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