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.
3
Being for God
Could they have guessed, by Galilee,
the impact of Christ’s word?
how lives would change, their world would be
transformed