The Priest as Interpreter

By Fr. Glenn M. Spencer

A titled priest licensed to a parish by his Ordinary and under the appropriate parochial authority is ἄνθρωπος ὁ διερμηνεύς. Man the Interpreter.

In all conditions of life in the House of God, from the meaning of Holy Scriptures to a parishioner's hopes, dreams and fears, the priest is a messenger. The children of God seek for meaning. The priest is both a carrier and a conveyor of meaning.

St. Paul writes that Christians need not be taught by anyone because we possess an anointing through the gifts received in Holy Baptism that gives us faculty to grasp meaning for the people of God. Those gifts, the theological virtues, specifically aid us in our struggles against the wounds of the Fall, especially those that militate against intellectual virtues.

Furthermore the Priest received an anointing at his ordination that, along with intellectual maturity and education, enables him to rightly divide the Word of Truth, the Holy Scriptures, as well as to discern plenary meaning in the House of God. Pastoral Care in the Anglo Catholic tradition is reliant upon interpretation, which in a sense is a kind of diagnosis, because the crises that have brought on the need for pastoral care are always concrete and frequently energized. They have many likely sources and meanings that require specialization in several skills as well as requiring prayer for mature, responsible, ethical, pastoral interpretation.

But usually when we think of interpretation we think of Holy Scripture, a pastoral letter from our Bishop, or a liturgy. Written texts do not interpret themselves. Every Sunday and feast day the priest preaches a sermon that should interpret for his cure the meaning of life in light of Holy Scripture. He will do something very similar in pastoral care and vestry meetings. No one, other than the Ordinary and the Rector, has the authority to speak with finality on scriptural, liturgical, or pastoral matters he must address with frequency in his parish.

Here I am speaking of cure as care made present through the activities of the transcendental imperatives. Authentically appropriating the transcendental imperatives means verifying for yourself by proper performance of the transcendental imperatives, in the proper order. Proper performance means raising and answering questions that are generated by human experience and in our case, our concern is for the human experience of caring for a cure. We are all curates caring for a cure by way of a cure. We have to learn the transcendental imperatives.

I have specific, concrete directions. When it comes to internalizing the transcendental imperatives, read poetry. To practice raising questions for attentiveness, read poetry. To practice raising questions for intelligence, read poetry. To practice questions for reasonableness, read poetry. To practice responsibility, read poetry. Not just old classical poetry that everyone agrees is great poetry, but good poetry ancient and modern and contemporary. Read poetry silently or aloud. It requires an extraordinary focus on the performance of attentiveness. Spend more time reading poetry alone, but do not forsake reading poetry aloud with your fellow travelers. Do close readings, not closed reading. Every single word counts and the whole counts. Meaning = Interpretation = Intelligibility.

Fr. Glenn M. Spencer is Vicar of Christ the King Anglican Mission in Staunton, Virginia. He is Rector Emeritus of All Saints Anglican Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he served for more than thirty years.