sacramental being

Deacon James Keating writing in the November 2011 Homiletic & Pastoral Review (via Ignatius Insight Scoop):

Christ wants to share his authority over malevolent powers with his priests. He wants to encourage and teach a man how to be with a person when that person is being tempted, struggling with faith, hope or love: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, Therefore and make disciples of all nations…. And behold I am with you always, until the end of the age" (Mt 28:18, 20). This desire of Christ to share his authority is fulfilled when a man is ordained to the priesthood. Each priest, however, has to subjectively cooperate with Christ, receiving his authority, over and over again, with each day of ministry. This receptivity can be hard to sustain as so many tasks present themselves to a priest, tasks that threaten to take from him the essential aspect of priesthood: it is a spiritual mission flowing from a heart captured by Christ’s own. A priest’s pastoral authority flows from his own being, his being after ordination.

The phrase "being after ordination" as much as the constant task of "subjective cooperation" echoes José Granados' remarkable article on the Ascension in the Spring 2011 issue of Communio:

A central element of faith in the Ascension is the bond between flesh and God. This claim strikes us as odd, in that we often understand the body as an obstacle to our relation to the divine, in the manner of Socrates' debate in the Phaedo. For the Bible, however, the flesh is the privileged place wherein God manifests himself. The resurrection of the body, the goal toward which Christian life points, confirms this aspect. The fullness of the body takes place when it is filled with the Spirit and becomes a spiritual body. This means that the flesh is not opposed to the Spirit, but is rather his companion, the fitting place within the world for his work and abode. 

This is possible because the body itself is that place where life, by becoming open to the world and to humanity, discovers within itself a relation to God the Creator. Only in the body can God be made manifest. In the body God appears, not as some external object placed before our eyes for our control, nor as some remote horizon of man’s desire, which could be mistaken for a mere projection or mirage. The flesh bears testimony that we are created and welcomed into existence by a love that precedes us. The transcendent can now be understood to be the spring from which all life flows, like that originating love that gives birth to us. In order to discover the mystery of love, the flesh, moreover, sets in motion a dynamism that carries man beyond himself, toward communion with the transcendent. 

What is the role of the Ascension in the history of this bond between the flesh and the divine? The body of Christ, already glorified, is now bound to the rest of creation in a new way. This mystery communicates to the cosmos the state of the glorified flesh of Jesus, insofar as it places the definitive goal toward which all of creation is tending in the Father himself. A new horizon is thus opened within creation: all created being is already in heaven, because all things are now moving toward the very heart of God. On the basis of the Ascension, therefore, the body acquires a new language; the body’s capacity for proclaiming God is raised to a new level. This is the language of the sacraments, in which material creation expresses a more fulfilled relation with the transcendent.

Keating again:

Reclaiming the power of his office, which means to become affected by his intimate communion with Christ, the priest realizes that there is a Pentecost today, as there has always been since the very first one[.]

Granados:

[T]he Ascension has to do, not principally with Christ's absence, but rather with his powerful presence among his people. The liturgical context of the Lucan narrative highlights the connection between the Ascension and the Church. In the gospel, Jesus leaves while imparting his blessing, with arms raised—a gesture that calls to mind the priestly blessing of Sirach (Sir 50:20–21). For this reason, Heinrich Schlier can say that, for Luke, Ascension and blessing coincide: the gesture with which Jesus departs is the final image that remains with the disciples; he departs while giving his blessing, not after. We have already noted that in the Old Testament, the divine blessing brings the continuing presence of God, which is interior to that which is created, bestowing upon it fertility and growth. It is understandable, then, why this act grounds the existence of the Church. Luke's account is thus in accord with the conclusion of the gospel of Matthew: "I am with you always, until the end of the age" (Mt 28:20).