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2

Being for the Other

You laid aside your rightful reputation

And gave no heed to what the world might say;

Served as a slave and laid aside your garments

To wash the feet of those who walked your way.

You touched the leper, ate with those rejected,

Received the worship of a woman’s tears:

You shed the pride that keeps us from the freedom

To love our neighbour, laying down our fears.

Help us to follow, Jesus, where you lead us,

To love, to serve, our own lives laying down;

To walk your way of humble, costly service,

A cross its end, a ring of thorns its crown.

Draw us to you and with your love transform us:

The love we’ve seen, the love we’ve touched and known;

Enlarge our hearts and with compassion fill us

To love, to serve, to follow you alone.19

The priestly ministry of the presbyter

So far we have talked quite a lot about the presbyters. We are, of course, in very good company. Even John Henry Newman in the first of his famous Tracts, said, ‘I am but one of yourselves – a presbyter’. But, you may well ask, when are we going to talk about priests? Well, it is no bad thing to remind ourselves that in its earliest centuries the Church was very reticent about describing individual Christians as priests. Hierus, the Greek word for priest, was reserved for Christ, the true priest of the Church, and for the Church itself which, as a body, shared in the priesthood of its head. The ministry of the priests, the hiereis of the Old Testament, had been fulfilled in Christ and was now being enacted corporately through the new covenant community. In the Roman Catholic Church, where Latin remains the official language, this care over language has often been preserved in its more technical statements, such as the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Ministry and Life of Presbyters and the liturgy it inspired, ‘The Ordination of Presbyters’. And yet we know that in the Roman and in several other traditions, Anglicanism included, presbyters are usually called priests and that this way of describing them goes back to at least the third century.

Some Christians find this embarrassing and prefer to speak about ministers, pastors, parsons or are more comfortable with more occupational descriptions like vicar, rector or chaplain. Others justify calling some ministers priests on linguistic grounds, making the point that when sacred, the old English word used for hierus in Greek and its Latin equivalent sacerdos, went out of use, préost (like the old French prestre) became the everyday word for presbyter and sacerdos. Hence, it is argued, our ‘priest’, derived from ‘préost’, means nothing more than the original Greek presbuteros. And there have certainly been many who, like Richard Hooker in the late sixteenth century, have believed that it was a mistake to continue with this apparent semantic confusion and that we should revert to the more ancient term of presbyter. For our part we do not think that it is so easy to dismiss the nomenclature as a semantic mistake precisely because the presbyter’s ministry among the priestly people of God takes on certain priestly characteristics. Our task in the first part of the chapter is to explore those characteristics in order to see whether by a graceful analogy, as Ronald Knox put it in a famous university sermon, presbyters can be also called priests.

In the previous chapter we said that the presbyter is called to be an example to the people of God and to preside over its priestly life. This is an extraordinarily high calling. The people we serve, as the Anglican Ordinal impresses upon us, are ‘a great treasure’, they are Christ’s spouse and body, a ‘royal priesthood’ appointed and anointed ‘to proclaim the might acts of God’ (1 Peter 2:9) before the world. We saw that the calling to be an example to Christ’s priestly people is intricately entwined in scripture and the tradition of the Church. Timothy is told to ‘set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity’ (1 Timothy 4:13). The ancient Armenian liturgy of the Eastern Church prays that the presbyter will live ‘in righteousness and by . . . example, teaching those who believe . . . [and so] may truly shepherd the people’.20 In the ordination prayer in the new Roman Catholic Ordinal the bishop prays, in words that are among the few lines singled out as the central and necessary validating element in the rite: ‘may they be examples of right conduct’. The same emphasis is repeated in the Church of England at almost every available point. The Canons and the Ordinal require priests to be ‘wholesome examples and patterns to the flock of Christ’ and the ‘capacity to offer an example of faith and discipleship’ is one of the stated criteria for selection of those offering for the ordained ministry.

All of this, of course, can sound very insular and moralistic, as if the ordained are just to be rather rarefied objects of virtuous living that the small Christian minority in our culture would do well to imitate. Have we been called simply to be good for the good of the Church? Well, in one sense, yes we have – and being good is no easy thing, for ‘only God is good’ (Luke 18:19), and the Church is no small thing in the purposes of God. But the calling to be good has a particular quality (an indicative and active quality, as we shall see later) about it, and is a far more dynamic business than the immediate images conjured up by exhortations to exemplary behaviour. Being examples to Christ’s people involves being an example of Christ’s people. It is a calling to indicate the identity of the Church by embodying the characteristics of the Church. It is a calling to live out the way of being to which the Church is called. The Church is called to be a holy priesthood. The presbyter is called to signify this priestly calling. In more sacramental language, the presbyter is a sign of the priestly life of the Church.

