Passing on spiritual knowledge to the next generation

Apr 12, 2025

By Terence Sweeney
Such a synodal approach means thinking of your parishioners as more than just your “flock.” A pastor is gifted with responsibilities, true: By the grace of your ordination and the decision of the bishop, you are a leader. But remember that the people you lead are your fellow workers in the vineyard, “co-responsible citizens in the City of God” as Cardinal Gerhard Müller calls us. In your flock there are people with all kinds of talents and insights; draw on those. There will be people with richer prayer lives, better educations and better management skills than yours. Leading them will at times mean letting them lead. Your mission is not primarily to us, but with us. You will look more like a leader when you get your hands dirty with us — and sometimes when you do what we tell you to do.

Pastoral pilgrims
As time passes, you will help your parishioners grow toward Christ and so attract others to Christ. You will do this best if you smell like your flock — because you work with them and if you always centre yourself on Christ. You will change and your parish will change, but Christ, the centre, “is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb 13:8). Remembering this will also remind you of something else that will outlast you: the parish. You are just passing through, but the parish will last. The 90-year-old you bury was here before you and the baby you baptise will be here after you.

In canon law, a parish is a “community of the Christian faithful stably constituted in a particular church.” It is certainly the case that its “pastoral care is entrusted to a pastor,” but the parish exists because the baptised are there, not because you are. Lose track of that and you’ll lose track of us. Keep track of it and you might find a parish eager to follow your lead, eager to work with you and eager to continue the only journey that matters: The pilgrimage into the heavenly city.

Synodality may be a far-off word, but it envisions the nearness so central to Christianity, for in “Christ Jesus you who once were far off have become near by the blood of Christ” (Eph 2:13). Parishes are one of those places of synodal nearness to Christ. What we need in pastors, new and old, is the commitment to live that mission to and with us as we seek to draw all people nearer to Christ. --America

Terence Sweeney is a professor in the Honours Programme at Villanova University.