The Presbyter's Vocation

These excerpts I ran across at the Catholicity and Covenant blog (of an Episcopal priest); they are originally taken from the ordination sermon preached by the Bishop of Woolwich in the Church of England when ordaining new priests (presbyters) for that church.  The sermon is evidently based upon the Road to Emmaus text in Luke 24:13-35, a favorite of mine.

The bishop's words to these new clergy strike a chord with me and apply just as clearly to all the presbyters (elders) in my own communion, The United Methodist Church, and other branches of Christ's holy universal church as well.  He says that a good presbyter (elder/priest) must be a person of Scripture, a person of the Eucharist, and a person of prayer:

The person of Scripture:

The words [Jesus] spoke were no mere small talk; he expounded the scriptures to them, as he spoke of himself. As priests you are to share in the Lord’s ministry of teaching, and if you are going to teach it’s always a good idea to learn first. That’s one reason that it’s your heads that we lay hands on: because we are commissioning you to a lifelong programme of learning, and that involves putting your grey matter to work. ‘Will you be diligent … in reading Holy Scripture, and in all studies that will deepen you faith and fit you to bear witness to the truth of the gospel?’, I will ask you, and you will say: ‘By the help of God, I will’. I hope that when you say that you will really mean it, because priests do not always find it easy to keep up a commitment to learning. In part this is because we live busy lives, and we are tempted to get by with the bare minimum we need – well, if we fall for that, we will find that the minimum becomes barer and barer as the years go by ...

You need to make sure that the assaults of doubt do not keep you from engaging everyday with the scriptures, for they are a treasure of infinite riches, never exhausted. Let yourselves be shaped by them more and more, so that you in turn can share with others the excitement of exploring the mind of the God who has made himself known to us. 

The person of the Eucharist:

When Jesus has walked with his disciples and expounded the scriptures to them, he turns aside to sit at table with them. Taking bread in his hands, he blesses and breaks it for them, and it is then that he makes himself known. And you as priests are called to do the same, to bless and break the bread of life in the Eucharist – not so as to make yourself known, but to show the risen Jesus present with his people ...

If at any time this begins to feel routine to you, and you become over-familiar with this most blessed sacrament, why not take yourself off to the National Gallery, and spend some time looking at Caravaggio’s wonderful picture of the meal at Emmaus. As Jesus breaks the bread, the faces of his companions are struck with awe and wonder; the very food on the table hangs improbably on the edge, a sign that we are on the brink of a mystery which topples us over into a world we could not imagine; the whole scene is shot through with a mysterious and startling light.

The person of prayer:

All we do today we do immersed in fervent prayer springing from the heart; and without always coming back again and again to pray you cannot be a priest. Why is that? Simply because being a priest is not about techniques you can master; it’s not about processes you can follow; it’s not about strategies you can adopt; it’s about trusting entirely in God and the grace of his Spirit to do what we would have no chance of doing on our own. A priest is not a technician of the sacred, not a manager of a church, not even a leader of a community – a priest is a Christian who knows in her heart that, like every Christian, she once was lost but now is found, has been brought with a price, depends for all she is on the grace of God, and without that can do nothing at all of any use to anybody. Of all the sad sights in the world, there are few sadder than a priest who has given up on prayer – so don’t do that! ... keep praying from your heart, now and every day, praying earnestly for the gift of the Holy Spirit as you are accepted into this enormous and wonderful calling. And we will pray with you and for you, our hearts on fire with yours as we all walk along the road, hear the scriptures, break the bread together.