Saint of the Month: Father John Price (Reflections on Easter 4, Year A)

St. Peter's in Lambedr Painscastle photgraped by By Philip Pankhurst, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13608768

“…I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10b)

Whenever I start to get bummed-out by the drudgery of parish ministry, whenever I start to lose it over low worship attendance, the impiety of the culture, the strewn trash and the drug dealers in the church parking lot, and the constant panic-inducing neurosis of church finances—in short, about 90% of always—I comfort myself with the example of one of my favorite saints, the Reverend John Price.

Let me begin by saying that I’m not referring to the Rev. John W. Price, the distinguished American Episcopal priest and author of Revealing Heaven: The Christian Case for Near Death Experiences. (Harper Collins: 2013), although I’m certain that he is a wise and caring Christian pastor and his book is an excellent spiritual volume. I’m talking about a Rev. John Price I darn-well bet you’ve never heard of. I probably wouldn’t have heard of him either if my late friend F. Wayne Martin hadn’t given me a little book about my ancestral homeland called Wales: Land of Mystery and Magic by Donald Gregory.

The Saint John Price of this curious volume (and Wayne was always great at finding curious volumes. I don’t know how he did it!) was a Welsh Anglican priest born the son of a poor farmer in 1810. Somehow young John must’ve shown some intellectual promise because he was educated at Queen’s College, Cambridge and ordained to the Anglican priesthood at the age of twenty-four. For a quarter of a century he served as curate (we Lutherans would call him an “Associate Pastor”) in various Welsh parishes before he got a church of his own. In 1859 he was named the vicar of St. Peter’s Llanbedr Painscastle in the county of Powys.

Powys was recently named the “Happiest Place in the United Kingdom.” I suspect this is because its beautiful green hills make it ideal for developers to build luxury homes for the upwardly mobile. Unfortunately for Father John Price, it pretty much sucked as a place to live in the mid nineteenth century. This is because the farmland wasn’t particularly good, so the laborers tended to move away to better paying jobs in the coal mines or the cities. Today the village of Llanbedr Painscastle is little more than a crossroads. It was sort of an agricultural “rust belt” when Father Price took up his ministry there during the reign of Queen Victoria.

In spite of the sparse population and the low stipend, Father John served Saint Peter’s for thirty-six years until his death at the age of eighty-five. He may very well have passed through this earthly sphere and left no ripple of his existence had he not been “discovered” by a famous colleague, the Reverend R. Francis Kilvert, in 1865. Kilvert was an avid diarist (and early nudist) who served several rural parishes in Wales and wrote prodigiously about his travels and encounters. He discovered John Price, whom he called “the Solitary,” living alone in virtual poverty in a shack near St. Peter’s. The Englishman found Father Price to be a bit eccentric, but was impressed by the Welsh vicar’s ingenious system of shorthand which Price devised and managed to get published.

The legend which surrounds Father Price is of his almost self-destructive generosity. As meager as his stipend at St. Peter’s was, the vicar increased church attendance by paying the local tramps and vagabonds to attend worship. I’m not sure I’d recommend this as an effective evangelism tool, but John Price, heeding Christ’s command to serve the poor, had no trouble in sharing his pitiful salary with those who were even worse off than he. In bad weather he opened the nave of St. Peter’s so the hobos could cook their meals, meals which they, in turn, shared with Father Price.

Because he lived in Victorian times and had a great respect for morality, Father Price elected to strike a blow for family values by keeping his vagrant flock from living in sexual sin. Since his homeless congregants couldn’t afford parochial marriage fees, Father Price performed their weddings for free and even gave each couple a small monetary gift. Gregory records that some couples managed to fool the vicar by changing their names and re-marrying up to six times in order to keep collecting the tiny pecuniary wedding present. If this is true, it makes me wonder if their successful frauds were accomplished due to the aging priest’s failing eyesight or if Father Price was on to their scam and simply let them get away with it out of pure generosity. The Welsh romantic in me likes to believe it was the latter.

In the gospel lesson for Easter Four, Year A (John 10:1-10), Jesus tells us that he came that we may have abundant life. I think the life of John Price qualifies as “abundant.” It was lonely and impoverished, but it had a purpose. Father Price may not have had an “abundance” as the world and Joel Osteen understand the term, but he was rich in the things of God. In the 1960’s a couple in their nineties, the last living parishioners to remember Father Price, called him, “A perfect gentleman and kindly disposed.” I believe his faithfulness touched lives.

In the accompanying First Lesson for Easter Four (Acts 2:42-47) we read how our early Christian ancestors practiced the joy of sharing. In their communal life they demonstrate two of the great gifts of the Holy Spirit: generosity and trust. Like John Price they could share what little they had with others out of compassion in the trust that God would always provide them with their daily bread. When we follow our Good Shepherd, we are assured that he prepares a table for us. It doesn’t need to be a table laden with worldly riches, but it will be one that will satisfy the longings of our hearts.

We are not called to success when we follow Christ. We are called to faithfulness. When I stop and consider my ecclesiastical career, I am comforted by the knowledge that I don’t actually have a career. I have a calling, and that is abundant enough for me.

Thanks for spending this time with me.