Quotes about Pastoral

It's amazing how many introverts go into the ministry.

Gregory of Nazianus taught around AD 370: "The responsibility of pastoral office is great indeed, and no one ought to enter who has not deeply examined motive and ability, who has not struggled against call in the face of godly demands of office and the frailty of mere humanity.

My life often feels like a whirling dervish of kids, writing, speaking, and pastoral ministry.

The pastoral vocation in America is embarrassingly banal. It is banal because it is pursued under the canons of job efficiency and career management. It is banal because it is reduced to the dimensions of a job description. It is banal because it is an idol — a call from God exchanged for an offer by the devil for work that can be measured and manipulated at the convenience of the worker. Holiness is not banal. Holiness is blazing…

Opposition is an inevitable reality of pastoral life.

Finally, on June 22, 1750, the Council, convened to advise on the matter, recommended, by a vote of 10 to 9, the minority protesting, that the pastoral relations should be dissolved. The concurrent sentiment of the church was expressed by the overwhelming vote of about 200 to 20 of the male members. The next Sunday but one Edwards preached his Farewell Sermon.

When all the flocks had been gathered there, the shepherds would roll away the stone from the mouth of the well and water the sheep. Then they would return the stone to its place over the mouth of the well.

In 1965, in the Council's "Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests" (Pres-byterorum ordinis, 10), the Church proposed a new institutional form, called the "personal prelature." Such an institution could accommodate both clergy and lay members cooperating to accomplish specific pastoral tasks.

What I hope my liberal friends (and I have more than a few) take from this pontificate is that mercy and truth are never separable in Catholic pastoral life.

There are many things which are pastorally helpful in the short or medium term which are not in fact grounded on the deepest possible reading of Scripture. That is simply a testimony to the grace of God: we don't have to get everything right before anything can work! But if the church is to be built up and nurtured in Scripture it must be semper reformanda, submitting all its traditions to the Word of God.

Forgiveness is difficult at the personal and pastoral level, and the twofold reason is because Jesus was so forceful about its necessity for his followers and we find forgiveness so demanding and difficult.

The difficult pastoral art is to encourage people to grow in excellence and to live selflessly, at one and the same time to lose the self and find the self. It is paradoxical, but it is not impossible.