Franciscan at Home

In the Sacrament of Baptism, something extraordinary happens that many Catholics, including children, don’t fully understand. When the baptized are anointed with sacred chrism, they share in Christ’s work as priest, prophet, and king. This participation in Christ’s priestly mission, often called the “priesthood of the baptized” or the “common priesthood of the faithful,” is not merely theological terminology. It is a fundamental identity that should shape how children understand their role in God’s family and in the world.

Yet, in many catechetical settings, we rush past this profound truth, focusing instead on preparing children for the next sacrament or teaching them about the ministerial priesthood without helping them understand their own priestly calling. In doing so, we miss the opportunity to help young people discover their dignity as baptized Catholics and their mission to serve God and neighbor.

Starting with the Kerygma

Before we can help children understand their priestly identity, we must first ensure they have encountered Jesus Christ personally through the kerygma. As Pope Francis reminds us in Christus Vivit (“Christ Is Alive”), the fundamental message is simple yet transformative: “God loves you”; “Christ, out of love, sacrificed himself completely in order to save you”; and “Christ is alive!”[1] When children understand this core message—that they are beloved by God and called into relationship with him—everything else, including their baptismal priesthood, finds its proper context.

The priesthood of the baptized isn’t about what children will do when they grow up; it’s about who they are right now as beloved sons and daughters of God. This identity shapes how they relate to God, to others, and to the world around them. When we begin with the kerygma, children understand that their priestly calling flows from love—God’s love for them and their response of love to God and neighbor.

When Catholics hear the word “priesthood,” our minds often jump to the parish priest at the altar. Yet, the Church teaches that all the baptized share in the one priesthood of Christ. This truth, while ancient, is often misunderstood, overlooked, or reduced to a vague notion of “service.” The priesthood of the baptized is not a lesser version of ordained ministry—it is a distinct, ontological participation in Christ’s own priesthood with its own dignity, power, and mission.

This article explores the biblical and theological foundations of the common priesthood, its relationship to the ministerial priesthood, and what this means for our daily Christian life and formation.

Biblical Roots: Christ the High Priest

The Letter to the Hebrews offers the clearest New Testament teaching on Jesus as high priest.[1] Unlike the Levitical priests, Christ’s priesthood is “according to the order of Melchizedek” (Heb 6:20)—unique, eternal, and perfect. Two qualities define his priesthood:

• Full humanity: “He had to be made like his brethren in every respect” (Heb 2:17). Christ stands in solidarity with us, able to sympathize with our weakness.
   
• Perfect holiness: By virtue of the Incarnation, his human nature was united to his divine person and wholly sanctified from the first moment of conception.

Christ’s priestly mission was to reconcile humanity to God—not merely by offering a sacrifice but by offering himself as the sacrifice (Heb 9:14). This priestly action began with his obedience to the Father at the Incarnation, was manifested at his baptism in the Jordan, and reached its climax in his Passion, Death, and Resurrection.

Participation in Christ’s Priesthood

The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, teaches: “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.”[2]

How do we enter this priesthood? Through baptism,
which one might say configures us to Christ cum sensu Christo, “with the mind of Christ” (see 1 Cor 2:14–16), in the mode of his earthly priesthood. Confirmation deepens this configuration, empowering us cum voce Christo, “with the voice of Christ” (see Lk 10:16), for public witness and apostolic mission (see CCC 1777).

These sacraments imprint an indelible sacramental character on the soul: a permanent ontological capacity to worship God and to be an instrument of his grace.[3] In the common priesthood, this character allows the faithful to offer “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God” (1 Pt 2:5) in every circumstance of life—at home, at work, in society—not just in liturgical settings.

Art: Christ and His Mother Studying the Scriptures; 
Henry Ossawa Tanner, American, 1859 - 1937; 
Dallas Museum of Art, Deaccession Funds.