There was a fascinating and very important debate in the late nineteenth century about priesthood between J. B. Lightfoot, the Cambridge New Testament scholar and R. C. Moberly the Oxford professor of Pastoral Theology. It was a quintessentially Anglican exchange. They were passionate but polite, committed both to reformation principles and to the catholic inheritance, showing a detailed attention to scripture and to the application of scripture in the tradition of the Church. Although they differed about quite a lot, including the origin and role of bishops in the Church, they found themselves agreeing – in Lightfoot’s words, quoted approvingly by Moberly – that:

Hitherto [in the early centuries of the Church] the sacerdotal view of the Christian ministry has not been held apart from a distinct recognition of the sacerdotal functions of the whole Christian body. The minister is thus regarded as a priest, because he is the mouthpiece, the representative of the priestly race . . . So long as this important aspect is kept in view, so long as the priesthood of the ministry is regarded as springing from the priesthood of the whole body, the teaching of the Apostles has not been directly violated.21

Moberly went on to say that ‘The ordained priests are priests only because it is the Church’s prerogative to be priestly’ and that they are always, in their ‘own spiritual attitude and effort – to Godward for man, to manward for God – called to realize, and (as it were) to personify, the characteristic priestliness of the Church’.22

In the late twentieth century, very much in the style of Lightfoot and Moberly, the House of Bishops of the Church of England claimed that the priest is called to embody the four classic marks of the Church – oneness, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity.23 There is richness in this idea that is worth pursuing. We are to be one, integrated, at peace with ourselves, body, mind and spirit, able to live authentically with ourselves and with integrity with others, respecting difference but enjoying togetherness. We are to be holy, icons of a new way of living, fully alive in our humanity, gladly receiving all that our creaturely human life offers and allowing it to be infused with faith, hope and love. We are to be catholic, connected to the holos, the whole, faithfully living life with others. We are to be apostolic, people sent to save, thrust out with the same generative energy that we see in those who first gave birth to the Church. This is part of what it means to be appointed to a representative ministry. The Church is saying ‘We want to be able to look at you and be reminded of what we have been called to be. And remember, that as we place you in this relation to us, so the world will look to you to read us.’ Presbyters, therefore, may be called priests because they indicate or signify the priestly identity of the people of God.

While very content with the representative calling of the presbyter, Lightfoot and Moberly were quite clear that this was not a vicarial ministry in the sense of doing something in place of the people of God. There was no question in their minds that we are to be holy to exempt the Church from being holy. Our priestly calling does not erase the priestly calling of the people of God. It exemplifies it and, as we shall see, empowers the people of God to realize their true identity as the priestly people of God. ‘For-other-ness’ cannot do otherwise. Its inspiration is caught in Irenaeus’ catchphrase – ‘ the glory of God is a human person fully alive and the life of humanity is to see God’. Priestly ministry longs for human beings to live with the vibrancy and joy, trustfulness and confidence, individuality and sociality for which God destined us and which glorifies God because it demonstrates that God is the creator whose purposes are for the good of the other.

Before we move on to look more closely at the activating calling of the priest, it is worth spending some more time considering the depth of the Church’s calling. Ephesians 4, one of the most inspiring chapters in the New Testament about the calling of the Church, urges the people of God to come ‘to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ’ (4:13). The true calling of the Church is to express and to enact the life of Christ in the world. Christ’s life is the life that is one with the Father and the Spirit. Christ’s is the life that is given to the world to bring all things into communion with God. Christ’s life is the life that is holy, brought to birth by the Holy Spirit, the life that ministered in the Spirit and was offered to the Father through the Spirit and raised to life by the Spirit. Christ’s is the life that is catholic, related to all God has made, embracing all the world in outstretched arms on the cross. Christ’s is the life that is apostolic, perpetually sent by the Father in the breath of the Spirit to bring God’s purposes to completion. Some more words from Irenaeus catch something of the priestly heart of Christ: ‘The Word of God, Jesus Christ our Lord: who for his immense love’s sake was made that which we are, in order that he might perfect us to be what he is’.24 The stature of the Church is nothing less than the stature of the life of Christ.

