The cost of clerical ambition
Father Coleridge explains how the conduct of Christ's ministers can build up others for eternal life – or direct them towards eternal destruction.
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Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How ambition endangers anyone who seeks to do something for God when they forget their duties to him.
That true greatness lies in patient charity, not in rivalry or comparison.
Why St Paul’s example shows the positive side of ministry opposed to scandal.
He shows us that the only safe ambition for Christ’s ministers is to labour for souls with the charity of Christ, guarding against the fatal scandal of ambition.
For more context on this chapter, see Part I.
The Greater in the Kingdom
The Preaching of the Cross, Part I
Chapter VII
St. Matt. xviii. 1–14; St. Mark ix. 32–49; St. Luke ix. 46-8; Story of the Gospels, § 86-7
Burns and Oates, London, 1886.
Our Lord thinking of the Pharisees
Our Lord had constantly in His Heart the case of the men who were at that very time doing so much harm to the souls of others, men who had not begun by full malignity in opposing Him and His teaching, men who had been placed by the Providence of His Father in the seat of authority and the chair of Moses, for the express purpose of helping those over whom they ruled, and who looked to them as guides, to embrace the sweet yoke and gentle burdens of the Gospel kingdom.
The Scribes and Pharisees had gone astray just for the reason that they had not had the courage and wisdom to sacrifice themselves and their selfish objects of ambition to the service of God. Many of them were men of bad lives, and may even have used their position to facilitate their indulgence in sensuality, as was the case with the sons of Eli.
But their immediate cause of sin was their ambition. The time had not come for the denunciation of the woes these men were bringing on themselves, of which denunciation we shall have to speak a little later. But it was already in our Lord’s Heart, and He also knew full well how it was to be in the Christian Church afterwards.
We find an instance of this beginning of rivalry among the disciples of the Apostles in the state of the Church of Corinth to which St. Paul wrote, where men were calling themselves the disciples or followers and converts of this or that one among the teachers, and were encouraged as it seems by some of the latter in this beginning of division, which contained in itself so much mischief for the future if it were not immediately checked.
It is not the plan of St. Paul to speak severely, but his Epistles to that Church are warnings and instructions to all time, both as to the dignity of the Christian ministry, and the immense evils which result whenever it even begins to lose its perfect spirit.
The disciples had not answered his question
We may therefore understand this passage about scandal in connection with the main purpose of our Lord in the whole of this discourse or discourses, for we shall see reason for thinking that on this occasion He repeated twice over very nearly the same teaching after a very short interval of time.
We must remember that up to the moment when these words were spoken, the disciples had not avowed to our Lord the subject of their conversation on the road to Capharnaum. He had asked them, and they had been ashamed to answer Him.
In His sweet and gentle way, knowing their hearts, as St. Luke tells us, He had called them to Him, and told them, that if any man desired to be first, he should be the last of all, and the servant of all. Then He had said no more. He had spoken by action, taking a child and setting him by Himself, in the midst of them, and embracing him.
Then He had added the words about the blessing of receiving such a child in His name. He had let Himself be interrupted by the question of St. John about the prohibition of the man who had been found casting out devils in His Name, but He had returned to the former subject, only changing the form of His words from a recommendation of loving care for little ones to a warning against the danger of giving scandal to little ones.
The danger of ambition in Apostolic men
It is therefore as if He had said, without entering into the question as to who should be the greater, which was soon after to be put to Him directly, that what He wished them to occupy themselves about in their conversation, and in the thoughts and desires of their hearts, was, above all things, the immense blessing of being in any way ministers of help or salvation to those for whom He showed so much love, the little ones of the flock, and also the immense danger of giving anything like scandal to such, as was only too easy to any who did not most carefully rule themselves and restrain the instinctive movements of ambition, or any other passion, which might arise in their hearts.
If their hearts were full of the true dignity and beauty, and also of the perils and dangers of the ministry, which was their work in the Kingdom of Heaven, there would be no room left for the aspirations of ambition, but only for that true and laudable ambition which desires to see the work of God for the good of souls prosper to the utmost, whether in their own hands, or in the hands of any other whatsoever.
St Paul to the Corinthian priests
Nowhere can we find a better description of this true and honourable ambition than in such words as those of St. Paul to the Corinthian priests:
‘Giving no offence to any man, that our ministry be not blamed, but in all things let us exhibit ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in tribulation, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in prisons, in seditions, in labours, in watchings, in fastings, in chastity, in knowledge, in longsuffering, in sweetness, in the Holy Ghost, in charity unfeigned, in the word of truth, in the power of God, by the armour of justice on the right hand and on the left, by honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report, as deceivers, and yet true, as unknown, and yet known, as dying, and behold we live, as chastised, and not killed, as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, as needy, and yet enriching many, as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.’1
It is evident that St. Paul would not pour himself out so readily as he does in these words, if his heart was not full to overflowing of the opportunities and responsibilities of the Christian ministry.
He discloses here his own vigilance in seizing every opportunity of discharging his great duties with the utmost charity and edification. He does not speak about being first in all these things which he enumerates, he has no time for a comparison with others.
The passage is a picture of his life, its external condition and its interior exercises of virtue. It is the positive side of the character and conduct of men who are incapable of giving scandal or yielding to temptations, even from things dearest to them, because they are all on fire with what he elsewhere calls the ‘charity of Christ.’
Mortifications of the Apostles
Elsewhere St. Paul dwells on the privations and mortifications of the Apostolic life, by means of which he and his brethren were made what they were.
‘Even unto this hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no fixed abode, and we labour, working with our own hands, we are reviled, and we bless, we are persecuted, and we suffer it, we are blasphemed, and we entreat, we are made the refuse of this world, the offscouring of all even until now.’2
And again:
‘In all things we suffer tribulation, but we are not distressed, we are straitened, but are not destitute, we suffer persecution, but are not forsaken, we are cast down, but we perish not, always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal bodies.’3
On the occasion on which these Epistles to the Corinthians were written, the Apostle had to deal with mischiefs among the Christian priests which were very similar to those which might have followed among the Apostles, if our Lord had not given them the lesson and warnings contained in this passage of St. Matthew, and in this way we may illustrate the words of the Master by those of His faithful servant.
These and other passages of St. Paul form a grand commentary on the words of our Lord here. When our Lord spoke, the idea of the Christian ministry and pastoral office was only in germ in the minds of the Apostles. It was a new thing in the world, as new as the doctrine of the Cross. St. Paul shows us to what it grew in the minds and hearts of the Apostles, and he has handed it on to the Church of all ages.
But all that he says may be traced to these discourses of our Lord in Galilee, with their three or four fundamental ideas—the dignity of souls as representing God and Himself, the enormous danger and fatal easiness of scandal, the love of the Good Shepherd, and the will of the Father that no one of the little ones should be lost.
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2 Cor. vi. 3-10
1 Cor. iv. 11-18.
2 Cor. iv. 8-10.
Very Timely and interesting.....From these writings and others of the Apostle Paul, do you believe that he was likely a stigmatic ?.....Thanks and Blessings!
This is what we face with many traditional priests trying to come up with solutions to the crisis in the Church but not following what the Church teaches about herself. In their ambition they forget their mission and becomes as tinkling symbols, or worse a source of scandal.