John Baptist's Journey to Priesthood

One of the few joyful moments in the painful final days of John Baptist’s life (1719) was the unexpected but brief improvement in his condition that enabled him to celebrate the Eucharist. He had been bed-ridden for several days, but nonetheless prayed that he might recover enough on the feast of Saint Joseph, Protector of the Institute, to be able to say Mass. It seemed unlikely, because the evening before, as his nephew Élie Maillefer remarks, ‘he was so weak that he could neither walk, nor even stand’. However, the next morning he felt strong enough to get up and celebrate the Eucharist. ‘He accepted this last favour from God with thanksgiving.’

It was 57 years since he had taken the first step towards becoming a priest. As a boy not quite 11, he had received the tonsure, when a cross-shaped clipping was taken from his hair to mark his becoming a cleric. The ceremony took place in the chapel of the Archbishop’s palace in Reims, but the officiating bishop was Jean de Malevaud, the auxiliary bishop of the nearby city of Châlons-sur-Marne, not the Archbishop of Reims.

At the time, as De La Salle discusses in his catechism, The Duties of a Christian to God, the sacrament of Holy Orders included ‘various degrees subordinate to one another that involve different functions and are pursued in succession from the last order to the first, which is the priesthood’. The sacrament encompassing all these ‘orders’ ‘imparts to those who receive it the power to exercise the functions and ministries of the Church along with the grace to carry them our fittingly’.

Until 1972, there were four minor orders: porter, lector, exorcist and acolyte. Pope Paul VI abrogated these orders, and replaced the fifth, ‘subdiaconate’, with the lay ministries of lector and acolyte.

Of all the ceremonies leading up to John-Baptist’s ordination as a priest, none was conducted by the Archbishop of his home city. He received the four minor orders (1668) from Charles de Bourlon, Bishop of Soissons, the sub-diaconate – for which he had to travel to Cambrai, from its Bishop Ladisla Jonnart (1672), and the diaconate (1676) – for which he had to travel to Paris, from the auxiliary bishop François Batailler.

It was not until he was ordained a priest, on Holy Saturday (9 April) 1678 that the officiating bishop was Charles Maurice Le Tellier, Archbishop of Reims. In the previous years, Antonio Barberini had been the designated archbishop. However, apart from one clandestine visit to Reims, he had been absent in Rome, his native city. Le Tellier had become archbishop on Barberini’s death in August 1671, but there were no ordinations at the time of John Baptist’s reception of the sub-diaconate the following June.

On the day following his ordination to the priesthood, John-Baptist celebrated his first Mass in the chapel of Our Lady, within the Cathedral of Our Lady of Reims. Except on the few occasions when it was not possible, he continued to celebrate the Eucharist every day of his life, most often, of course, with the participation of his Brother-teachers.

Source: Br John Cantwell FSC