The priestly identity of the Church that presbyters are called to indicate and to signify, is nothing less than the priestly identity of Christ. Therefore, although ‘priesthood in the presbyteral order’25 arises from the priesthood of the whole people of God, its ultimate source is the person of Christ. Priests are to ‘set the example of the Good Shepherd always before them as the pattern of their calling’, declares the bishop in the Anglican rite. ‘Know what you do, imitate what you celebrate and conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s cross’, the bishop says to the newly ordained in the Roman Catholic rite as the bread and the chalice to be used in the Eucharist that follows their ordination are placed into their hands. It is good advice for those called to preside among the priestly people of God and to minister to God’s people with a pure heart – ‘imitate what you celebrate’. Let the pattern of Christ’s living, dying and rising be yours.

John Chrysostom was quite clear on the personal qualities needed for this priestly life. John attempts to explain to his very dear friend Basil why he felt utterly unable to join him in being ordained. John and Basil were both monks. They knew that the Church wanted to ordain them but John was sure that he was not ready to serve the Church in this way, at least at this time. The problem was that he could not bring himself to tell Basil. Convinced that his hesitation would undermine Basil’s sense of vocation, John pretends to go along with the plan to be ordained but when members of the local church come to collect them he makes himself very scarce, leaving Basil to be ordained alone. Basil is heartbroken at the deceit but vows never to force John to justify himself. Nevertheless, John is keen to try to show Basil both why he could not go through with it and why he was sure that it was right for Basil to be ordained. ‘Do you know the power of love?’, he asks Basil. ‘Yes I do,’ responded Basil. He knew that love worked, even if he also knew that he had ‘not performed the half of it’. John tells him that ‘this choice virtue, the badge of the disciples of Christ, which is higher than the spiritual gifts, was, I saw, nobly implanted in your spirit and laden with much fruit’.26 John then goes on to recount a recent story of Basil standing by a friend who had been wrongfully accused and so exposing himself to great personal risk. Basil cannot deny the incident and confesses to John, ‘I know no other form of love than to be willing to sacrifice my own life when one of my friends who is in danger needs to be saved’. This is enough to prove John’s case. After reminding him of Jesus’ saying, that ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’ (John 15:13), he says to Basil, ‘If no greater love than this can be found, you have already reached the height of it, and both by your deeds and your words you have stood on love’s summit’.27

The power of love is the essence of Jesus’ priesthood and the fundamental calling of the Church. The marks of people’s readiness to serve Christ in the presbyteral ministry are the depth of their desire to see the Church realize its calling and the consistency of their commitment to help it to do so by the power of love: ‘I, therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called’ (Ephesians 4:1). This desire and commitment for the forming of Christ’s life in his people lies at the heart of the presbyteral ministry. In the Anglican rite, the bishop says on behalf of the people, ‘We trust that . . . you are fully determined, by the grace of God, to . . . grow up into [Christ’s] likeness, and sanctify those with whom you have to do’. This expresses well the dynamic of the presbyter’s calling to be an example to the people of God. Presbyters are called to be holy as every Christian is called to be holy but the particular quality of their calling has a priestly dimension. They are called to be holy so that others may be holy. They are to be enabling examples, activators as well as indicators of the Church’s true being and life. In sacramental language, they are not just signs of the priestly identity of the Church but effectual signs of its priestly life, catalysts as well as paradigms. They are to effect what they signify, means of grace which God uses to form his people into that which Christ has initiated them: one, holy, catholic and apostolic royal priesthood declaring in word and deed, in praise and prayer, the mighty acts of God before the world (1 Peter 2:9). Presbyters are called to be animators of the priestly people of God, tools in the hand of Christ by which he draws his people more fully into his life and fashions his image in them:

See that you never cease your labour, your care and diligence, until you have done all that lieth in you, according to your bounden duty, to bring all such are or shall be committed to your charge, unto that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, to that ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ, that there be no place left among you, either for error in religion, or for viciousness in life.28

