Priests should offer their lives in service to their people, not
pursue their own interests, Pope Francis said in his homily at a morning
Mass on December 9.The Pope drew a contrast between “mediators” and “middlemen” in the clergy. The mediator, he said, “gives himself to unite the parties; he gives his life.”
The priest, he explained, is a mediator between God and his flock, and in this sense he imitates Christ.
“The logic of Jesus as mediator is the logic of annihilating oneself,” the Pope said, citing the letter of St. Paul to the Philippians.
Middlemen, on the other hand, “must take the path of rigidity,” the Pope continued. “Often disconnected from the people, they do not know what human suffering is.”
He added that this sort of priest invariably is influenced by worldliness, pursuing his own interests rather than the good of the Church.