Leviticus and Prophecy as Types of Pastoral Care (2)

By Archimandrite Cyprian (Kern)

And what is a “prophet” as a type, as a style of pastoral care?

Of course, not the same one that the Church has assigned to the famous figure of the righteous canonized by it. Although this term is borrowed from the Bible, it is nevertheless given a somewhat different meaning, closer to the concepts from the monuments of early Christianity. In this sense, a prophet is not one who foresees or predicts the future, but one who is a bearer of the creative spirit, who does not rest on the path of his pastoral work, who constantly hungers and thirsts for communion with the Source of Truth, who is sensitive to what is happening in the world around him, who does not reconcile himself to the ingrained evil and injustice, regardless of what authorities in this world they may be sanctioned by. These are the shepherds who are aware of themselves as priests of the Most High God, of the Living God, who themselves are alive and are filled with bold faith. These are those Christian shepherds who feel and who experience the tragedy of Christianity and their calling.

The Old Testament prophet was rarely at the same time a priest[8] – these were two parallel institutes of the religious order. While the New Testament priest must also be a prophet – in the spirit of his pastoral ministry; he cannot but be one. The Old Testament Levite already became a priest by birth. The prophet, on the other hand, is one who is directly called by God. Neither the right of the estate nor the merits of his fathers have elevated him to the height of his ministry: “… I am no prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet” (Amos 7:14).

With his fiery speeches and with his whole life, the Old Testament prophet denounced the imperfection of the priests, the kings, and the people. He was sent from above – as a corrective for the unsuccessful examples of the priesthood. The New Testament priest – as a prophet, is obliged to constantly listen to this voice of God within himself and always be a corrective for himself.

The Old Testament prophets were directly called by different strata of society and from different places (kings, shepherds, etc.), being inspired by the Holy Spirit. And the shepherds of Christ – in the sacrament of ordination, receive this same grace of the Holy Spirit, which “… fills what is lacking and heals what is infirm.”[9] If the ancient prophets listened to the voice of God and communed with God, then the New Testament prophet-priest is in daily communion with the Lord Himself in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist. And does he not hear the voice of the Lord? The ancient prophet was not afraid to open his ears and heart to the knowledge and accommodation of the Truth of God. Should the New Testament prophet-priest be afraid of this, who is filled with no less grace of the Same Spirit – no matter how terrible, inconceivable and dizzying this truth may seem? The ancient prophet preached the idea of ​​moral renewal, of inner rebirth (Isa. 1:10; 6:7; Hos. 4:1; 12:3, 6, etc.), he denounced social evil, the injustice of the powerful in this world, he awakened his people and his priests. He was an unyielding guardian of righteousness. Is not the New Testament priest and prophet also obliged to be like this? Is he not called to carry out his ministry of mystical transformation of the world?

In Old Testament Israel, God gave Moses the institution of the priesthood and the sacrificial code. The Levites were the guardians and executors of these prescriptions. However, the prophets – who so sharply denounced these Levites – did not rebel against the ritual, nor against the sacrificial institution. They rebelled against the available forms of implementation of this ritual and these sacrifices. They rebuked the priests who “… transgressed my law and profaned my holy things, and did not distinguish between the holy and the profane, and did not put difference between the clean and the unclean” (Ezek. 22:26), who blasphemed the name of the Lord (Mal. 1:6), and who “are hypocrites” (Jer. 23:11), who fed “themselves” (Ezek. 34:2), and of whom it was said that “as it is with the people, so it will be with the priest” (Hos. 4:9). So the New Testament shepherd is obliged to constantly warm up within himself the prophetic attitude towards the sacrifice, towards prayer, towards the institutions of the Church, and not the usual Levitical attitude towards the sanctuary.

The Old Testament prophets were servants of their people. They, of course, stood at the level of the national-Jewish character of the revelation and the chosenness of Israel. However, we should not forget that there were also prophets who rose above this narrow-national level. Some of them the Lord called to ministry outside the borders of the Jewish people (St. Prophet Jonah), and He opened wider horizons to them (Zech. 8:22-23). ​​Of course, they could not rise to the idea of ​​universal service. This has already been given to the New Testament shepherds. Here the shepherd must no longer return to the Old Testament views and confine himself within the boundaries of the national. The tasks of the Christian shepherd are broader and he must, is obliged to sacrifice his national, his habits and prejudices to the universal, to the common human. No matter how lofty patriotic aspirations may be, they cannot be higher than the evangelical, universal goals. The national must be subordinate in the pastoral ministry to the Christian, to the universal, to the supranational. If the shepherd cannot do this, he is again enslaved to the Levitical atavism.

Bishop Porphyry says: “There is a great spiritual famine throughout Europe. The mediocrity and heavy sleep of spiritual powers have been replaced by wakefulness and flights of gifts in the field of truth, goodness, beauty and justice… Russia is tormented by spiritual poverty. Where are the prophets among us who, with an inspired word, would saturate her – who is by nature so inclined to faith – with the poetry and charm of the spiritual world?… Where are the prophets among us who, in the name of God and the Gospel, would preach freedom to the captives?… Where are the apostles?…“[10]

However, the prophetic spirit and style are so unusual against the general background of spiritual bourgeoisie. They seem like a sharp dissonance. They sharply invade the calm rumble of guild, carefree, happy and self-satisfied Christianity. Such people look like utopians and fools. And from this arises the question: is prophetic ministry possible even now? Is it not a specific feature of Old Testament and early Christian life?