By placing the ordained in this particular relationship to other members of the people of God – a relationship of pastoral responsibility for the priestly fulfilment of the people of God – the Church is, at the same time, placing the ordained in a par-ticular vocational relationship to Christ. This is not to deny Lightfoot’s principle that ‘the priesthood of the ministry springs from the priesthood of the whole body’. It is simply to say that one way the priesthood of the whole body acknowledges its dependence upon the discipling and training of Christ is by appointing some of its members to watch over the Church with the eyes of Christ and to see that it grows into what it is called to be. The vocation of presbyters is to ‘to serve Christ the Teacher, Priest, and Shepherd in his ministry which is to make his own body, the Church, grow into the people of God, a holy temple’.29

The concentrated priestly ministry of the presbyter

The priestly ministry of presbyters finds its most intensive form in those focused moments when they are entrusted, as Lightfoot put it, with ‘the performance of certain sacerdotal functions belonging properly to the whole congregation’.30 Martin Luther, the great sixteenth-century reformer and passionate advocate of the priesthood of all believers, used to talk of the ‘common priesthood’ of all the faithful appointing the ‘called priesthood’ of the ordained to act in its name. This notion of the ordained priest being – as the catholic Anglicans, Charles Gore and Robert Moberly contended – organs of the priestly people, through whom the body operates at particular times and in particular ways, seems to run across the traditions. Richard Baxter, a leading Puritan of the seventeenth century and author of the pastoral classic The Reformed Pastor, told the clergy who gathered at his regular conferences that:

Another part of our work is to guide our people, and be as their mouth in the public prayers of the Church, and the public praises of God: as also to bless them in the name of the Lord. This sacerdotal part of the work is not the least. A great part of God’s service was wont in all ages to the Church to consist in public praises and eucharistical acts in Holy Communion.31

The Church agrees that for some purposes it will shape itself like an hour glass. It determines, for example, that in certain of its liturgical actions it will concentrate its priestly prerogative to mediate the forgiveness of God on to one person, who speaks this word of forgiveness so that the people can be freed to minister reconciliation in their relationships with each other and through their life in the world.

The danger, of course, with this image is that it could imply that the local congregation is the repository of the priesthood of the whole. In fact, the local church is a local manifestation of the one Church and part of the priest’s role as a sign of the catholicity of the Church is to represent the priesthood of the whole Church. This is one reason why priests are ordained by bishops whose ministry of oversight over various congregations connects them with each other. Hence, the blessing a priest pronounces over a congregation is not part of a collusive circle of self- congratulation. Its authority is not derived from this particular congregation, even though the ministry of a priest in any one place requires a delicate ecology of care and consent between priest and people. The blessing is the voice of Christ spoken through the whole Church to the expression of the Church in this place. It is Christ, through one part of his body, speaking words of peace and strength to another.

This focused form of the ‘priesthood of the presbyteral order’ is keenly felt in one’s ministry beyond the life of the immediate congregation. Although funerals, marriages and certainly baptisms are very much actions of the Church that properly involve more ministries than the priest’s, it is possible as a priest to find the priestly calling of the Church to commend the departed to God, bring the joining of the betrothed to each other before God and welcome a child into the family of God concentrated in your words and gestures, your presence and person. This is even more likely in the sort of quasi-sacramental action which we are called upon to perform because in some way we are identified with, or even as, the Church – house-blessings, naming ceremonies, prayers – in that quaint liturgical expression – on ‘various occasions’, ranging from the death of a pet to the opening of a sports stadium. They are occasions which, rather than decreasing as the influence of the Church in the nation declines, seem to be increasing as our contemporary culture becomes more open to the spiritual realm and looks for people accomplished in its arts.

For many of us, this interface with the world in which we are seen as the public face of the Church forms the stuff of much everyday ministry. We find ourselves to be a person who can be trusted with intimate secrets in the street, painful memories on an occasional visit, deep-seated resentment of God outside the school gates, profound religious experiences as we sit opposite the stranger on a train journey. With very little warning windows are opened into people’s otherwise quite closed lives, and the ministry of Christ in the Church is given a rare invitation to help and to heal.

Being a school governor, meeting other carers to discuss common problems, joining a local pressure group to campaign for a doctor’s surgery in a forgotten part of town, place us in situations where we are expected to speak for the Church, declare its mind and bring its hope. This sort of interaction with the warp and weave of human society is the substance of most work-based ministries, whether in formally constituted chaplaincies, with their designated position in an institution, or the background ministries of self-supporting priests whose workplaces become their confessionals as colleagues discover that one of their number may just provide a new angle on an old problem.

