EVANĐEOSKI SAVJETI U ŽIVOTU SVEĆENIKA
GOSPEL ADVICE IN THE LIFE OF A PRIEST

Summary/Abstract: Evangelical advice - poverty, purity and obedience - is most often associated in everyday speech with institutions of consecrated life, i.e. with the lifestyle of persons consecrated to God - monks and nuns. The same approach can be found in numerous documents of the church teaching, as well as in numerous other authors who deal with this topic. This paper, however, will not deal with priests - monks who are bound to poverty, obedience and purity from a special perspective in the way that they have committed themselves to public vows or other sacred ties. Emphasis will be placed on priests incardinated in the regional Church, which is made up of the diocese or what canon law identifies with it according to cann. 266, §1; 368-369. It should be noted that there is a difference between evangelical counsels (cf.: can. 575) and evangelical vows (cf.: can. 1191, §1). All vows are also evangelical advice. However, there are more evangelical counsels than the three mentioned, which we could find by reading the Holy Scriptures. Vows in practice most often correspond to evangelical advice, but the advice is not limited to only three traditional vows. The study of the evangelical counsels and the emphasis on one in relation to the other has changed throughout the history of the Church. Furthermore, they have their own Christological, anthropological, ascetic and social dimension and importance. Under the concept of evangelical purity, the Church's Magisterium and the current Code of Canon Law understand celibacy and abstinence. Evangelical poverty represents an obligation voluntarily undertaken out of love. It is a call to serve one's neighbors with the desire to imitate the poor Christ. Finally, evangelical obedience, whose foundation and model is Jesus Christ, represents the duty of the priest who is called to discover and do God's will and to testify that there is no contradiction between obedience and freedom. The importance of living the evangelical counsels was emphasized both by the general church councils and the doctrinal documents on the education and training of priests, as well as by the regional synods of the Church in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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