Pilgrimage of Love: Ministry of the Bishop and his Life with God

When this piece is published in The New World, I will be in Turkey with Metropolitan Iakovos, the Presiding Hierarch of the Greek Orthodox Church of Chicago. When the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, visited Chicago a year and a half ago, he invited Bishop Iakovos and me to visit him in Istanbul, the modern name for the city founded in 330 A.D. by the Emperor Constantine after he gave freedom and imperial recognition to the Christian Church.

Founded on the site of Byzantium as a new and entirely Christian Rome, Constantinople remained the capital of the Roman Byzantine Empire for over a thousand years, and the bishop of the imperial capital took on a position of great importance in the Church. Today, Istanbul is an overwhelmingly Muslim city, but its Greek Orthodox bishop remains there as the Patriarch of Constantinople. The city was first recognized, along with Rome, Antioch and Alexandria, as one of the four major dioceses of the Church in 381 A.D. After the separation between Old Rome (the See of Peter) and New Rome (Constantinople) nine hundred years ago, the Patriarch of Constantinople became the major bishop among all the Orthodox Churches.

The Holy See, Old Rome, and the Churches in communion with her, like the Archdiocese of Chicago, recognize the Orthodox Churches as fully apostolic, although not all Orthodox Christians would say the same of us. Our understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is similar or compatible, for the most part, and we all enjoy the seven sacraments of the apostolic Churches, but our history divides us. The primatial or universal role of the successor of Peter as bishop of Old Rome is the most visible point of difference between us.

When Metropolitan Iakovos and I go to see the Ecumenical Patriarch and then go on to visit the Pope (who is also Patriarch of the West as well as primate of the Catholic Church), we will be giving witness to the good, the loving relations that exist between Catholics and Orthodox here in Chicago. We will come together to the very cities where the historical experiences that now divide Catholics and Orthodox were first played out. We will pray together in both cities, Old Rome and New Rome, that loving relationships here may be helpful in overcoming historical hurts there and that our Churches may someday be visibly united and in full communion with each other. I ask you to pray to that end also.

Since both Orthodox and Catholics have the same sense of a bishop’s role in the Church, especially since the Second Vatican Council elaborated the theology of local Church more clearly for Catholics, Bishop Iakovos and I will be able to travel as brothers in the episcopate. For both Catholics and Orthodox, the role of the bishop is inserted into our understanding of who God is. It is this relationship between the bishop and the Blessed Trinity that bears examination as we go together on a Pilgrimage of Love.

When Orthodox and Catholics say, “We believe in God,” we mean our faith is in Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is a Blessed Trinity; and all our prayers and our teaching and our lives begin and end in the name of God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is Jesus, our Savior, who introduces us to his Father and makes it possible, because we are in him through baptism, to call his Father our Father. “Lord, show us the Father,” Philip said to Jesus (John 14:8); and Jesus replied, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” To know the Father, we look at Jesus.

To know Jesus himself, we look at the record and the witnesses. We look at and live in the tradition, both written in Holy Scripture and oral in the liturgy and teaching of the Church, which links us to Jesus in the community he left behind. In the Church, Christ’s body, we receive Scripture and are told it is God’s holy word. In the Church, the risen Lord touches and shapes us through the sacraments, which are his actions in our space and time. In the Church, we recognize the Lord because we live by the Spirit Jesus sends.

To know the Holy Spirit, who is always self-effacing, we look at the results, the gifts and the fruits which are witness to the Spirit’s activity in the Church. The Spirit is wind or force; the Spirit is fire or warmth and light. The Spirit is prophetic, pointing always to Christ and keeping us in Christ’s truth.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one God. Each Person of the Blessed Trinity is totally given to the others. Their “sharing” is perfect. The presence of one divine Person means the presence of all three in our lives. Each is God, yet there is only one God, because each Person is perfectly and simply a relation to the other two. God is perfect self-giving, perfect generosity. God, as St. John says, is love (I John 4:8).