Whether our theology has prepared us for it or not, it does not take long to dawn on us after our ordination that we are often seen as walking sacraments through whom the presence of Christ can be touched. Like the hem of his cloak we are evidence that he is passing by. Sometimes, as Jesus warned those who followed him, we evoke hugely antagonistic reactions well out of proportion with the failings of our own personalities or social skills. Often these simply have to be suffered. Occasionally they become opportunities for deeply creative ministry.

Our calling to build up the life of the Church is not an excuse to distance ourselves from the life of the world. In fact, it should propel us into the world so that we can model the priestly attention to the world which is the calling of all Christians as they serve the Christ who gave himself up for all. Neither can the concentrated form of the presbyter’s priestly ministry be detached from the ministry of the priestly people through whom it is given. The priest’s ministry is not to obliterate the presence of other Christians in any place but to make the Church obvious wherever it is. The priest is called to support and to nurture Christians wherever they may be found, helping them in whatever way is appropriate to actualize their priestly calling to be with and for others, living in the ways of God’s kingdom and practising the presence of God in their places of work and leisure.

Love for the Church as the mark of the priestly ministry of the presbyter

The calling to preside over the people of God, seeking to preserve, prosper and perfect their life in Christ, carries with it a particular priestly attitude to the Church. Richard Baxter called it ‘a public spirit’ and claimed that ‘No [one] is fit to be a minister of Christ that is not of a public spirit as to the Church and delighteth not in its beauty and longeth not for its felicity’, and so is ready to ‘rejoice in its welfare and be willing to spend and be spent for its sake’.32 We see something very similar in John Chrysostom who said that ‘Priests must be sober and clear- sighted and possess a thousand eyes in every direction, for they live, not for themselves alone, but for a great multitude’.33 Ordained life is impossible without the deep love for the health of the Church that Chrysostom, Baxter and many others spoke of and lived by, despite the blows that the Church had dealt them in different ways. This love for the Church lies at the heart of many of the images that have been used to describe the ministry of the priest over the ages.

There is an extraordinarily rich variety of images of priestly ministry in the Church’s tradition. Exploring them in the liturgies and writings of the centuries can feel like wandering through a beautiful house or even searching the hidden depths of a pyramid or some other archaeological site, where new treasures are waiting to be discovered in each room. To help us find our way we have chosen to use Gregory the Great’s On the Pastoral Charge. Other choices could have been made but maybe Gregory’s affection for the English makes him a good choice. He was the sixth-century missionary pope who sent Augustine on his mission to England after seeing faces of English slaves in Rome and thinking that they looked like angels!

One of the images Gregory leads us to is of the priest as a mother. He talks of the capacity of mothers to give birth and to nurture life, even through its hard times, and encourages people facing severe temptation to ‘run to the pastor’s heart, as to their mother’s bosom, and wash away, by the comfort of exhortation and the tears of prayer’ the troubles that overwhelm them. Motherhood is a rich image for ministry, with deep biblical roots. Paul’s missionary ministry thrust him into experiences of birth and nurture. ‘My little children,’ he implored the Galatians, ‘for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you’ (Galatians. 4:19); and he reminded the Thessalonians that ‘We were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us’ (1 Thessalonians 2:7–8). The yearning to see new life emerge, the dedication to see it grow healthily are hallmarks of motherhood. And mothers do not need to be to told that birthing and caring necessarily involve a sharing of ‘one’s own self’.

Alastair Redfern explores the stories of the two mothers who figure in the infancy narratives of Christ – Elizabeth and Mary.34 Both were childless, though at different stages of their lives. The one was blamed for having no children and the other would be blamed for bearing a child. Both encounter the wildly creative activity of the Spirit that cannot be contained in the usual norms of life-making. Both only appear in a fleeting sort of way. Elizabeth fades from view when her new life appears. Alastair Redfern notes that not only is she ‘self-effacing’ but that she bears a self-effacing child who is content to decrease so that Christ can increase (John 3:30). Similarly, Mary is prepared to be a ‘largely background figure’ whose preoccupation is the development of her child. And like Elizabeth, the child she forms is as self-effacing as his mother, who points to his heavenly Father and gives himself to the world.

