What is the role of the priest or bishop as a father?

In his discussion of the authority of priests, Origen describes them as physicians who care for their sick children and exert every effort to heal them. They are not emperors or rulers, but fathers. For in the Church, priests and teachers can have children, as St. Paul says: “My little children, of whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you” (Gal. 4:19), and he says, “for though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel” (1 Cor. 4:15).¹⁶⁰⁴

1603 St. Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nyssa: Homilies on The Song of Songs , ed., Brian E. Daley S. J. and John T. Fitzgerald, trans., Richard A. Norris Jr. (Society of Biblical Literature, 2012) Homily 2: p. 69.

1604 See Origen, Homilies on Leviticus 1–16 6.6.3 (FOTC 83:127–128).

Origin’s reminder is always salutary: “he who is called to the office of the bishop is not called to rulership but to service to the whole Church.”¹⁶⁰⁵

God permits priests to feel weakness, so that they might be kind to those who are weak. In being more aware of their own sins, their treatment of sinners becomes more respectful, and thus, more likely to attract them to repentance: “‘The Law appoints human priests who have weaknesses (Heb. 7:28) in order that just as they can offer for their own weakness, so also they can offer for that of the people … But what is most to be admired in this kind of priest? Not that he may not sin—because that is impossible—but that he knows and understands his own sin. For he who thinks he has not sinned never corrects himself. In like manner, he is more easily able to pardon those who sin, whose conscience is disturbed by his own weakness.”¹⁶⁰⁶