The Church is a network of relationships because she lives God’s life, Trinitarian life. The Church, like the Trinity, is a communion of persons, each intrinsically related because all share the gifts Christ gives his people. The basic gift is sanctifying grace, which justifies us and enables us to live God’s own life by freeing us from sin, healing our souls and enabling us to act in a supernatural manner. If God’s life is one of infinite generosity shared in a Trinitarian order, then the Church’s life will be the same because the Church reflects, causes and makes visible God’s life in us. The Church’s life is one of grace and charisms both institutional and personal, shared visibly in an ordered pattern called ecclesial communion.

The sacraments of the Church are the principal means for making this dynamic of shared gifts visible. As St. Paul says, it is Christ who baptizes; and it is Christ who confirms and forgives and heals and unites and ordains and gives us not just his Word but his very Self in the sacrifice of the altar. Christ will continue to share his gifts with his people until he returns again in glory.

In the meantime, in our time, the Church is governed apostolically by the successors of those whom Christ first commissioned to preach the Gospel to the nations and to establish local Churches. With and under the successor of Peter, the head of the Twelve, Catholic bishops are charged to preach Christ’s truth, to celebrate Christ’s sacraments, to govern and love Christ’s people and to see that all Christ’s gifts are available to all his people. Orthodox bishops accept the same charge but would not exercise their mission today with and under Peter’s successor.

In each particular church or diocese, therefore, the bishop is the visible point of reference for all those who gather in Christ’s name. The bishop makes Christ’s headship visible in a particular Church. He is married to his people, which is why he wears a ring. He is shepherd of his people, which is why he carries a staff or crozier. He is head of his people, which is why he wears a miter or crown.

Like and in God the Father, the bishop as life giver is the locus of authority in his local Church. Like and in God the Son, the bishop as servant gathers the baptized into Eucharistic assembly and sends them on mission to transform the world. Like and in God the Holy Spirit, the bishop unites, encourages challenges, comforts and strengthens the people confided to his pastoral care. Since God is love, the virtue that is pre-eminent in the ministry of the bishop is pastoral charity, which regulates and informs all other virtues in his life.

The spiritual life of the bishop reflects and strengthens his ministry. The believer’s spiritual life relates him or her to the Blessed Trinity internally and is made visible externally in prayer and works. The bishop, therefore, is most himself when he is at prayer, celebrating the Mass in his cathedral, surrounded by his priests and deacons, breaking open the Word of God for the holy people of God and bringing them with him into the sacrifice which unites us most perfectly to God through the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. The structure and prayer of the Mass is totally Trinitarian, beginning in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and ending with God’s blessing. The Eucharistic prayer is prayed to the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. After the bishop or priest makes Christ’s Body and Blood present in an unbloody manner, the whole assembly offers Christ’s sacrifice to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. Only then, visibly in Christ, do we dare to say “Our Father” and share the first gift of the Holy Spirit, peace, before receiving the Eucharist as our food and drink.

In his personal prayer and pastoral contacts, the bishop also lives and acts in Trinitarian fashion. The Liturgy of the Hours is as Trinitarian as the Mass and the other Sacraments. The bishop’s prayer for his people enables him to bring their deepest concerns into the heart of God’s love. His work for his people draws him into the self-sacrifice which conforms him spiritually to Christ. Because his vocation and mission in the Church are Trinitarian, so must be his personal spiritual life. But in his life with God, the bishop never lives alone. Because “the bishop is in the Church and the Church is in the bishop” (St. Irenaeus), the bishop becomes holy only with and through his people.

Rooted in faith and growing in love, the bishop’s Trinitarian life and ministry should give hope to his people so that they can be light to the world. One is called by God to this vocation and is sustained in it by the prayers of the people. Every bishop is grateful for his vocation, but every bishop also recognizes how fragile his own cooperation with Father, Son and Spirit may be. The Church encourages prayers for the Pope and other bishops because without them the risk is great that the bishop might begin to go his own way and forsake the saving embrace of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All of you are in my prayers; please keep me and the Pope, Metropolitan Iakovos and the Patriarch of Constantinople and all bishops in yours.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I.
Archbishop of Chicago

 

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