Friday Reflection: The Priest who was Phillips Brooks
The priest…must be dignified, but not haughty; awe-inspiring, but kind; affable in his authority; impartial, but courteous; humble, but not servile, strong but gentle…
— From John Chrysostom, Six Books on the Priesthood
I. I was talking with a priest friend recently and I told him that I was writing an essay on Phillips Brooks (1835-1893). He asked why I would choose to write on Phillips Brooks and I responded that for some reason I had “always been interested” in Phillips Brooks, the Episcopal priest and Bishop the church remembers on January 23. I grew up in a very literate Roman Catholic family and attended Catholic Schools from kindergarten through college seminary and for the most part lived in the Catholic bubble of church, home and school. A week or so ago, I was thinking about writing this essay and remembered my early interest in the Episcopal and Lutheran faiths. I remembered, too, that I sang concerts as a “ringer” with choirs that were from Lutheran or Episcopal churches and that there were rehearsals when the conductors, especially when we sang Christmas carols, would often tell us about the carols. I came to realize that to have “always been interested” in Phillips Brooks had mostly to do with the carol we sang all the time, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” which Brooks wrote in 1868. But always being interested in Phillips Brooks doesn’t mean I really knew anything about him. Yet, as I prepared to write this essay, I’ve realized that it may very well be the “O Little Town of Bethlehem” that reveals the most about the priest who was Phillips Brooks.
II. Phillips Brooks was born in Boston (December, 1835) to a distinguished and affluent family with deep roots in New England. Phillips was the second of six boys, three of whom followed him into the Episcopal priesthood. The religious roots of the Phillips-Brooks family was as Unitarians but the family became well respected, faithful, learned Episcopalians. As was expected of the high-achieving Episcopal sons, Phillips attended the Boston Latin School and Harvard University, from which he graduated at the age of 20 in 1855.
III. After graduation from Harvard, Brooks returned to the Boston Latin School as a teacher, a position that did not work out. One suspects this was an unnerving and discouraging episode in Brooks’ life, for up to this point, education was all he knew. To become a teacher seemed both natural and sensible as he decided what he really wanted to do with his life.
Holy Trinity Church, Rittenhouse Square
IV. Sometime during the 1855-56 school year, Brooks made a decision to enter seminary to study for ordination to the Episcopal priesthood and matriculated at the Virginia Theological Seminary in the fall of 1856. After he finished his studies in 1859, Brooks was ordained a Deacon and began his ministry in Philadelphia as Rector of what was then a small Episcopal parish, the Church of the Advent. Ordained a priest in 1860, Brooks continued his service to the Church of the Advent and in 1862, he was called to be Rector of a larger and more prestigious parish, also in Philadelphia, the Church of the Holy Trinity-Rittenhouse Square. It was as Rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity that Brooks gained a reputation as a priest who was open to all elements of the Episcopal church. At Holy Trinity, he became a magnetic and personal preacher, one who did not preach from the pulpit but from a lectern in front of the congregation. In his sermons, Brooks took very public positions on his opposition to slavery and support of the Union in the Civil War. In April 1865, he preached a sermon at Holy Trinity on the death of Abraham Lincoln, and even in the time of “hard copy,” the sermon was circulated widely. And when Brooks was invited to preach at Harvard University Commemoration of the Civil War dead, his sermon received nationwide attention. It should be noted that Brooks was a preacher who meant his sermons to be popular, so he made them very accessible for his congregations and readers. The sermons were neither theological nor doctrinal, and were mostly without exegesis. In his Beecher Lectures on Preaching which he gave at Yale in 1877, Brooks said preaching is “Truth through Personality” and “Preaching is the communication of truth by man to men.” (quoted in Phillips Brooks: American Icon by David Larsen). Even now, 130 years after his death, at least 50 different books of his sermons and reflections are still available.
V. Phillips Brooks is reported to have said his “only ambition was to be a parish priest and, though not much of one, I would as a college president be still less.” While this may be a true statement, it does seem that Brooks was a man of substantial ambition, an ambition that drove him to be the very best priest he could be, to be honest and guileless in his public life and to be very popular. If his ambition had a shape, it was not to be too obvious, though he did enjoy the stature that took shape at Holy Trinity in Philadelphia. It should be mentioned here that Brooks’ physical stature was substantial; he was 6 feet 4 inches in height and 300 pounds in weight.
