I have been re-reading Austin Farrer’s sermons this Holy Week. Last night, I came to one preached at the first Mass of a priest at Holy Trinity, Northwood, and which has become perhaps one of the best-known “purple passages” of Farrer’s, and arguably remains (alongside Michael Ramsey’s The Christian Priest Today) one of the most significant reflections on Christian Priesthood of the modern age. There have been many more recent books on ministry, and I have been lucky enough to have had time to read a good selection of these in recent months as I prepare for ordination. Some more recent works, such as Michael Sadgrove’s excellent Wisdom and Ministry, offer very valuable new perspectives on what it means to be ordained, and I have drawn much inspiration from them. I suspect that with the passage of time, some of these will also be considered classics in the way that Farrer and Ramsey are today. Yet there is something to be said for words which have stood the test of time. These words of Farrer’s speak as relevantly to us of what a priest is today as they did when they were first preached:
Apples don’t drop from the sky, they grow on apple trees. And sacraments don’t hurtle down here and there like lightning from heaven: they grow on the great branching tree of the Apostles’ ministry…into which tree, by virtue of his ordination, every new priest is grafted.
So then, a priest is a living stem, bearing sacraments as its fruits: he gives you the body and blood of Christ; he gives you, if you faithfully confess before him, Christ’s own absolution. And that’s not all; the man who bears the Sacrament is sacramental himself; he is, one might almost say, himself a walking sacrament…Just exactly what a priest is, you can see best in the Holy Eucharist. In a great part of that holy action he is, of course, no more than the voice of the congregation…But there is a moment when the priest steps into the place of Christ himself, to do what Christ did, to bless and to break, to present the mysterious sacrifice before God Almighty…
These moments, certainly, are exceptional in the activity of a priest; exceptional, but still not disconnected with his whole life or character. The man who is as Christ in the Sacrament is not just like anyone else ever: he bears the stamp…in him Christ sets up the standard of his Kingdom and calls us to the colours.
It is just this fact that shows up the priesthood so terribly, and makes us, and them too, so painfully aware of their deficiencies…Anyone may be a better Christian than the priest, more holy of life, more deeply versed in prayer. But the priest has a special obligation to lead a devout life, to study divinity, to pray; and so to be fit to give some help to his fellow-Christians in these supremely important concerns…
…None of us [Christians] can be let off being Christ in our place and our station: we are all pygmies in giants’ armour…it’s the price (how small a price!) paid for the supreme mercy of God, that he does not wait for our dignity or our perfection, but just puts himself there in our midst; in this bread and this wine, in this priest, in this Christian man, woman, or child.
He who gave himself up to us first as an infant, crying in a cot, he who was hung up naked on the wood, does not stand on his own dignity.
Words which are both challenging and comforting, and certainly a model of priesthood which I think has stood the test of time.
(Quotations from Walking Sacraments, in Houlden, L (1991). Austin Farrer: The Essential Sermons. London: SPCK)
Grasping at Holiness 