reason that prompted Gregory to accept the priesthood was his desire to do his share to counterbalance the large numbers of unworthy and unprepared clergy who had recently flooded the church to satisfy their ambition or their greed:
They push and thrust around the holy table, as if they thought this order to be a means of livelihood, instead of a pattern of virtue, or an absolute authority, instead of a ministry of which we must give account. . . . For at no time, either now or in former days, amid the rise and fall of various developments, has there ever been such an abundance as now exists among Christians, of disgrace and abuses of this kind.83
As his speech winds down to a close, Gregory does not fail to mention that he has, in fact, been prepared for this moment from his earliest youth. Not only had he grown up in a pious household, but he had also surrendered himself to a life of renunciation and ascetic self-fashioning:
There was moreover the moderation of anger, the curbing of the tongue, the restraint of the eyes, the discipline of the belly, and the trampling under foot of the glory which clings to the earth. I speak foolishly, but it shall be said, in these pursuits I was perhaps not inferior to many.84
Weighing all these considerations, Gregory admits that he realized that his initial urge to seek the tranquility and solitude of monastic retreat would have been a selfish undertaking.85
Framed by these personal remarks are Gregory’s views on the nature of the priesthood and the character of the ideal priest. He brings up the awesomeness of the priest’s liturgical function in consecrating the eucharist,86 a theme that would later be resumed by John Chrysostom and Ambrose, among others. In contrast to later authors on the subject, Gregory does not dwell on the nuisance of the administrative duties of the priesthood. He does, however, go into great detail in comparing the priest to a physician who is responsible for healing and strengthening the souls entrusted to his care.87 This requires both the ability for accurate diagnosis as well as the prescription of the right medicine suited to the disposition of the patient. Gregory insists on the importance of the priest’s ability to address each individual according to his or her personal needs, in his admonition and in his preaching. In essence, the qualities that Gregory requires here in the context of the pastoral care of priests are nothing else but the gift of discernment that, as we shall see below, gave a special quality of immediacy to the teaching of the pneumatophoroi and the desert fathers.
Most important in Gregory’s view is that the priest himself be a model of what he preaches:
A man must himself be cleansed, before cleansing others; himself become wise, that he may make others wise; become light, and then give light; draw near to God, and so bring others near; be hallowed, then hallow them; be possessed of hands to lead others by the hand, of wisdom to give advice.88
According to Gregory, the effectiveness of a priest’s instruction, and indeed the quality of the priesthood as a whole, depend entirely on the priest’s own striving for personal holiness. This holiness, however, was not guardedly preserved in monastic isolation, but shared in ministry to others.
John Chrysostom probably wrote his treatise On the Priesthood during the years that he was in Antioch, probably in the late 380s.89 It must have been something of an instant success, for Jerome records in 392, in his Lives of Illustrious Men, that he has read it.90 The premise of the work is John’s defense against any accusations of wrongdoing for his clever manipulation of the ordination of his friend and monastic companion Basil (not identical with the famous bishop of Caesarea), while managing to escape the same fate himself. This gives him occasion to dwell on the enormity of the responsibility of the priestly ministry, and to describe in detail the different functions that a priest must fulfill. The word he uses throughout, hierosynē, refers to the priesthood in general, without distinguishing between the offices of presbyter and bishop.91
While Gregory of Nazianzus had taken his own experience—initial rejection of office, followed by eventual acceptance—as an opportunity to explain the relative merits of ecclesiastical office versus monastic retreat as exemplified in the internal conflict of one person, John Chrysostom assigns each side in this conflict to a different character. He casts Basil in the role of the former monk who agrees to become a cleric, and himself in the role of the monk who shuns ecclesiastical office.92 Considering that the author was at this time a deacon on his way up in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, this rhetorical role-play alone casts serious suspicions on the autobiographical value of the entire treatise. Nonetheless, On the Priesthood is an important statement about the nature of the priesthood. It was appreciated by posterity as a veritable “mirror of bishops.” Isidore of Pelusium, an Egyptian scholar-turned-monk who is known to us mainly through his extensive correspondence, sent a copy of Chrysostom’s treatise to a certain Eustathius in around 440, recommending it for its inspirational nature:
I have sent the book you asked for, and I expect that you will derive profit from it, as everybody usually does. For there is nobody, no single heart that has not been moved to divine love by reading this book. It shows how venerable and difficult to attain the priesthood is, and teaches to exercise it without reproach. For John, the wise announcer of the secrets of God, the eye of the church of Byzantium and of the whole [church], has elaborated it so finely and with such great diligence that all will discover therein their virtues or their reproach, both those who exercise their office in a manner pleasing to God and those who administer it with negligence.93
In order to justify his decision to avoid ordination, John in this work compares his personal failings and shortcomings94 with the impeccable and virtuous conduct of his friend Basil, who had demonstrated his love of humankind in a selfless act of intervention for a friend.95 It is essential that the bishop possess such qualities for the exercise of his office. John devotes less space than Gregory to the bishop’s pastoral duties, although he, too, invokes the image of the bishop as the physician of souls.96 Instead, he approaches the episcopal office from two complementary angles, the spiritual and the administrative.
John pays particular attention to the spiritual power inherent in the bishop’s liturgical functions. He dwells on the bishop’s role in consecrating the eucharist even more than Gregory had done. It is a task that requires complete ritual purity:
For when thou seest the Lord sacrificed, and laid upon the altar, and the priest standing and praying over the victim, and all the worshippers empurpled with that precious blood, canst thou then think that thou art still amongst men, and standing upon the earth? Art thou not, on the contrary, straightaway translated to Heaven? . . . By their agency [i.e., that of the priests] these rites are celebrated, and others nowise inferior to these both in respect of our dignity and our salvation. For they who inhabit the earth and make their abode there are entrusted with the administration of things which are in Heaven, and have received an authority which God has not given to angels or archangels.97
This attention to the awesomeness of the transformation of the eucharistic sacrifice into the body and blood of Christ and the participation of the priest in this transformation seems to be a common concern of Greek theologians at the end of the fourth century, especially those in the intellectual orbit of Antioch. As Johannes Quasten has suggested, it was probably formulated in an attempt to counter Arianism by emphasizing the distance between the divine and the human realm.98
The other sacral function of the bishop that is of great importance in Chrysostom’s work is his power to bind and loose through the imposition of penance, and the related function of performing baptisms.99 Both bring a complete regeneration of the individual in the Spirit; and in both, the bishop acts in the role of a father who gives new life. In order to help sinners, the bishop should also shoulder the burdens of others.100 He is, in fact, personally responsible before God for any sins in his congregation. John Chrysostom will repeat this thought later in the sermons he delivers in Constantinople.101