Of course, we must be very careful not to reduce womanhood to motherhood or to see motherhood entirely in terms of losing oneself in the other, just as we must be very cautious about images of priestly ministry that might appear to treat the priest as a cloth to be wrung out by others. Yet the energy of motherhood and the willingness of mothers to risk their lives in the giving of life are strong and powerful pictures of the calling of a priest. A woman about to give birth is driven by the instinct to ensure that everything needful is ready for the birth. And a woman who has children is constantly checking that everything now and at the next foreseeable stage is in place to ensure the health of her child. These are essential perspectives of the priest. We must be asking, ‘What are the conditions for the health of the Church? What is needed for the birth and growth of people into Christlike life? How can it be provided? When do I need to move into the background so that the people of God can take their place in the foreground of the Church’s ministry? When do I need to decrease, so that others can increase?’

Gregory balances the image of mother with that of father. As we would expect there are all sorts of gender assumptions in the way he compares the two, particularly when he says that priests should be like ‘a mother by kindness and a father by discipline’.35 Fathers, thankfully, give a lot of kindness and mothers certainly know how to wield discipline, and yet many of us have experienced mothers and fathers handling us in different, though complementary, sorts of ways.

My experience of my father was of someone who was thrilled by each new step I took. Whether it was learning to ride a bike, going into a pub for the first time or moving on from the safety of home to the new possibilities of university life, he was always anticipating the next stage, getting me ready for it and, although I did not realize it at the time, working hard to make sure that I was given the best chance possible to make it work. He seemed to like nothing more than to teach me how to do something and then to work alongside me as I clumsily tried to hammer in a nail or paint a wall. Sometimes there would be a slightly tense moment as I became as good at a particular task as he was, but without too much trouble he would soon hand over a project to me and allow me to get on with it, promising that he was there for me if I found myself in difficulty.

Interestingly, my father’s experience of his father was the opposite. Rather than releasing him into adulthood, his own father tried to constrain him in childhood. The loss of his wife in childbirth, the poverty of the 1930s and the trauma of the war had left my grandfather protective and possessive, unable to learn ‘How self-hood begins with a walking away. And love is proved in the letting go.’36 There is little more depressing than seeing mature and gifted members of a church, some of them perhaps already trained for particular ministries, distrusted or disempowered by a priest who cannot take the risk of working with others in ministry. But there is something very invigorating in a church where gifts are being discovered, different ministries being discerned and where people are being trained and then released to fulfil their part in the priestly ministry of Christ’s body. Where there are clergy confident enough to know that their priestly identity is fulfilled in the mentoring and mobilizing of others for ministry, the Church will grow into adulthood and come closer to its full stature in Christ. The ‘walking-away’ and the ‘letting go’ required of the priest is the sort of space-giving that a good father does for his child. It is a process of giving room for the other member of Christ’s family to find the calling that God has given and then permission to exercise that God-given ministry. And, like Paul with Timothy, his son in ministry, we discover that there is still much for us to do as we continue to support those we have trained and released into Christ’s work (Philippians 2:2). ‘What are the conditions for the growth of the Church into maturity? How can Christians be stretched to serve God in the ministry to which God is calling them? What is needed in this place for the development of the Church into adulthood in Christ? How can the Church be raised and released to propogate its own life? How can I discern and shape and support the giftings of others?’ These are critical questions for those called to preside over the priestly community.

Perhaps Gregory’s favourite image is of the priest as a physician. The largest part of his Pastoral Charge consists of detailed advice on how to approach seventy-two different pastoral cases. Each case is paired with its opposite: the joyful and sad, the patient and impatient, the quarrelsome and peaceful and so on. Gregory is not trying to establish some sort of immutable case law – a set of pastoral precedents to which we can always turn in whatever situation. Quite the opposite in fact – his pastoral advice is finely honed to particular situations. He begins each section by repeating his overriding pastoral principle – ‘different admonitions are to be addressed to . . .’ and then he shows how different people, with different problems need to be approached in different ways. At the same time, though, he is conscious of the importance of maintaining Christian integrity and consistency so that the care given to one person will not only help that individual but will be good for the community as a whole: ‘The speech therefore of teachers ought to be fashioned according to the condition of hearers, that it may both be suited to each for their own needs, and yet may never depart from the system of general edification.’37