To view a full resolution of this artwork on a smartboard, click here.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of all men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” —(John 1:1–5)

The first words of the Gospel of John prompt readers to shift their approach from following a narrative to entering a mystery that requires meditation. With this framing, the words transcend a literal meaning to suggest a poetic reality that can only be discerned through the heart. Inspired by Sacred Scripture, Henry Ossawa Tanner’s religious paintings reveal a heart enriched through poetic meditation. An American living in France and devout Methodist, Tanner was encouraged by France’s culturally Catholic environment to explore Sacred Scripture in his work. This can be seen in his Christ and His Mother Studying the Scriptures (1908), in which Tanner uses composition and technique to enliven a simple domestic scene and suggest a spiritual significance. Painting with a teacher’s heart, he offers a meditation on education and the mystery of the Incarnation.

The scene is deceptively simple: A mother supports her son as he follows the words on the scroll with his finger to aid his reading. It is a quiet scene as the mother listens attentively to her son, giving voice to the words. The pyramidal structure of the composition—with the heads of the figures at the apex and the horizontal base emphasized by the striped carpet—communicates stability, instilling this home with a sense of peace.

Yet, the stability of the scene does not make it feel static. Rather, the painting breathes with life through design and technique. The scroll unravels as a ribbon, offering a calligraphic quality to a scene dominated by more angular shapes. Tanner’s hand is shown through the lively brushwork, offering texture and energy while remaining well ordered through his attention to the direction of each mark. The vivid color stays within the realm of representation while going beyond what the eye directly observes in nature. It is as if the artist turned every painting dial up one notch. It is a painting of a mother simply helping her son learn how to read. But this ordinary experience is shown as extraordinary on Tanner’s canvas.

"When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his home” (Jn 19:26–27). In this passage from John’s Gospel, Jesus extends Mary’s motherhood not only to John but symbolically to the whole Church. She is both Mother of our Redeemer and Mother of the Church. This dual role provides an example for mothers to live out the maternal vocation of women with Christian joy. In the domestic church, as a mirror of the activity of the universal Church, Christian parents extend the family’s life of prayer from the Mass and propel it toward the Mass. The role of the mother as source of nurture and nourishment is particularly important in the life of a child. Her maternal vocation also carries a spiritual significance rooted in the priesthood of the baptized; motherhood is understood in relation to the sacrifice of the Mass. What can we learn from Mary as Mother of God and Mother of the Church? What does the Catholic liturgical imagination offer us to inspire us to pursue a deeper relationship with Christ in our life and baptismal call?

God’s Maternal Characteristics

In a collection of essays on the nature and vocation of women, St. Edith Stein writes on the vocation of woman as mother. She understands that the whole of a woman’s existence is, in its entirety, motherly—regardless of whether a woman has borne children in the natural sense. This motherliness extends to everyone a woman encounters. The archetype for this vocation is found in Mary, she writes, and “every woman who wants to fulfill her destiny must look to Mary as ideal.”[1] This maternal calling takes on spiritual and supernatural significance especially in the context of the Sacred Liturgy and the domestic liturgy, as we seek in our family life to “enkindle the sparks of love for God, or once enkindled, to fan them into greater brightness.”[2]

What are these maternal characteristics of woman? These qualities of motherhood—whether one is a mother by birth, adoption, or spiritual motherhood—find their source in God. The image of the maternal characteristics of God is not new; we find examples of it throughout salvation history, from the time of the Old Testament all the way through to the writings of the early Church and medieval saints.[3] The purpose here is not to propose a feminization of God the Father, nor to diminish the significance of the role of the human father in the liturgical life of the family. Rather, God is the source of all goodness, including the goodness of motherhood, and woman is in some manner a reflection, an image, of these nurturing, protecting, and loving maternal qualities.

Sacred Scripture offers numerous representations of motherhood focused on the nurturing care of children, particularly in the book of Isaiah. “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb?” (Is 49:15). We also hear of the comfort that God will provide in Jerusalem: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; in Jerusalem you shall find your comfort” (Is 66:13). Perhaps even more striking is the comparison of the Lord crying out like a woman in labor (Is 42:14). The Psalms, too, employ this image of a nursing mother: “For you drew me forth from the womb, made me safe at my mother’s breasts” (Ps 22:10), and “Like a weaned child to its mother, weaned is my soul” (Ps 131:2). Another frequent theme is the analogy of the animal mother protecting her young: the mother bird that gathers her young, providing shelter under her wings: “He will shelter you with his pinions, and under his wings you may take refuge” (Ps 91:4).

