I will extol thee, O Lord, for thou hast upheld me: and hast not made my enemies to rejoice over me.<\/em> (Ps. 29:2)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (The Missal arranges this antiphon out of Our Lord’s threefold question to Peter after the resurrection, putting as a condition what the Gospel puts as a question.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Look forgivingly on Thy flock, Eternal Shepherd, and keep it in Thy constant protection, by the intercession of blessed Martin, Thy Sovereign Pontiff, whom Thou didst constitute Shepherd of the whole Church. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read the petition slowly. Not correct the flock, not improve it, not test it. Keep it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1 Peter 5:1-4; 5:10-11<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Dearly beloved: The ancients therefore that are among you, I beseech, who am myself also an ancient, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ: as also a partaker of that glory which is to be revealed in time to come:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking care of it, not by constraint, but willingly, according to God: not for filthy lucre’s sake, but voluntarily: Neither as lording it over the clergy, but being made a pattern of the flock from the heart.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And when the prince of pastors shall appear, you shall receive a never fading crown of glory.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n But the God of all grace, who hath called us into his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little, will himself perfect you, and confirm you, and establish you. To him be glory and empire for ever and ever. Amen.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And let them exalt him in the church of the people: and praise him in the chair of the ancients.<\/em> (Ps. 106:32)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Let the mercies of the Lord give glory to him, and his wonderful works to the children of men.<\/em> (Ps. 106:31)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (The Missal sets these two verses in reverse order, taking the later one first.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Alleluia, alleluia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church.<\/em> (Matt. 16:18)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Alleluia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Matthew 16:13-19<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n At that time, Jesus came into the quarters of Caesarea Philippi: and he asked his disciples, saying: Whom do men say that the Son of man is? But they said: Some John the Baptist, and other some Elias, and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus saith to them: But whom do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And Jesus answering, said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Start with the adverb, because the adverb is the instruction. Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking care of it, not by constraint, but willingly.<\/em> Peter is writing to men who hold a charge over other people, and before he says what the job is he says how it may not be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not by constraint. The prohibition arrives ahead of the job description.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three things get ruled out in two verses, and they are three different ways of getting a result out of a person. Constraint, which is force. Filthy lucre, which is payment. Lording it over, which is rank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each of them works, in the plain sense that each reliably produces behaviour. Push hard enough and people move. Pay enough and people show up. Outrank someone and they will very often agree with you out loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not by constraint rules out the first of the three, and the other two go out of the door with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the letter is not ruling out three methods that fail. It is ruling out three methods that succeed, and the reason has to be something other than that they do not work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not by constraint, then, is a claim about what a shepherd is actually after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now the Gospel, which is where the reason sits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus comes into the quarters of Caesarea Philippi and opens with a question about public opinion. Whom do men say that the Son of man is?<\/em> It is a real question and He gets a real answer, given out loud, in front of everybody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some John the Baptist, and other some Elias, and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets.<\/em> Look at what is in that list. Nobody in it is being insulted. John the Baptist is the greatest born of women, Elias is the prophet who does not die, Jeremias is the man who wept over the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The consensus about Him is generous, respectful, and wrong. That is the first thing to hold on to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A crowd can be kind and still be mistaken, which is a second reason to feed a flock not by constraint of numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The wrong answer here is not a slander and not a failure of manners. It is the best that asking around can do, and asking around is a method that returns what is visible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then the question changes, and only two words in it move. But whom do you say that I am?<\/em> Men becomes you, and the Son of man becomes I. The first question could be answered out of the general report; the second cannot be answered from anywhere except where the person answering is standing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That second question is the one no amount of pressure reaches, and it is why the Epistle says not by constraint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And when Peter answers, the commendation arrives with a reason attached, which is unusual. Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven.<\/em> Christ does not say blessed art thou because thou art clever, or because thou wast paying attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He says the answer did not come out of the available human supply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So: not by constraint, and not by consensus either. Neither method gets anywhere near the thing being praised here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That phrase turned up in this archive a week ago today, doing the opposite job. In the armour of God the Church read then, the struggle is not against flesh and blood<\/a>, and flesh and blood is ruled out as the enemy. Here it is ruled out as the source. Same phrase, opposite end of the sentence, and both times a subtraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which is the Epistle again, arriving from the other side. Force, payment and rank can all produce a sentence out of a person’s mouth. None of them can produce the thing Christ calls blessed, and that is precisely why the flock is fed not by constraint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Notice also where the keys come. They come after. So does the rock, and so does the promise about the gates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The keys are handed over inside a Mass whose Epistle says the flock is fed not by constraint, and the order of those two things is not an accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every one of those is handed to a man who has just been told that the best thing about his answer is that he did not manufacture it. Authority in this Gospel arrives attached to a confession that arrived from somewhere else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not by constraint is therefore not a rule about manners. It is a description of what the office can and cannot reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which brings us to the man whose feast this is, because his whole life ran into that wall from the other direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Catholic Encyclopedia<\/a> records that Martin was born at Todi on the Tiber and elected pope at Rome on 21 July 649. In October of that year he held a council at the Lateran which rejected the imperial documents then circulating about the will of Christ, and enacted twenty canons defining the Catholic doctrine on the two wills. After that the emperor Constans wanted exactly one thing from him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A signature. That was all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One name on one document, wanted from a man whose own office had told him to feed not by constraint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He did not get it, and what followed is set down plainly. An exarch named Calliopas arrived in Rome on 15 June 653 and two days later declared him deposed. Martin reached Constantinople on 17 September, and the encyclopedia records that he was left for several hours on deck, exposed to the jests and insults of the crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then ninety-three days in a prison called Prandearia, suffering, in the encyclopedia’s own words, from hunger, cold and thirst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not by constraint was, by that point, a sentence being tested on the man whose job it was to preach it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was tried on 19 December, and the encyclopedia states that the true and only charge was the pope’s refusal to sign the Typus. He was stripped of nearly all his clothing, loaded with chains and dragged through the streets. Then eighty-five days more in prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He was put on a ship on 26 March and reached Cherson, in what is now the Crimea, on 15 May, a place the article says was then suffering from a great famine. He died there on 16 September 655. A successor had been elected at Rome the previous August, while Martin was still living in exile, and the encyclopedia says Martin afterwards acquiesced in that election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every method the Epistle forbids was used on him and used at full strength. Constraint, in chains and in a ship’s hold. Rank, by an emperor. And it did not produce the signature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not by constraint turns out to be a description of what actually works, and not only a rule about what is permitted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is the teaching this Epistle disarms, and it is the reason the naming below is earned by the text rather than added to it. There is a very old idea that in a relationship of spiritual authority the duty runs upward: that the person underneath owes obedience, patience and the benefit of the doubt, and that the person on top is owed all three by office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Peter writes the obligations in the other direction and puts every single one of them on the shepherd. Not by constraint. Not for money. Not by rank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no matching clause anywhere in the passage setting a condition on the flock. The people in someone’s care are not told to submit, endure, or make it easier. They are told nothing at all, because the letter is not addressed to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The instruction is not by constraint, and the person required to keep it is the one holding the charge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I want to name who has been on the receiving end of the other reading. People who were assaulted or abused by someone the church had placed over them get told, in a hundred careful ways, that submission was the virtue and that leaving was the sin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The vocabulary is available and it gets used. Rebellion. Bitterness. A failure to forgive. A refusal to be under authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not one of those words is in this Epistle. The only conditions it sets are set on the other person entirely, and the flock is to be fed not by constraint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Apply the fruit test to Christianity’s own record here, because that is the record the Epistle is being read against. A teaching that puts the whole duty on the person with less power has produced, over a very long time, rooms where the safest available course was silence. That is what it grows, and the growth is the evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Silence is what constraint grows. Feeding a flock not by constraint grows the other thing, and the difference shows up in what people are able to say out loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not by constraint grows something else, and it costs four words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last Thursday the Church raised a question that sits near this one and answered it differently. That day asked whether a present harm can be called God’s will, so that leaving would be resisting Him, and the answer came from a man who refused an order and then spent a whole book overturning the decree; the offering was called none that can resist thy will<\/a>. Today’s question is not about providence at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is about obligation, and about which of the two people in the room the conditions were written for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Come at it from either end and it reads the same. Not by constraint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a story sometimes told of a woman who reported what a man in her congregation had done to her, and then sat in a corridor on a folding chair while twelve people who knew him talked it over in a room she was not in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of the twelve was lying. That is the part that matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every one of them said honestly what they had seen over many years, and what they had seen was a kind man who gave lifts to people without cars and stayed late to stack the chairs. The sum of twelve honest reports was wrong. It was not a conspiracy and it did not need to be one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A poll of everything visible about a person returns everything visible about a person. That is all it returns, and it is exactly the method the Gospel puts first and then sets aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The letter says feed them not by constraint, and a room settling a thing by weight of numbers is doing the opposite of feeding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She was in the corridor about two hours. When the door opened she was told the matter had been considered very carefully and that nothing had been found to support it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the twelve came out after the others and sat down on the chair beside her. She did not say she believed her, because she did not know. What she said was that she was not going to settle it by counting, and that she would sit there as long as the corridor was cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is not a resolution and I will not pretend it is one. Nothing was decided in her favour that afternoon. But one person had declined to treat a show of hands as the truth, and had refused to let a number do the work of a judgment, not by constraint of the majority and not by consensus either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Monday the Church read a master who comes home and, instead of taking an accounting, girds himself so that he will minister unto them<\/a>. That is the same instruction arriving from above rather than from below. And yesterday’s Collect said outright that we cannot survive by any power of our own<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three days, three refusals of the lever. Not by constraint, not by inspection, and not by our own strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the theology is not yours, the shape of this stands without it. Every arrangement in which one person holds power over another produces the same temptation, which is to reach for whichever lever works fastest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Force works fast. Money works fast. Rank works fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not by constraint is the instruction that costs you all three at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What none of them produces is a person’s actual assent, and a person’s actual assent is the only part that survives the pressure being taken off. Anything you had to make somebody give you, you will have to keep making them give you, for as long as you both live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So take the adverb out of today and carry it. Whatever charge you hold over anybody\u2014a child, a class, a congregation, a team, a person in your care\u2014the letter tells you how it is held.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not by constraint. And if you are the one somebody else holds a charge over, the letter has no instruction for you at all, which is itself the answer to a great deal of what you may have been told.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Collect asks for one thing on this man’s feast, and it is not vindication. It asks that the flock be kept. Not corrected, not made obedient, not brought into line. Kept, and fed, and fed not by constraint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the offered gifts we beseech Thee, O Lord, that Thou kindly enlighten Thy Church, so that Thy flock may everywhere progress and prosper, and Thy shepherds, under Thy guidance, may be pleasing to Thy name. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Go out today owing nobody your agreement, and needing to extract nobody else’s. May God, the eternal Shepherd, look on you with the forgiveness this Collect asks for, keep you in His constant protection, and feed you not by constraint but willingly, which is the only way He has ever done it. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if that language is not yours, take the plain form and keep it. Nobody is owed your agreement and you are owed nobody else’s. Whatever authority you hold, hold it not by constraint; whatever authority is held over you, it does not come with a duty to stay quiet. What a person freely gives you is worth more than anything you could have made them hand over, and it is the only part that stays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hold what you have been given not by constraint, and let go of whatever you were only ever holding by force.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCollect<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Epistle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Gradual<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Alleluia<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Gospel<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Offering<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Secret<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Holding<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n\n\n