When we consider religious life as something that is perfectly established, Christianity as a set of rigid prescriptions, and pastoral ministry as only the preservation of traditions and canonized forms, – in such a view, prophetic mood and spiritual fervor are naturally an anachronism and a striving for an unnecessary, pitiful and dangerous attempt to bring back to life something that has long since gone.

However, if Christianity has not died, if the Church lives even now, if our Liturgy has the same power that it had in the early days of the Church, if divine grace acts through the priest and he transforms the elements, heals diseases, has power over demons and sanctifies and transforms this world darkened by sin, then we cannot be dead in faith, we will not be afraid of spiritual burning. In this case, we, the pastors, cannot help but be inspired by the spirit of St. Elijah, of Isaiah or the Forerunner, of the Apostle Paul and the prophets of the Didache. I repeat: to be a prophet does not only mean to predict the future. It means to burn and to be bold before God. It means not to reconcile with the prevailing evil. To awaken the sleeping religious element, to respond and react sharply to all the problems that torment humanity.

If the spirit of the apostles and prophets has died in us, then we are only a class of priests, of Levites performing their ministry. The apostle, foreseeing the cooling of the Christian spirit and the ossification of the empirical forms of the Church, wrote to the Thessalonian community: “… Do not despise prophecies” (1 Thess. 5:20). In this prophetic spirit he saw the boldness of faith, the pledge of true ministry, and he wished to see the same thing in his successors and continuers of the divine-human work. The apostle was not mistaken in his fears. As Israel once said to its prophets, “… do not prophesy to us what is right, speak to us what is smooth, prophesy what is pleasant” (Isa. 30:10; cf. Amos 2:12), in the same way the spirit of bold service to God gradually began to die out in the Christian Church – the form began to reign over the essence; the content of the Gospel began to be seen in everyday life. Very soon they began to forget and fear this prophetic spirit. After all, without it, life in the Church flows, of course, much more calmly. There is no need to burn, you can also seek nothing, you can give yourself permission to soothe yourself in the soft fluffy mattresses of the established way of life. This is the great temptation of everyday life. In the pathos of its religious inspiration, the early Christian community still continued to live with the spirit of the prophetic ministry and was not afraid of it. The Didache allows the prophets to give thanks “as much as they wanted.” St. Justin the Philosopher also narrates that the priests gave thanks as much as they could, that is, as much as they had inspiration and strength. What has been said testifies that in this religious inspiration they clearly saw and felt the sincere power of faith. It was like a criterion for the truth of religious life. There was no false, feigned pathos here, nor any painful distortion of the spiritual path. Speaking in one of his words about the miracle of Pentecost, St. Gregory the Theologian beautifully characterizes the state of mind of the newly enlightened and blessed apostles, saying that it was a power of spirit, and not some kind of delirium of the mind. In this the entire ministry of the Christian Church was carried out. The Christian as such, and especially the pastor, must be, cannot but be filled with this power of the spirit, with this prophetic spirit. Thus St. John Chrysostom was not afraid to say that when God reveals to us what “eye has not seen, ear has not heard” (1 Cor. 2:9), we also become prophets; that in the baptismal font the Christian becomes both king, priest, and prophet.

It would hardly be a mistake to say that from the days of the apostles to our own day there has never been a more responsible or more tense time for the Church of Christ. The catastrophic and apocalyptic nature of our era seems to be sufficiently obvious to all but the blind. The Lord does not tolerate and severely denounces lukewarm faith (Rev. 3:16). Especially in our time there can be no death of faith, spiritual lethargy and deafness to what is happening in the world. Huge layers and strata are stirring and shifting, which for centuries have stood still. Whole nations are rising up against the Church, but also huge caravans of lost strangers are returning to it. It seems that the words of the prophet are being fulfilled before modern shepherds: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but a thirst for hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). To satisfy this hunger and thirst, a priesthood is called, inspired, strong, young, bold – a priesthood with a prophetic spirit. These priests must carry out their ministry in the full armor of modern requirements. Before priests today there are many pastoral paths, and each of these paths is blessed, and on each of these paths zealous workers are needed. Their choice depends both on individual aspirations and tastes, and on the will of the Church, which sends them to be its overseers. In whatever path they carry out their work, they are obliged to do it in the spirit of the Good Shepherd, without looking back at the once secured, calm, orderly Levitical prosperity and remembering the tragedy of our time and their ministry.

And the main thing is not to extinguish within themselves the religious-pastoral inspiration and to follow in the footsteps of the prophets and apostles. Let them not be afraid of the young fire burning within them. Let them not extinguish it, let them not succumb to the lulling routine of everyday life, let them not indulge in aestheticism to the detriment of spirituality. Let them not be afraid, burning with spirit, to appear as out of date, as utopians, as fools and out of tune with the general gray background of spiritual bourgeoisie. Let them remember the already quoted words of the Theologian of Nazianzus and perform their ministry not in a frenzy of the mind, but in the strength of the spirit.

“Do not quench the spirit. Do not despise prophecies.”[11] What exactly this prophetic spirit represents, what meaning is given to it in pastoral theology, and what it is to be a shepherd-prophet and not a Levite, we have tried to clarify in this article.

Notes:

[8] Ezek. 1:3; Jer. 1:1; 2 Par. 24:20.

[9] From the sequence of the sacrament Priesthood.

[10] Cited in the original, pp. 238-239.

[11] 1 Thess. 5:19-20.

Source in Russian: Cyprian (Kern), archim. “Leviticus and Prophecy as Types of Pastoral Care” – In: Vestnik RSHD, 3, 1938, pp. 10-24.

Illustrative photo: Gutenberg_bible_Old_Testament_Epistle_of_St_Jerome