NOTAS SOBRE UNA TEOLOGÍA DEL MINISTERIO ORDENADO

Resumen

-- Jesus Christ is the only and eternal Priest; and therefore it is clear that we all are priests, or rather, a priestly people,from the one priesthood of Christ. But we have to notice something very important: from the two aspects of the priesthood of Christ stressed by Hebrews, that is, the worshiping of God and the mediation, we only share the Jirst. Each and every one of us can offer to Goda new cult, but the mediation belongs only to Christ: it is not transferable. The same thing applies to the ordained ministry; it has the specific function of expressing the active presence of Christ the mediator, so that the people ofGod make this mediation his own, accept it and be transformed in Christ through it. We can say that the ordained ministry is priestly only from this perspective. The sacramental character is a principie of action that legitimates the mission and the service ofthe minister. That is why we must banishfrom our minds that the ordained ministry is a personal dignity. The ordained ministry is a mission service by its nature; it is not ontological but afunctional service. The existence of a single ordained ministry does not nullify the possibility that new forms of service related to the new needs of the Church, emerge, thanks to the dynamism and the needs of the Christian communities. When the originality of Christianfaith, as afollowing of Jesus, disappears, the Church ministry ends taking care of itself; falling down to a growing sacralization, that makes the ordained minister to be like "a priest" according to the style of a pagan religion, or of civil status; and someone will say that such care of himself is "eo ipso" a following of Jesus. The ordained ministry is not supposed to excel by what distinguishes it or by what makes it superior, but by a sacramental charisma that submerges it inside the community, in the heart of her communion, in arder to serve her, to favor her and to express it in the apostolic preaching.