by Winston Hottman
As part of our 2023 Christian Spirituality Reading Challenge, we have included Gregory the Great’s classic on pastoral care, Regula pastoralis. The purpose of this blog post is to provide a basic orientation to the life of Gregory and this work. The wisdom of Pastoral Care continues to speak to pastors and layperson in many ways, but I’ve chosen to highlight one theme in particular that bears promise for the retrieval of classical pastoral theology.
Life of Gregory
No one who knew Gregory from a young age would have been surprised by his rise to fame. Born around 540 to a Christian family of the senatorial aristocracy, he received the best education possible before beginning a political career as an urban prefect. Gregory’s skills as a leader and administrator became evident to all, and by his mid-thirties his star was on the rise.
But Gregory’s greatness would be achieved in an unexpected way. Resigning his position as prefect, he decided to devote himself completely to the service of God as a monastic. In doing so, he gave away much of his inheritance for the establishment of monasteries in his family’s lands in Sicily, including one in the family palace, where he chose to retire to his ascetic vocation. Here he would pursue a life of virtue and contemplation.
But Gregory’s plans again were interrupted, this time against his will. Gregory’s political savvy had caught the eye of Pelagius II, bishop of Rome, who needed an ambassador to the imperial court in Constantinople. Shrewdly, Pelagius ordained Gregory.
Gregory’s new role immersed him not only in diplomatic affairs but doctrinal controversies as well. And he shined. Following Pelagius’s abrupt death by bubonic plague in 590, Gregory organized a procession in the city to pray for God to end the plague. That day, there was no doubt in the mind of observers who the next bishop of Rome should be. Against his wishes, Gregory was acclaimed by the people as Pelagius’s successor and appointed by the emperor.
Gregory deeply regretted this turn of events. Having committed himself to a life of humble contemplation, he found himself thrust even further into worldly affairs and their attendant spiritual dangers. In his new role, Gregory bore a variety of pastoral, administrative, and political burdens. In addition to his general oversight of the church, he was responsible for governing the papal territories and coordinating the distribution of wheat to the urban poor, while also being called upon to fill the leadership gap left by the diminishing influence of the distant emperor in Constantinople. On top of this, he had to deal with the persistent threat of the Lombards, who made several incursions into Rome during his tenure. Of one particular besiegement of Rome Gregory would later write that he felt unable “even to live.”
Nevertheless, Gregory embraced his appointment as a call from God and in so doing became one of the most influential figures in the history of the Church. His legacy includes ecclesiastical and monastic reforms, liturgical innovations, the evangelization of the Anglo-Saxons in former Roman colonies, and numerous writings, including the work we have chosen for this year’s reading challenge, Pastoral Care (Liber regulae pastoralis).
Gregory’s Pastoral Care
Pastoral Care is Gregory’s most important contribution to pastoral theology and comes down to us as a definitive classic. Alongside other notable works like Bucer’s Concerning the True Care of Souls and Baxter’s The Reformed Pastor, it should be required reading for any with interest in pastoring. Like these other classics, it speaks deeply to the human experience of pastoring across different times and cultural contexts.
Gregory begins the book with two different profiles of a pastor, the difference between the two being the absence or presence of humility. Those who approach the pastoral office with pride inevitably experience a contradiction between their inner life and the external life of their public office, which in turn corrupts their teaching to the harm of their hearers while leading the pastors to a self-inflated view of their own ministries. On the other hand, those who approach the pastoral office with a desire moderated by fear achieve a rectitude of life that finds expression in their teaching and a spirit of humility regarding their own ministerial accomplishments.
The four parts of the book address the stages of these progressions. Part 1 discusses the proper way to approach the pastorate, Part 2 the relationship between the inner and outer lives of the pastor, Part 3 the way to apply one’s teaching to the varying needs of different classes of people, and Part 4 the need for constant reflection on one’s own weaknesses.
Gregory’s concerns in Pastoral Care reflect the tension he experienced in his own life and ministry between the life of contemplation and the life of service. Throughout the work, Gregory is at pains to help pastors and pastoral candidates navigate that relationship without shipwrecking.
While Pastoral Care is relevant to contemporary pastors in a variety of ways, it is here where Gregory’s counsel is especially poignant in our own cultural context. Pastors have always been busy, but it seems like ours is a particularly frenetic time. The last century has seen a proliferation of cultural expectations and program-centered approaches to church ministry that have glutted pastors’ schedules, in many cases with activities that fall outside the traditional purview of pastoral care. Social media, the effects of which we are still discerning, exacerbate this centrifugal force, drawing the pastor further out of his own inner life of prayer.
For Gregory, this presents a grave danger both to the pastor’s own spiritual development as well as his public office. He compares such a pastor to a traveler who forgets where he is going. But for Gregory, the answer is not a pendulum swing in the opposite direction. As much as a pastor may seek to establish a life of prayer, there are still people to be served, needs to be met, meetings to be held, and so on. So, what is a pastor to do?
Importantly, for Gregory, the answer is not an either/or but a both/and.
Let the ruler not relax the care of the inner life by preoccupying himself with external matters, nor should his solicitude for the inner life bring neglect of the external, lest, being engrossed with what is external, he be ruined inwardly, or being preoccupied with what concerns only his inner self, he does not bestow on his neighbours the necessary external care. [1]
For Gregory, the integrity of the internal and external reflects the twofold commandment of the love of God and love of neighbor, and it would be a profound mistake to believe the two would ever be at odds with one another.
For Gregory, Jesus is the model par excellence, who during his earthly ministry both prayed on the mountain and worked miracles in the towns. In Christ, then, the pastor finds the perfect model of love, in which a life of solitude and service exist in proper proportion and perfect harmony. In Christ’s own mission from the Father, we find it to be the case that our own ascent to God is not impeded by the needs of those under us. In fact, the opposite is true.
Then, indeed, charity rises to sublime heights, when in pity it is drawn by the lowly things of the neighbor, and the more kindly it stoops to infirmity, the mightier is its reach to the highest. [2]
Or as a mentor recently put it: “People are not objects or barriers in ministry. They are ministry.” As to how Gregory counsels the pastor to pursue this balance, I’ll let you discover that for yourself. But suffice it to say that Gregory’s model of ministry should serve as a clarion call for pastors ministering in an environment that not only pulls us out of our inner selves but from those in whose service we find ourselves.