With extraordinary insight Gregory skilfully diagnoses the way different dispositions can impede Christian growth and suggests treatment that goes to the heart of a problem, where necessary wielding the surgeon’s knife with purposeful precision. He combines fine psychological judgements about healthy human living with deep spiritual instincts about how the ordinary qualities of a wholesome life find their origin and fulfilment in God. Peace, for example, that human virtue for which most of us strive, is merely ‘a foot-print of peace eternal’, and what, he asks, ‘can be more mad than to love footprints left in the sand, but not to love Him by whom they are left’.38

Gregory is ‘a lover of souls’. He knows that only God will fulfil the deepest longings of human hearts and that Christ’s pattern of life is the definitive example of humanity fully alive, of life lived in welcoming openness to all that God intends for us. Committed to the ‘cure of souls’, Gregory attends to any signs of ill-health in people, any attitude or action that may restrict a person’s growth into the life of Christ, and suggests forms of ministry suited to each situation. He knew that the health of the Church depends upon the health of its members. Paul’s letters are a mirror image of Gregory’s charge. He was passionate about the health of church communities and was able to analyse the communal dynamics of healthy churches with startling accuracy, while at the same time giving very particular advice about how the members of the community should handle their relationships with each other and their life in the world. Those who study the growth of the Church today tell us, as if we needed reminding, that healthy churches are growing churches.39 It is not for nothing that the Church is called the body of Christ. Like human bodies, individual Christians and Christian communities have natural capacities to grow. ‘What are the conditions for the health of the Church? What is impeding the growth of the Church? How can the diseases of the soul be cured? How can members of the Church be helped “to grow up in every way into him who is the head, from whom the whole body . . . promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:16)?’

The priest as a navigator is another favourite image for Gregory. He describes the pastoral calling to be with people when they face ‘a storm in the soul, in which the vessel of the heart is ever tossed by gusts of feeling, and driven without ceasing hither and thither, so that it is wrecked by transgressions in word and deed, as though by rocks that meet it’.40 Much of his advice to pastors is about helping people to find their way through the difficult times of life, to steer their way through temptation and testing, to keep their sights set on the destination to which God is calling them. Again, Gregory has one eye on the person in particular need and the other on the well-being of the Church as a whole, but he knows that the ship as a whole cannot be steered unless all its parts are working well.

The navigator is a good image for the priest. It recognizes that Christian existence is never stationary. We are always moving in one direction. The only question is by which current we will allow ourselves to be propelled. It is an eschatological image that underlines that we are to be always on the move, looking ahead to the future that God has prepared for us and ready to set all the instruments by which we orientate ourselves, all the antennae we use to determine our direction, on the new way of living to which we are being called by Christ.

For Gregory navigators are similar to shepherds. They steer us through the vicissitudes of life, leading us into places of nourishment and then leading on to the next place in our journey with God. As we have seen, the shepherd is one of the foundational images of Christian ministry, inspired of course by the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. The relationship, however, between the ordained and Christ in the ministry of the Church has led some to explore a comparison between the priest and the sheepdog. Sue Walrond-Skinner, for example, has some evocative things to say from her ‘years of watching and working with border collies’:

The sheepdog possesses two all-consuming attractions: the sheep and her master. Her eye stays focused always on the sheep; her ear listens ceaselessly to the shepherd’s call. Her attractions to both are profound . . . yet neither attraction can be worked out for her without the contrary pull of the other. She is held into a triangular relationship with the shepherd and sheep; her wild, compulsive instincts are only kept in check by her unswerving attention to her master.

Sheepdogs lie about a lot. They are capable of putting every fibre of their being to work when required to do so, but they are instantly at ease, able to leave the sheep to get on with their lives, feeding, communicating, just ‘being’ together. The sheepdog does not interfere with or interrupt the life and work of the flock. The sheep are always the focus, the dog is merely an instrument which exists for their welfare and a tool that is usable by the shepherd in his own care of them.41

The dual focus on the people and on Christ is central to Gregory’s pastoral method. The priest is to be ‘next to each person in sympathy’ and to ‘soar above all in contemplation’. Identification and transformation, incarnation and redemption are the twin poles of our activity as we stand in solidarity with those entrusted to us and, listening to the voice of Christ, discern how they are to be led to where Christ wants them to be. And so we will be asking, ‘What are the conditions for the movement of the Church in the right direction? How can Christians be helped to see their way forward in a culture increasingly alien to the central convictions of their faith? How can the Church learn to hear the echo of God’s word leading it towards God’s future, so that through the Church the world will be able to find its way to the new earth and the new heaven that God has prepared in Christ? And how can I be so with the people that they trust me to lead them?’