St. John Paul II wrote on the masculine and feminine qualities of God in his apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem: “In various passages the love of God who cares for his people is shown to be like that of a mother: thus, like a mother God ‘has carried’ humanity, and in particular, his Chosen People, within his own womb; he has given birth to it in travail, has nourished and comforted it (cf. Is 42:14; 46:3–4). In many passages God’s love is presented as the ‘masculine’ love of the bridegroom and father (cf. Hosea 11:1–4; Jer 3:4–19), but also sometimes as the ‘feminine’ love of a mother.”[4]

Liturgically, this image is expressed in the entrance antiphon for Divine Mercy Sunday, Quasi Modo Geniti Infantes: “Like newborn infants, you must long for the pure, spiritual milk, that in him you may grow to salvation, alleluia.”[5] St. Augustine presents maternal love in the tenderness and care with which a mother feeds her child, describing this life-giving spiritual food: “For this name, according to Thy mercy, O Lord, this name of my Saviour Thy Son, had my tender heart, even with my mother's milk, devoutly drunk in and deeply treasured.”[6] At the same time, Augustine also describes a mother’s milk as the food of the infant, that preparatory spiritual food until solid food can be eaten.[7] Referencing Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 3:1–2), Augustine sees this change in nourishment as a sign of spiritual maturity. From a mother, this is the early nourishment in faith; from God, this is the food of creation, the food that sustains man in existence; and from the Church, this is the spiritual milk of the sacraments.

When we consider the Mass as a place of encounter with the Lord, we frequently jump right to receiving Communion as the most important catechetical point to highlight. Of course, our joy at receiving the Lord is always called for, but we cannot neglect the rich and valuable moments that precede this summit. Every action of the liturgy is a place of incarnate encounter with the Lord, who first entered into our world of time and material; and in a special way, we should take notice of the beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, which is marked by the presentation of the gifts.

It is easy to gloss over the importance of this rite. Far too often we can find ourselves considering the preparation of the altar and the presentation of the gifts as a type of intermission in the drama of the liturgy. Yet, this rite, too, has rich and beautiful meaning and symbolism, and we would do well to approach this moment of Mass with gratitude for the gift of the Word and joyful anticipation for what has yet to happen within the liturgy.

To truly understand the offertory procession, we must consider what it is that we do during this time. It is crucial that we view the offertory as more than a material procession of goods for a utilitarian purpose. When we bring to the altar the bread and the wine, it is not merely a material gift; indeed, symbolized by this gift is the Bride of Christ, the whole People of God which is the Church. Symbolically, we give bread—made from pure wheat flour and water—and wine—made from grapes, yeast, and water—to represent all we have. The bread, made from two elements, calls us to acknowledge Christ, fully God and fully man. And the wine calls us to acknowledge the three divine persons of God. These truths, themselves a gift to man, are all we have to offer.

None of us wants to suffer. We don’t want to be diagnosed with a disease. We don’t want to experience loss.But suffering is inevitable. When it comes, what are we to do? Is it merely to be endured? What, if anything, can we learn from Jesus and his experience of suffering? What does his response to suffering mean for us, who are joined to him in baptism?

The Priesthood of Jesus

Jesus is the eternal Son of the Father. He is the divine Teacher and our model of holiness. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that he is also a priest, our great High Priest, making of his entire life—but especially his Paschal Mystery—a sacrifice to the Father (see CCC 662; Heb 7; 9:11–15). If we are baptized into Christ and joined into union with him, then the fact that he has a priestly identity and mission means something significant for us.

In the baptismal liturgy, these words are spoken over the newly baptized person: “He [God] now anoints you with the Chrism of salvation, so that you may remain as a member of Christ, Priest, Prophet, and King, unto eternal life.”[1] The ritual text indicates that every baptized person possesses a priestly identity and mission, which centers around the offering of sacrifice. From this point on, our lives are meant to be sacrificial. At Mass, those who are priests by baptism gather around the one who is a priest by ordination, who stands in the person of Jesus, and we all as the assembled body of Christ offer the sacrifice of Jesus to the Father.

Yet, there is another offering that we priests (by baptism) make in the liturgy. While every facet of the life of the baptized person is capable of being offered to God as a gift, our suffering can also be offered to God. Let’s consider here what would be required for suffering to be experienced and turned over to the Father as a priestly offering.

