When I was a pastor, I used to run the mile from my house to the gym instead of driving. I wanted to keep my heart healthy and push my body.
One day my wife mentioned the routine to another pastor’s wife. Her response was immediate: “What, is that a pride thing?”
That suspicion followed ambition through much of the Christian culture I knew. If you wanted to excel, test your limits, or build something difficult, someone was ready to call it pride.
Then I encountered a line attributed to Pope Gregory the Great: “Do not fear to set your ambition to become a saint.” It gave me a better question. I did not need to bury my drive. I needed to decide what it served.
Ambition and Pride
Ambition can be selfish. It can seek recognition, rank, and control. But drive can also be consecrated. It can build up the weak, serve the poor, strengthen the Church, and glorify God.
Gregory’s challenge aims ambition at the highest goal: sainthood. Holiness requires more than passivity. It requires discipline, endurance, and the willingness to give your strength away.
The Example of Judas in The Chosen
The latest season of The Chosen puts this tension into Judas. He comes to Jesus’ ministry with plans for collections, rewards, and expansion. The other disciples push back and tell him to “just do the work you’re told.”
His problem is not that he thinks boldly. It is that his ambition bends toward control instead of love. I wish the writers had made that distinction more clearly. The Judas on screen did not need less strength. He needed strength ordered by the Beatitudes.
Ambition Ordered by Love
St. Paul writes in Philippians 2:3, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” He names the corrupt form: selfish ambition. Christian greatness spends itself for another.
A second line attributed to Gregory says, “Where love exists, it works great things.” Love decides whether strength becomes service or self-worship. Ambition grounded in love builds, protects, and gives.
The world does not need Christians who are afraid to be strong. It needs Christians who know what their strength is for.
So set your ambition on becoming a saint. Consecrate your passion and your dreams of higher things to serve the lower things. Lift up the Lord Jesus and, with Him, your neighbor.
Kern Keep 