You can’t understand what a priest is unless you understand what the Church is, and you can’t understand what the Church is unless you understand who Christ is and what Christ means.

The Church hierarchy deals with this linkage of priesthood, Church, and Christ in a recurrent pattern that examines each of them under three aspects, three interrelated points of view. The three points of view are: prophet (or teacher), sanctifier (or priest), and leader (or king).

Christ is prophet, sanctifier, and leader. His mission on earth was – and is – to speak for His heavenly Father, to manifest and proclaim God’s love for His human creatures. That’s what it means to be a prophet. Christ is also sanctifier, or priest, that is, one called and empowered to serve as connection between God and the people he represents.

As priest, Christ represents His people to the Father and, in turn, represents the Father to His people in the context of love and dedication that we call worship. As leader (or king, or shepherd, or pastor), Christ has the mission to bring all created reality into oneness in and under God. Christ is the ultimate source of unity between humankind and its Creator. These three aspects of Christ’s mission are obviously interrelated. Speaking for the Father and offering human worship to the Father and bringing all creation together under the headship of the Father all work together. Each aspect of Christ’s mission influences and colors the others. There is one Christ, one mission, that we look on from three different directions.

It’s the same with the Church. The Church’s mission is an extension and a continuation of the mission of Christ. Basically, the Church is a gathering of ordinary men and women called by God and sent out into the world to bring Christ’s salvation to it. The Church has a prophetic role: to manifest to the world the love of the Father in Christ.

The Church as a whole – as well as each of its members – is responsible for announcing the gospel to all of humanity. The Church has a priestly or sanctifying role, too. Its vocation is to offer fitting worship to God and to bring the world into a posture of worship. It does this by participating in the sacraments as God’s people and by offering the world the holiness of God through Christ. Thus the Church serves as corporate and visible connection between the world and God. In view of all this, it’s easy to see that the Church has a unifying or leadership function as well. It is called to bring God’s world into oneness in corporate and visible response to God’s message of love.

This brings us to the ordained priesthood. Ordained ministry is a special calling within the Church to enable and assist the Church to be what it is called to be. Ordained ministers teach the Church in the name of Christ and guide it to faithfulness in belief. Ordained ministers preside in the name of Christ at the Church’s worship and, in turn, represent the people in that worship. Ordained ministers provide a center of unity for the Church as representatives of Christ.

They are responsible for keeping the Church together as one. The ordained ministry in the Church, therefore, is prophetic and priestly and charged with leadership.

(It is necessary to mention here that there are three levels of ordained ministry in the Church: bishops, priests, and deacons.

Deacons are called to assist the bishops and priests in their respective ministries.