“Every calling of the Lord is first and foremost a calling to His joy.” Leo XIV entrusted this reflection to the presbyters when addressing them at the meeting organised by the Dicastery for the Clergy. And in the 253 days since his election, the Pope has made clear a particular attention - almost a natural inclination - towards the theme of vocations and the quality of presbyteral and religious life.
In his addresses to priests, seminarians and religious superiors, Leo XIV avoids describing vocation in terms of a fallback option or an individual enterprise. He presents it, rather, as a way of life sustained by a relationship with Christ and, precisely for this reason, endowed with a generative force: it consolidates the present and opens possibilities for the future. The lexicon chosen by the Pope is coherent and recognisable: friendship, heart, courage, fraternity, prayer, joy. Words that do not serve to outline a utopian vision of ministry, but which call us back to the essential and to urgent questions that we must make our own if we are to live the ministry in everyday life and with joy.
The decisive category is friendship. Meeting the participants at the gathering promoted by the Dicastery for the Clergy, Leo XIV rejects any functionalist definition of ordained ministry and returns to the Gospel of John: the priest is a “friend of the Lord”. Not an executor, not a technician of the sacred, but a man who lives from a personal and daily relationship with Christ, nourished by the Word, the Sacraments and prayer. It is here that the Pope places the foundation of celibacy, the ability to pass through trials without hardening, the source of a joy that does not depend on circumstances.
From this approach follows a demanding vision of formation. Leo XIV never reduces it to the acquisition of pastoral skills, but describes it as an integral journey involving the whole person. Familiarity with the Lord requires time, silence, listening, and above all an ordered interior life. For this reason, the Pope insists forcefully on a second foundational axis: fraternity. Presbyteral life cannot be sustained by individualisms disguised as zeal. A presbyterate incapable of true relationships will hardly be able to generate credible communities. When Leo XIV speaks to seminarians, his deep image of the priest emerges with particular clarity. “The seminary should be a school of affections,” he states without mitigation. In a cultural context marked by narcissism, fragmentation and conflict, affective and relational maturity is not an accessory chapter, but a condition of truth of the vocation. To descend into the heart - the Pope says - can be frightening, because wounds and fragilities dwell there; precisely for this reason they must not be removed, but recognised and healed. Only in this way will the future priest be able to stand alongside others without using ministry as defence or compensation. Prayer, in this perspective, is not a devotional exercise: it is the space in which discernment is learned and one becomes integrated men.
Alongside the heart, Leo XIV decisively places courage. “Do not be afraid,” he repeats to seminarians, and reiterates it when speaking of vocations with priests. The Pope calls for clear proposals, ecclesial environments capable of showing that giving one’s life is possible and human. There is no naïve enthusiasm in his words, but spiritual realism: for this reason he recalls concrete tools such as spiritual accompaniment, confession, fraternal life. A vocation is not safeguarded by isolating oneself, but by supporting one another. The same grammar returns in the audience with the Superiors General. Leo XIV warns against the risk of a consecrated life worn down by efficiency, where the urgency of services takes the place of the source. Prayer is defined as a relational space, the place where the heart opens to God and rediscovers the meaning of the mission. When this space narrows, the consecrated person risks becoming a weary administrator, rather than a witness.
During his apostolic journey to Lebanon, speaking to young people, Leo situates vocation within a broader horizon: authentic relationships are founded on a “forever” that concerns marriage as well as religious consecration. Here again the theme of true friendship returns, the kind that knows how to say “you” before “I”, and that makes possible a decentred and fruitful life. Leo would recall this again to the Roman Curia in his first Christmas address.
This delicacy of the Pope also emerged during an audience held in recent weeks in the Paul VI Hall: Leo XIV exchanged his zucchetto with the son of a permanent deacon of the Diocese of Trenton, saying to him in a joking tone: “One day you might wear it, but first you must become a priest.” It is a joke, certainly, but it is not insignificant. It speaks of a Pope who lives his own vocation with gratitude and freedom, and who does not fear proposing it as a possible good. A light gesture that can become a lasting memory, capable one day of resurfacing as a true question.
Friendship, heart, fraternity, courage, joy are not consolatory formulas. They are criteria for discernment. In a time in which vocation risks being defended with strategies or numbers, Leo XIV brings it back to where it is born and where it endures: in a relationship that makes life full and, precisely for this reason, desirable.
p.F.C.
Silere non possum