The Primacy of Logos and Priestly Formation in Nigeria: Context and Content
A Priest must be convinced of two things. The first is the Faith. Faith in this sense means that his primary orientation must always be towards God. This is very similar to the understanding of Joseph Ratzinger when he avers that faith is “taking up a position, as taking a stand trustfully on the ground of the word of God. 1 Essentially, Faith will, therefore, mean one “entrusting oneself to that which has not been made by oneself and never could be made and which precisely in this way supports and makes possible all our making.” 2 The second is his vocation. Vocation must also be understood in the sense of its etymology which means “to call, to name, to summon.” 3 At the background, a call is a tensive dynamic. One is always called from something or somewhere. One is also especially in the Christian sense of vocation called for something. There is, therefore, a call from something and a call for something. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s statement that when “Christ calls a man; he bids him to come and die” should, therefore, be understood not in the sense of annihilation but a death to something that makes living for something else possible.
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