Recently I was given a rather strange job to do. This task has been required of me by the United Kingdom Border Agency in order that I might assist our incoming Bishop to obtain a visa to live and work here. Apparently, and bizarrely, I have been requested to prepare a Job Specification for our soon-to-be Metropolitan Silouan. The very thought of it, a priest acting as an employer, drawing up a list of the things a Bishop is supposed to do! This, however, is what the immigration regulations require, for all employments without distinction. So, keeping a straight face, I sat down and over a few hours I typed up a 25 point Job Specification for an Orthodox bishop. In this I was ably assisted by two other diocesan clergy, one an expert in canon law.  As I worked I tried to keep before me the truth that our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ calls His servants to work in the vineyard, as we heard in today’s Gospel reading, and it is to Him that we must show both allegiance and the fruits of the Holy Spirit.”  I then submitted the document to the Bishop elect for his comments. I of course apologised for seeming to treat him as one of our paid staff. His humility, which I have already had occasion to encounter, came to my rescue. I was not to worry, he said, “for he fully intended to fulfil all the necessary requirements and regulations and he knew that I was only doing the same with a pure heart”.

Writing out that Job Specification, however, was a useful exercise. It reacquainted me with all those sacred responsibilities, many shared with the priesthood and the diaconate, with which a Bishop is charged. I am sure that Father Silouan needed not at all to be reminded of such things; indeed he could probably double the length of the list. He will, however, need to confirm his ability to fulfil those duties as part of the visa application process. As law-abiding citizens we must of course render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar’s, the Job Specification if you like.  These obediences must be lawful and honest but they may not be particularly sensible or appropriate!  Likewise, we must render unto God the things that are God’s.  He is our Heavenly Employer and no one else. To Him we are and shall be accountable, particularly at the Great and Final Judgement. Father Silouan will have these matters close to his heart I am sure at this time, probably at this very moment as the Patriarch’s hands are laid upon him in the monastery of St. George in the Valley of the Christians, Syria to become a bishop in the Orthodox Church.

I have already mentioned humility, which is both a key charism and an ascetical labour; a virtue for all Christians, and certainly for the ordained clergy. Without neglecting those not belonging to the Church of Antioch, since my becoming Orthodox in 1995 I have known three bishops at close quarters, all three very different men but all showing a profound humility in their walk with Christ. Yes I am happily including our new Bishop, for it has been my privilege, whilst not meeting him in person, to have had conversations with him over the last few months. He shows exactly the same humility. That great Orthodox Saint of the West, Pope Gregory the Great defined a Bishop’s role as being: “the servant of the servants of God.”

Today we are commemorating another Bishop, again a great Western Orthodox saint, our own very patron, St Aidan of Lindisfarne. His life and service of God was characterised by that very same humility which allows the light of Christ to shine and scatter any darkness. Classically we remember the time when he sold a horse given to him by the king that he might traverse his diocese more easily. The horse was sold to a passing beggar and initially the king was not amused and yet, being a Godly man himself, he was profoundly moved as he recognised the humility of this great saint, who was also his own personal friend.

Many centuries later, the 15th to be precise, and in Florence we find that this torch of Christian humility had been almost but extinguished in its bishops. Satan seemed to have prevailed when a great man of God was excommunicated, hung and burnt, along with two of his companions. His name was Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican friar, a great preacher and moral reformer in Florence. His sacrifice was not in vain, however, for he lit his own torch for freedom and truth that others would later carry.  I remember him for quoting a famous little verse by St. Boniface of Crediton, as did John Milton and many others since.  This verse is a warning, not just those who are called to serve as clergy in whatever place, but to all of us who seek salvation for ourselves and for others. This is the St. Boniface’s verse: 

Once golden priests used wooden chalices, now on the contrary, wooden priests use golden chalices.

The true gold of humility is not then the fool’s gold of pride and it alone qualifies us to be called: “servants of God”.  Perhaps it is the only requirement that needed to be written down in that ridiculous Job Specification. A Bishop is called not to be a successful manager, a smooth operator, a charming person, an efficient administrator, nor even an amazing preacher. Some of these things are good and necessary but without humility they can never be enlisted in the service of love and the God who is love. No, God requires of us all that we struggle mightily for that humility which enables us to serve, to be made of gold, Kingdom gold and not of perishable wood. A Bishop, like St Gregory the Great, St. Boniface of Crediton and St Aidan of Lindisfarne our father and protector is to be an icon of Christ, a living image of that humility that we all should seek. In Father Silouan I believe that we have just such a man. Let us pray that the Lord will equip him and empower him with the most Holy Spirit to fulfil his ministry among us as a servant of the servants of God.