Trinity Church, Boston
(photo by Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress)
VI. It should come as little surprise that in his 7th year as Rector at the Church of the Holy Trinity, 1869, Brooks was called to serve as Rector of Trinity Church in Boston, at the time the most important and prestigious Episcopal church in the United States. And this appointment invites us to explore more deeply what “stature” came to mean in Phillips Brooks’ life. He spent a very successful 23 years at Trinity Boston (1869-1891) and became one of the most visible clergy members of the Episcopal Church in America, especially in Boston and the Northeast. One could argue, in fact, that Brooks was one of the 19th-century’s most visible, widely respected, and popular clergy-persons in ALL of American Protestantism. Though it is not accurate that it was his 23 years at Trinity Boston that formed Brooks, it was at Trinity that his public (and private) persona were shaped more completely. He was an open, liberal and progressive churchman, and these qualities emerged more fully at Trinity, especially when Brooks oversaw the design and construction of a new church (1872-77), the architect for which was Henry Hobson Richardson. What’s more, his preaching became more compelling, eloquent, and charismatic; his Trinity sermons were said to be legendary. Trinity became a renowned “Broad Church” and Brooks made certain all elements of the Anglican/Episcopal tradition were celebrated. More and more, he was asked to preach at many different churches and academic institutions, among them Harvard, Columbia, Yale, the University of Oxford in England, Westminster Abbey in London and at the Royal Chapel in Windsor. In addition, he was awarded a number of honorary degrees by several institutions, including Harvard, Columbia and Oxford.
VII. Phillips Brooks’ growing visibility and presence, enlarged and strengthened his stature. More invitations and opportunities were extended, one of which came in 1881 when he received an invitation to become a professor of Christian Ethics and sole preacher at Harvard, and another in 1886 to become Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Pennsylvania. Brooks declined both invitations. He had become a prominent churchman and, in April of 1891, was elected Bishop of Massachusetts. In October of that year, in Trinity Church, he was consecrated. Fifteen months later, after a brief illness, Phillips Brooks died.
VIII. We are left to wonder why Phillips Brooks became a Bishop, even for his beloved Diocese of Massachusetts, when he said his only ambition was to be a parish priest. And I have always wondered why his Episcopacy lasted only 15 months. He was not married, had no family of his own and admitted that, as a Bishop, he experienced great loneliness. When he was ordained a priest in 1860, ordaining Bishop Alonzo Potter, said to him (from the Rite of Ordination in the Episcopal Church):
“May Phillips exalt you, O Lord, in the midst of your people; offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to you; boldly proclaim the gospel of salvation; and rightly administer the sacraments of the New Covenant. Make Phillips a faithful pastor, a patient teacher, and a wise councilor. Grant that in all things Phillips may serve without reproach, so that your people may be strengthened and your Name glorified in all the world.”
—Book of Common Prayer, p. 534
This is who, I believe, Phillips Brooks was meant to be.
IX. And so we come back to where we started, with John Chrysostom and “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” In some respects, now I know why I might have been interested in Phillips Brooks so many decades ago. I believe he possessed what John Chrysostom considered to be the essentials of the priestly office: dignity, kindness, and affability. He was authoritative, courteous, impartial, strong and gentle. At the same time, he was available, approachable, inspirational, authentic and reverent. And there is the 4th verse of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” which takes us deeper into the mystery of Christ’s coming and the spiritual fabric of that mystery which is to be lived out: O Holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray; Cast out our sin, and enter in, Be Born to us to-day. We hear the Christmas angels The great glad tidings tell; O come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Emmanuel. This is a heartfelt expression of personal faith. It is not theological nor is it doctrinal. It is a simple, clear, and accessible expression of one of the great mysteries of Christianity.
X. Finally, we come to a surprising passage from a well-known 1886 sermon given at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia, just after Brooks returned from a one-year sabbatical, most of which was spent in the Holy Land (where Brooks first thought of writing his carol).
Oh do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger…Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.
—“Going Up to Jerusalem,” in Twenty Sermons (1886)
XI. Is there a conclusion to this story? Not really, but there is a very personal observation: For me, Phillips Brooks turned out to be truly called to the priesthood, a priesthood to which he gave his whole life. A priest is who he was, the embodiment of what Frederick Buechner says about vocation: Vocation is the place where one’s deep gladness meets the world’s deep needs. I wonder, then, why Phillips Brooks became a Bishop. A wondrous mystery but real, nevertheless.
Amen
—Father Peter Kountz
