What might the new Holy Father learn from an ancient writer who is known as the Father of English Poetry? The answer might surprise us.
Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of The Canterbury Tales, offers a portrait of the perfect priest which serves as an ideal model of sanctity that all priests, from the pope to the local pastor, should seek to emulate.
In the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales Chaucer describes an assortment of people who are traveling together on a pilgrimage to the shrine of the martyr, St. Thomas Becket. In their midst is a “poor parson of a town” who is introduced as being “a good man of religion.”
Although he is introduced as being poor, we are told that he is “rich in holy thought and work.” He is a learned man, a scholar: “Christ’s gospel truly would he preach and his parishioners devoutly would he teach.”
In his daily life, he proves himself in all his actions to be benign, “wonderfully diligent” and always patient in adversity. Far from insisting that the poor members of his congregation pay their tithes, he would rather give them money from the parish collection and even from his own pocket. Seeking only what is sufficient to live simply, his own needs are very small.
Although his parish is large and rural, with the homes of his parishioners spread far apart, he never neglected to visit the homes of the sick or those in any kind of trouble. He visited those who were farthest away, the poor and the wealthy alike, travelling on foot, staff in hand, in rain or thunder or any type of weather. “This noble example he gave to his sheep, that first he wrought and then he taught.” First he practiced and then he preached.
Mindful of the priestly vocation and the responsibilities attached to it, he reminds himself before reminding others “that if gold rust, what should iron do?”
For if a priest be foul, in whom we trust,
No wonder that a sinful man will rust.
And shameful, let priests this knowledge keep,
To find a filthy shepherd and clean sheep.
Well ought a priest by his example give,
By his cleanness, how his sheep should live.
Nor should a priest be sullied by ambition, placing his ministry for hire, “leaving his sheep encumbered in the mire.” He should not seek high office in the Church like a mercenary but should guard his sheep from the wolves, including wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Being holy and virtuous, he shows mercy to sinners, disdaining to speak disdainfully of them or to them, teaching them with meekness and discretion. “To draw folk to heaven by fairness, by good example, was his business.” And yet he sharply reproves those who remain obstinate in sin, whether rich or poor.
“Christ’s lore, and His apostles twelve, he taught, but first he followed it himself.”
Having described the holy simplicity of his “poor parson,” Chaucer sets him up as a perfect example for all priests to follow: “A better priest, I believe, that nowhere none is.”
Well might we hope and pray that the new pope will follow the example of Chaucer’s “poor parson” and that he might prove worthy of the traditional title of the Bishop of Rome as the “Servant of the Servants of God.” In the papacy, as in all other aspects of the Christian life, it is always the humble who shall be exalted.