I’d like to suggest that there are three steps to suffering in a way aligned with our missionary identity. Each of these movements is needed if our sufferings are to be experienced as truly ours and if we are to be conscious and present to them so that they might be given to the Father as a gift.

My beautiful mother, Kathleen Pauley, died on June 4, 2025 at the age of 83. She is an extraordinary person and an intimate friend of Jesus. She lived with suffering from a very early age and was well acquainted with the Cross. In the weeks of serious illness that led up to her death, I learned many things from her about our life in Christ, lessons which have helped me see suffering and death in a way more aligned with our Christian hope.

First, some background: Kathy was a woman after the Lord’s heart. Around four decades ago, she told me of being asked by our Lord in prayer if she would suffer for souls. She gave her assent to this seemingly strange request. Days later, she slipped on a puddle of water in the produce department of the grocery store and severely injured her back. And from that day on, she experienced a series of serious physical setbacks that lasted the rest of her life. Although her suffering had begun much earlier through a very difficult and painful childhood, this choice she was given by our Lord was a pivotal moment in her life where he made a proposal of love and she freely accepted it. After decades of intentionally sharing in his Cross, the final stage of her earthly pilgrimage took place over two months as she battled a very serious blood infection in her heart. This infection caused a heart attack and several strokes, which impaired her vision by about 80%. In being a member of her family who sought to accompany her through this experience, she taught me much from her school of suffering. Here are seven lessons I learned from her.

Lesson One: Suffering That Stays

My mother understood something remarkable about God: out of love, he only infrequently chooses to take away suffering. This is counterintuitive, of course, for us humans, who see suffering as the greatest of evils—as something from which we want God to rescue us. Instead, he chooses to enter deeply and intimately into our experience of suffering, accompanying us in radical, divine solidarity. Kathy experienced the presence of God in her suffering quite profoundly; she spoke sometimes of her experience of being deeply loved by Jesus as she suffered. It seems that this confidence in his closeness allowed her to embrace reality as it confronted her. Often, of course, she didn’t feel close to him; yet, she persevered in those periods of dryness and spiritual darkness. But always he provided for her, usually in unexpected ways.

Here’s a compelling example I witnessed: In her last days, I found myself marveling at how the Lord had drawn close and was uniquely providing for the needs of his beloved daughter as she suffered. Because of the strokes she had had, she often hallucinated. Yet, most of her hallucinations were of the loveliest type. For a span of about a week, she frequently believed she was not in a hospital bed facing a dire prognosis but rather at an enormous party with all of her family and friends around her. As I sat by her bedside, she asked me time and again if people were having a good time. And at one point, she brought a rush of tears to my eyes when she told me she was so excited because my daughters and nieces were going to “put on a show” for everyone, drawing on memories of a dozen years ago when the then-toddling Pauley girls loved to put on shows for Nana and Papa with play acting and singing.

Through these experiences with her, I found myself marveling at how the Lord was taking good care of his beloved and giving her joy. For much of my time with her, she was, as they say, happy as a clam. I know this isn’t the experience of most who suffer—and it certainly wasn’t her experience through most of her own life as she struggled to embrace some difficult realities. But, for a few days during her final weeks, her experience of joy showed me God’s great tenderness and closeness to her. I was so grateful to him for this. While he rarely took away her suffering, it did bring about opportunities for intimacy and union with Jesus that were just breathtaking to behold.

Last spring, most of my family spent a semester at Franciscan University of Steubenville’s beautiful campus in Gaming, Austria. As an introvert, one of my worries going into the semester was getting to know a whole new group of coworkers and joining their community as an outsider. Never have I been more delighted to discover my worries were unwarranted.We were picked up at the airport by a beautiful and generous family. When we arrived to Gaming late at night, a benevolent philosophy professor insisted on bringing in our bags. There was warm pumpkin soup and tea waiting for us at the dinner table. And with a burst of joy and energy, four amazing Franciscan TOR sisters rushed into the house with hugs and words of welcome. Over the course of the next four months, the faculty and staff there became the dearest of friends. Never have I experienced friendship and community in such a concentrated way.

