The Cathedral Close

In today’s reading from St. Gregory the Great’s treatise entitled Pastoral Care, we learn about the gifted bishop or clergyman who uses his gifts for his own benefit and not that of the flock. The saint admonishes against withholding one’s God-given advantages from the people or, worse, using them solely for one’s own benefit. Today’s section from Book I, Chapter 5 is a stern warning against self –centredness and preferring one’s own comforts and desires to the needs of the people of God.

Of those who are able to profit others by virtuous example in supreme rule, but fly from it in pursuit of their own ease.

There are some who are eminently endowed with virtues. They may have true gifts for the training of others-purity in zeal for chastity, strength in the might of abstinence, filled with the feasts of doctrine, humble in the long-suffering of patience, erect in the fortitude of authority, tender in the grace of loving-kindness, strict in the severity of justice. Truly such as these, if when called they refuse to undertake offices of supreme rule, for the most part deprive themselves of the very gifts which they received. Indeed, they do not just deprive themselves alone, but others also. While they meditate their own and not another’s gain, they forfeit the very benefits which they desire to keep to themselves.

Our Lord spoke Truth to His disciples when He said, “A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid: neither do they light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that it may give light to all that are in the house.” (St. Matthew 5:15) Further, He said to St. Peter, “Simon, Son of Jonas, do you love Me?” (John 15:16-17) When St. Peter had answered that he loved, he was told, “If you love Me, feed My sheep.” If, then, the care of feeding is the proof of loving, whosoever abounds in virtues, and yet refuses to feed the flock of God, is convicted of not loving the chief Shepherd.

St. Paul amplifies this saying, “If Christ died for all, then all died. And if He died for all, it remains that they which live should now no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again.” (II Corinthians 5:15). It is analogous to Moses’ admonition in Deuteronomy 25:5 that a surviving brother shall take to him the wife of a brother who has died without children, and beget children to the name of his brother. If, however, he refuses to take her, the woman shall spit in his face, and her kinsman shall loose the shoe from off one of his feet, and call his habitation the house of him that has his shoe loosed. The deceased brother is He who, after the glory of the resurrection, said, “Go tell My brethren.” (Matthew 28:10) For He died as it were without children, in that He had not yet filled up the number of His elect. Then, it is ordered that the surviving brother shall have the wife assigned to him, because it is surely fit that the care of holy Church be imposed on him who is best able to rule it well.

Should he be unwilling, the woman spits in his face, because whosoever cares not to benefit others out of the gifts which he has received, the holy Church condemns even what he has of good, and, as it were, casts spittle on his face. From one foot the shoe is taken away, inasmuch as it is written, “Your feet shod in preparation of the Gospel of Peace.” (Ephesians 6:15) If, then, we have the care of our neighbour as well as of ourselves upon us, we have each foot protected by a shoe. However, the shepherd who, meditating his own advantage, neglects that of his neighbours, loses with disgrace one foot’s shoe.

There are some, as we have said, enriched with great gifts, who, while they are ardent for the studies of contemplation only, shrink from serving to their neighbour’s benefit by preaching. They love a secret place of quiet. They long for a retreat for speculation. With respect to which conduct, they are, if strictly judged, undoubtedly guilty in proportion to the greatness of the gifts whereby they might have been publicly useful. For with what disposition of mind does one who might be conspicuous in profiting his neighbours prefer his own privacy to the advantage of others, when the Only-begotten of the supreme Father Himself came forth from the bosom of the Father into the midst of us all, that He might profit many?