maked him a spyced conscience;
But Cristes lore, and his Apostles twelve,
He taughte, but first followed it hymselve.
Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The Parson’s Tale’ from The Canterbury Tales
I had stood at the foot of a huge north wall and knew unquestionably that I could climb it, that I was strong enough and good enough, and knew as certainly as I had ever known anything that this is exactly where I should be and what I should do. It seemed wonderfully irrational and ludicrously egotistical. It needed no justification, no rationale.
It had to be done, and done well, and nothing more.
Joe Simpson, This Game of Ghosts, Vintage, 1994
The Illustrations
The woodcuts are by Bob O’Cathail and are reproduced by permission of the artist.
Hill Shepherd, front cover, Chapters 1, 6 and 11
Set Dance, Chapters 2 and 8
Honey From Stone, Chapter 3
The Hermit, Chapter 4
Alphabet Stone, Chapters 5 and 12
Salmon Leap, Chapter 7
Poet’s Table, Chapter 9
Dolmen, Chapter 10
Introduction
Archbishop Donald Coggan used to say that there was no finer job on earth than that of a parish priest. If I remember rightly, he didn’t use the word ‘calling’ or ‘vocation’ in this context. He used a more down-to-earth word because what he was getting at was the incredible truth that those of us commissioned to full-time ordained ministry actually get paid and housed to do what we would give our right arm to do anyway.
No two days are ever the same; no one is breathing down your neck or looking over your shoulder. The presbyter is given immense freedom, but with freedom comes responsibility. The responsibility never to betray those who turn to us, trust in us. The responsibility never to lose the sense of awe and wonder at who we are, and at the possibilities of each day as a priest of the Church of God.
For given into our hands is the wondrous ‘cure of souls’; the care and succour of human beings in the most significant area of their lives – their relationship with the Holy One, the Life Force, God.
To be a presbyter of the Church of God requires a sense of adventure grounded in the everyday. Although immersed in the structures of the Church, the priest operates like an agent in the field; it’s a job without boundaries. There is no way of telling where, or in whom, you will next meet Jesus in disguise.
This springs from a life of prayer in which daily we deepen our sense of union with God. None of the chapter headings (taken from the Authorized Text of the Ordination Services © The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, 2000–2006, www.cofe.anglican.org) deals with prayer as a separate issue, for it is assumed, taken as read, that prayer is the foundation of everything we are, and do, as priests.
One of the particular treasures of our Anglican tradition is the discipline of the Daily Office. Morning and Evening Prayer, said with a sprinkling of colleagues and fellow-workers or (if necessary) alone, ensures that we are rooted and grounded simultaneously in the psalms beloved of our Lord, the scriptures, and the ancient tradition of our Church. In reciting the Daily Office we grow into a sense of unity with all our sisters and brothers across the world who, as the planet spins, with us maintain an unceasing hymn of praise and devotion to God.
To remain faithful in the discipline of the Daily Office demands of us, not so much a dance of exaltation, as a steady plod of utter determination. Through this privilege of time set apart for God every day, we shall however be brought to a place where we ‘comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and . . . know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge’ (Eph. 3.17). For such a prize it is worth switching off the mobile and making the next appointment wait.
The prayer life of a priest is essential if he or she is going to be someone who ‘is’, who has won through to that state of being in which we rest in God, healed and forgiven. The priest holds within himself the tension of being and doing, eschewing both self-indulgent spirituality and frantic, pointless activity. She lives the advice of St Ignatius of Loyola: ‘Pray as if everything depended on God, and act as if everything depended on you.’
As presbyters we are furthermore called to be ‘artists of community’, as a wise Jesuit once described the priestly call. We have the supreme privilege of shaping with our hands, our prayer, our proclamation of good news, communities of faith, caravans of pilgrims, who will together discover the love, healing, hope and transformation of life in God’s grace.
Pamela Hooks, an activist for the renewal of communities in drug-ridden north Philadelphia (the city that saw 380 murders in 2005) began by creating a space which kids without hope could call home. She took a large room in a broken-down old building, and with the active participation of the young people of the neighbourhood, decorated it in vibrant colours and mosaic tiles the kids made themselves. It was a place where they could hang out, do art, take part in drum classes, participate in theatre. Pamela called it ‘the healing room of discovery’.
That’s what priests do. We create places where ordinary people can experience the extraordinary, where they can hang out with God. We create ‘healing rooms of discovery’, or as Walter Brueggemann puts it, ‘the most dangerous, hope-filled places in town’.1
If we were using religious language, we would say that in such work we are witnessing nothing less than re-creation of humankind by the Spirit of God, ‘until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ’ (Eph. 4.13).
This work is not for the faint-hearted, the lazy, or for those constantly checking their allowance of time off. The priest is someone willing to work at the process of ‘growing into what I am’ and to do so without anxiety or self-absorption. It is for those who are learning to be at peace with God and at peace with themselves.
It is for those who remain absolutely fascinated by, and therefore tirelessly interested in, other people, knowing that this fragile and funny stuff called human nature is the raw material of God’s ceaseless re-creating.
May the chapters that follow help in some small way to remind us of the joy and privilege of the priestly calling, for as the good archbishop said, there is no job, or calling, or vocation, that can conceivably be any better than this.
Note
1 Walter Brueggemann, Clergy Conference, Hershey, Pennsylvania, 30 November 2005.
1. Servants and Shepherds
Priests are called to be servants and shepherds among the people to whom they are sent.
Authorized Text of the Ordination Services
The
