Learned Levites
I happen to own a life of St Francis de Sales published in 1928 by Eugène Julien, bishop of Arras. It carries the epigraph, ‘A mes prêtres, ce beau visage de Prêtre’, ‘To my priests I propose this beautiful type of a Priest’. How we need beautiful examples of people whose holy lives we desire to emulate! For a bishop to put forward such an example is a truly pastoral initiative. When King Henry IV offered Francis de Sales preferment that would take him from Geneva to a wealthier see, he replied: ‘Sire, I pray Your Majesty to forgive me, but I cannot accept his offer. I am a married man. I have married a poor woman, and I cannot leave her for one who is richer.’ Herein lies a whole theology of episcopal ministry. To his priests St Francis said: ‘It is not enough for clerics to strive to be holy; they must also become learned in the science of their state. In priests, ignorance is more to be feared even than sin, for by ignorance one does not merely lose oneself, one dishonours, disgraces the priesthood. […] In a priest, learning is the eighth sacrament of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The greatest misfortunes of the Church have come when the ark of learning has been found in other hands than those of the Levites.’ Certain Levites now seem to disagree. All the more wholesome, then, is the saint’s admonition.
