this is what Christ gives us today. An unqualified acknowledgement that a virtuous life is slow and heavy-going. By his own stigmata, he de-stigmatises suffering and death. By falling, he normalises our own need for help in carrying our crosses. Take up your cross, and follow me. A direct call to bear with him. Encouragement still to care, even when no one else does. To keep going, even when hope is in short supply.
Similarly, tomorrow’s Seminary Enquiry Day is an act of granting permission. The very act of talking to someone about vocations can give them the excuse they are looking for to discern.
How many young men must there be, around our respective dioceses, who wonder deep down if the priestly vocation could be for them, but stay quiet for fear that they will seem presumptuous or arrogant to be the first one to suggest it? Lacking the courage or self-belief that it takes to step under the spotlight? Perhaps they are even weighed down by feelings of shame: that the genuine attraction in their heart to care for and persevere with souls is really just veiled ambition for image or esteem.
It bears reminding for everyone in the Church that vocations to the priesthood and religious life are not rare occurrences. They aren’t like getting struck by lightning, and most vocations don’t come through sudden, thunderous revelations. Vocations come through the ordinary, and every parish is capable of producing them. And when we explicitly acknowledge and commend material signs of a potential vocation in another Christian, we are doing no small thing. We are validating God’s work in that person, that it might be brought to fruition according to his will. We are giving that person a little bit of permission to step up, go further, and perhaps to bear with us the cross of pastoral ministry.
Crosses, too, are not rare. They are part and parcel of following Christ, but how surprised are we when suffering comes our way, or when a serene life doesn’t come easily? We weren’t promised anything else.
But nobody likes to feel isolated. When we take up our cross, we join at the end of a very long line. Christ’s example gives us not only encouragement to keep going, but permission. Our God was perfect in everything, yet still was not too good to suffer.