For most of us, our current cultural climate is one of stark isolation. With families spread out geographically more than ever, and with screens drawing us away from real human interaction, it is easy to live significantly withdrawn from good relationships. Without the cultural supports for community that previous generations enjoyed, unless we take intentional steps toward others, it’s very easy to lead a solitary and lonely life.

And yet, we human beings were made for communion with others. We know theologically that we were made for union with God (who is a communion of Trinitarian persons) and with all the baptized who are joined to him. And on a natural human level, we know that good relationships are critical to the flourishing of every human being—even if finding such authentic community can be a bewildering quest today.

In the first paragraph of the first document of the Second Vatican Council we find a summary of the Council Fathers’ goals for their work: “This sacred Council has several aims in view: it desires to impart an ever increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful; to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change; to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ; to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church. The Council therefore sees particularly cogent reasons for undertaking the reform and promotion of the liturgy.”[1]

As many have noted, these aims have as their clear goal the renewal of the Church and its human structures for the sake of evangelization, both for those already in the family of God and for those not yet part of that family. In keeping with the remarks by which Pope St. John XXIII opened the Council, its goal and purpose was to make the Gospel of Jesus Christ more readily knowable and known by and to the men and women of our age.[2] One might fairly describe the intent of the Council as catechetical and evangelical. That is, it sought to do what it could to enliven the efforts of Catholics to deepen their own faith in the Triune God and to draw others to the same God.

Unfortunately, that intention did not bear its hoped-for fruit, at least initially. As many have also noted, in the initial postconciliar years and decades, the intended fruition of the Council Fathers’ desires not only did not come to pass, but just the opposite occurred, such that, some 20 years after the close of the Council, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger remarked that “the catastrophic failure of modern catechesis is all too obvious.”[3]

Why and how did this failure in catechetical and evangelical renewal occur immediately following the Council? Many have offered answers to this question from numerous perspectives. A recent and compelling answer is found in Brad Bursa’s Because He Has Spoken to Us: Structures of Proclamation from Rahner to Ratzinger. Bursa not only traces the theological origins and development of the postconciliar catechetical collapse to the attempted catechetical implementation of the theology of Karl Rahner, but he also proposes a way forward by pointing to the Trinitarian Christology of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI.

At the end of his public life, Jesus sent his apostles into the world to preach, teach, baptize, and share the life he had given them (see Mt 28:16–20).

At the end of his public life, Jesus sent his apostles into the world to preach, teach, baptize, and share the life he had given them (see Mt 28:16–20). This is the divine model: people are called to God to be formed by him and then sent to bring others to share in that joyful life. Teachers of the faith in particular enjoy both the joys and the responsibilities of living and sharing that life.

The Church in the United States finds herself in a similar position as those first disciples in this, the final year of the Eucharistic Revival: it is the Year of Mission. After some time of diocesan and parish renewal, each of us is being charged to go forth into the world to bring Christ to others. Having been formed in these last years by our Eucharistic prayer and study, we are now commissioned as missionaries, sent to invite others to experience the great joy of knowing and serving Christ in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.

In the case of those already engaged in catechetical ministry, this call will also take the form of renewing and deepening our own understanding, methods, and engagement with those whom we teach. To such an end, there are four main “pillars” proposed to us to guide our way and to help keep us stable in our pursuits of drawing people to Christ.

Pillar I: Eucharistic Encounter

The first of these pillars is Eucharistic Encounter. This pillar is meant to encourage and continue what we have been stressing this entire revival: we need to encounter Christ in the Eucharist—we need to meet him in his presence and spend time with him. This is the start and end of all our endeavors, for the Eucharist is the “source and summit of the Christian life.”[1] As the old saying goes, nemo dat quod non habet; nobody gives what he doesn’t have. In other words, we cannot expect to lead people to Christ if we are not spending time with him ourselves.

Catechists can help their students to grow in this area by helping them to participate worthily and well at Holy Mass, attending daily if possible; by going to adoration and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament; and by making short visits to the tabernacle, even spiritually if you cannot do so physically. Frequent confession is a must in this area as well. Good and helpful explanations of what participating in these sacramental realities mean will of course be necessary and will go a long way.