Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind (and) your neighbour as yourself. (Matthew 22.37ff.)
It involves the desire we have and the means we employ to respond to the Other, that we might be taken beyond ourselves and deepen our love of God and neighbour through our specific vocational calling to follow Jesus. Whether bishop, priest or deacon, we must all seek to have our hearts remade in his image and likeness: ‘The challenge of priestly spirituality is to develop rhythms of living in tune with the Spirit so that the Spirit can animate each aspect of priestly identity and transform the priest into a truly effective person-symbol of Christ.’1 There are many specific insights as to how this can be done, and we all have our exemplars in the faith who have highlighted for us aspects of that love of God and neighbour in which we’re called to grow in Christ.
The priest as a ‘walking sacrament’
It’s in the Eucharist that this transformation is most profoundly realized. In a sermon preached in 1968, Austin Farrer, the late Dean of Keble College, Oxford, described the priest as a ‘living stem bearing sacraments as its fruit’, for the priest gives us the body and blood of Christ. He went on to say that because the priest bears the sacrament they are themselves sacramental: ‘walking sacraments’ who through their humanity celebrate and inhabit the words of Christ as they do what he did. I find that a deeply powerful reflection because it reminds me that I occupy a unique, mysterious and holy place. The priest is in some way perceived as the ‘threshold-minder’ of eternity, not a gatekeeper letting some in and keeping others out (although I’ve heard of ministers who act as if they had that power), but as one who holds open the door to the mysteries of God. And if I’m not prayerfully exploring that which lies beyond, how can I communicate something of the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of God that surpasses knowledge so that others may be filled with all that fullness (Eph. 3.18ff.)? It’s for this reason that we need to remember that while all Christians are called to a life of holiness the priest is called in a particular way, and their faults and failings will be shown up in a particular light.
My vocation
My own sense of being called to the priesthood started to become apparent in 1963, and three years later I joined the pre-theological course run by the Society of the Sacred Mission (SSM) at Kelham, Nottinghamshire. During those studies my sexual identity became known and my bishop refused to recommend me for training. It was a bitter blow, yet 25 years later I was ordained.
Afterwards, I spent six years living out that priestly calling in the context of being a religious, before being released from vows and spending ten years as rector of a ‘back-streets’ parish on the eastern edge of London. For much of that time I also exercised a ministry of spiritual direction and taught aspects of the subject as well as offering pastoral supervision. All this experience and more forms the context from which this book is written. Through it all, I’ve come to realize that at the heart of the priesthood there must lie an intentional desire to live out of the loving heart of Christ, and to be inhabited by that creative, compassionate Word.
Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
(St Patrick)
‘The Lord’s breast is the sponge of the heart.’2
Over the years I’ve come to understand that it’s through our immersion in the Heart of Christ, who calls us to follow him, that our calling is most fully realized, and throughout the book reference is made to the ‘Heart’. I don’t mean the physical organ or the place where our emotions reside, but the central part of our being into which God’s Spirit was breathed and which, St John points out, needs to trust in God (John 14.1). Yet it can become corrupted and deceitful, so the Scriptures tell us that we need to guard the heart above all else, for from it flows everything we do: ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God; and put a new and right spirit within me’ (Ps. 51.10). In the end, Jesus recognizes the need for a ‘right’ renewed heart when he pronounced the blessedness of those who have a pure heart, for they will see God.
So it is this uncorrupted ‘heart’ we look to in seeking to explore the priestly life and, while there will always be times when another has our attention, it is to the Heart of God in Christ that we must always turn. And if you’re happily married or partnered and worry about any sense of dualism between love of God and love of partner, don’t! The two aren’t in conflict but complement each other. You can never love God too much, for in turning the eye of your heart to him and allowing love to flow out it will overspill into every other aspect of life. But if a priest allows another to usurp the place of God then they are in danger of becoming deaf to their calling, as illustrated in the story of Jesus’ call to the rich man who asked to follow him (Mark 10.17f.). Of course, problems can emerge when a partner begins to feel they’re playing second fiddle to the Church, so we’ll consider that later on.
The compassionate gaze of God
In his Letter to the Philippians St Polycarp advised that ‘Clergy … should be (people) of generous sympathies, with a wide compassion for humanity … Any show of ill-temper, partiality, or prejudice is to be … avoided.’ I often notice the real compassion priests have for those in their care, and encourage them to realize their compassion as a reflection of God’s, and invite them to consider if any particular account in the Scriptures might help them to locate their compassion in a Divine context. Is there an image of God’s love that particularly appeals? The story of Jesus’ encounter with a leper (Luke 17.11f.) reminds us that it is his compassionate gaze we need to hold on to – for we, too, need to sit in that gaze and hear what it’s saying to us. A simple prayer-exercise for this might be helpful, so one is included in Appendix 1.
Prayer is a demanding practice because it not only requires us to set aside time for that encounter, but also to face the multiple distractions that will occur. It will also uncover layers of our being which we might have ignored, buried or turned from. So not for nothing are priests expected to pray the Divine Office each day and to spend time silently gazing on God, for this is a fundamental aspect of the redemptive process. How easy it is to slide into living out of the role rather than the heart of their ever-developing relationship with Christ. The role might inform that – and, please God, mould it in creative ways – but it can also hide us from the heart of our being-in-Christ. The collar can separate us from ourselves (as well as inviting us to become ourselves), so we must seek to open ourselves to God’s compassionate gaze, a gaze we might realize when kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament or facing the suffering of a child in our congregation, meditating on the Scriptures or seeking to aid a homeless person. What matters is that we allow that contemplative, compassionate gaze and not turn from it while deepening our realization that it is God’s gaze we must nurture in our hearts.
Trinitarian life
Archbishop Welby, speaking to 50 young Anglicans from southern Africa at a conference in 2017, declared: ‘I am who I am because I am in Jesus Christ.’ His words echo those of the remarkable medieval Franciscan Tertiary, St Catherine of Genoa, who said, ‘My self is God, nor is any other self known to me except my God’.3 The life of the priest is a life lived in the trinity of self, other and God, and, like all Christians, we are to hold this balance while always acknowledging that it is God we seek and who draws us beyond ourselves. It is this mystery of community to which we are called – life,