The final insight to draw on from Gregory pulls the others together. It is less of a pictorial image and more a descriptive noun. Gregory regularly refers to the priest as a rector, a Latin word that found its way intact into the English language. Derived from the verb rego (meaning, to keep straight or guide in the right direction), it literally meant a helmsman or a herdsman and was even used of an elephant driver! Gregory believed that the two basic roles of the priest were the ‘office of pastoral teaching’ and the ‘sacred goverance’ of the Church.42 Clearly, then, rector carried strong associations for Gregory with governing the Church. Although we need to make sensible adjustments from the more paternalist culture of Gregory’s day, the nuances of the word and the way Gregory actually describes the mindset of the rector, mean that even here he has much that is worth hearing.

Gregory is very clear about what needs to be avoided. Conscious that ‘the business of governance destroyeth integrity of heart’, he explains that priests must not be driven by any sort of ‘ambition of pre-eminence’, they should ‘shun praise’, and ‘dread and avoid prosperity’.43 Aware of the pressures to please others, he reminds us that our ministry is to lead the Church into a deeper love of Christ, not to covet the love that belongs only to him. Realistic about the narcissistic pitfalls of public ministry, he warns us against forms of self-love that lead people to honour themselves rather than God. Nevertheless, Gregory’s equally clear belief in the need for good and firm leadership in the life of the Church seems to be the main motivation for writing his Pastoral Charge. He believes that the nurture, development, health and direction of Christian communities require the guiding and shaping ministry of the presbyter who presides over the people of God and leads them into more faithful service of Christ. Orego, the Greek equivalent of rego, means to reach out. That is the calling of the priest: to reach out for the vision of a holy people blessing the world with the news of God’s reconciling love, to strive for this way of living to be seen and heard, touched and felt in the churches of our land, and to show that it can be seized only through the power of love. ‘Do we know the power of love?’ Chrysostom’s question to Basil remains the true test of the priestly ministry of the presbyter.

Notes

19 Rosalind Brown. Copyright © 1992 Celebration. Tune: Intercessor. Published in Rosalind Brown, Jeremy Davies and Ron Green, Sing! New Words for Worship, Salisbury: Sarum College Press 2004.

20 See Paul Bradshaw, Ordination Rites of the Ancient Churches of East and West, New York: Pueblo Publishing Company 1990, p. 132.

21 J. B. Lightfoot, The Christian Ministry, London: Chas. J. Thynne and Jarvis Ltd 1927, p. 119.

22 R. C. Moberly, Ministerial Priesthood, London: John Murray 1919, pp. 258, 260.

23 House of Bishops of the General Synod, Eucharistic Presidency: A Theological Statement, London: Church House Publishing 1997.

24 From the Preface to Against the Heresies, V.

25 This is a useful expression from the Roman Catholic Ordinal that we will be quoting on a number of occasions in the rest of the book.

26 On the Priesthood, p. 52.

27 On the Priesthood, p. 54.

28 From the Church of England Ordinal, 1550/1662.

29 From the Roman Catholic Rite of the Ordination of Priests.

30 Lightfoot, The Christian Ministry, p. 119.

31 Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor (ed. J. T. Wilkinson) London: Epworth Press 1939, p. 82.

32 Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, p. 73.

33 On the Priesthood, p.77.

34 Alastair Redfern, Ministry and Priesthood, London: Darton, Longman and Todd 1999, pp. 68–9.

35 Gregory the Great, On the Pastoral Charge (trans. H. R. Bramley) Oxford and London: James Parker 1874, p. 87.

36 From the poem, ‘Walking Away – for Sean’, by Cecil Day Lewis.

37 On the Pastoral Charge, p. 129.

38 On the Pastoral Charge, p.237.

39 See, for example, Christian A. Schwarz, Natural Church Development: A Guide to Eight Essential Qualities of Healthy Churches, Carol Stream, Illinois: ChurchSmart Resources 1996.

40 On the Pastoral Charge, p. 35.

41 Sue Walrond-Skinner, quoted in Redfern, Ministry and Priesthood, p. 37.

42 On the Pastoral Charge, p. 7.

43 On the Pastoral Charge, p. 18.