Ministry,Disability and Brokenness: Orthodox Insights into the Authority of the Priesthood

Abstract

Christian ministers must learn to acknowledge the authenticity — and thereby the authority — of their own weakness and woundedness. From an Orthodox Christian spiritual perspective, the awareness of one's imperfection and brokenness can, paradoxically, become a source not only of personal blessing but also of ordained vocation. The idealisation of physical beauty and external wholeness, frequently at the exclusion of difference and brokenness, is more characteristic of classical Greek aesthetics than of Christian asceticism. The notion of prayerful waiting inroduces a third expression of our brokenness, the shattered world around us as we stand — or kneel — before the twenty-first century. The brokenness of creation reveals a further aspect of the role of the priest.