parresia

spiritual leaders

Priests as Spiritual Fathers

Hebrews 13
17Obey your spiritual leaders and do what they say. Their work is to watch over your souls, and they know they are accountable to God. Give them reason to do this joyfully and not with sorrow. That would certainly not be for your benefit. (NLT)

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you. (NASB)

From an Orthodox perspective it is impossible to read these words and not think of the role of the Priest as a spriritual father.

In Orthodoxy, the Priest is not merely the person who gives the "witty, and often funny" sermon. The Orthodox Priest is not merely the guy who is in charge of arranging church activities and "socials." The Orthodox Priest is not merely a man who is "righteous enough" to offer the Lord's Supper. The Orthodox Priest is not merely any one of these nor merely all these things.

The Orthodox Priest has been ordained by the laying on of hands by men who had been ordained by the laying on of hands going all the way back to the Apostles, literally. The Orthodox priest is in the God given role of spiritual father; he is expected to preserve the truth of God's word, he is to edify, admonish, chastize, counsel, and teach the laity entrusted to him.

The Orthodox priest also takes confession. He is given the special role of being able to relate with you at one of the most intimate of levels: your sin. He is, from this vantage point, able to offer you Christian counsel; he is able to act in many ways just as a father would, a father who knows his child-- this relation and connection cannot be taken too lightly.

No, the Orthodox priest is not just the "boss" of the church; he is the loving steward in submission to Christ. I praise God that in the Orthodox church the words above (Paul's words perhaps) are taken seriously, and literally-- they find their expression in the role of true spiritual leaders who are not merely trained to be such, but have been ordained in the Holy Spirit in the lineage of those men who have been hand picked as heirs of that godly task by the Apostles.

Posted by at July 30, 2002 09:33 AM