We used to
say that ordination was an “ontological change”
meaning that there was a basic shift
in
who someone was.
The ordinary
humanity was extracted
and something extraordinary replaced
it.
I don’t know
if that ever made much sense.
It certainly
doesn’t now.
But there is
a change – a real change.
The nature
of it though is largely beyond our understanding.
Today, I
want to describe a piece of it.
Kim, when
you look at yourself in the mirror tomorrow,
you’ll see the same person you were
yesterday.
In your
heart, you will feel the same feelings.
In your
mind, you will think the same thoughts.
But before
long, you will notice that other people
look at you differently.
They will
attribute to you ideas that you do not hold,
beliefs you do not believe, pieties that
you do not feel.
Some will
see you as considerably better than you are.
Others will
see you as considerably worse.
It is
disconcerting.
It makes you
keep looking in the mirror
to see if you are still yourself.
When you see
that you are in fact the person you always were,
you will try to say to others,
“No, no, you have made a mistake.
I am me.”
But they
will not believe you.
Your efforts
to deny their projections will only irritate them
and cause them to all the more
suspicious of you.
“Why,” they
will wonder, “is she trying to pull a hoax on us,
pretending to be a person when we
know full well,
she is a
priest.”
Ordination
is a division of things.
It separates
who you are in your own eyes
from what you represent to the
world.
Kim, we are
about to impress upon you a symbolic meaning
that will often be different from
your experience of yourself
– as far from your experience of yourself
as the Christ is from a piece of
bread.
But having
two perspectives on one reality
can be quite helpful.
It takes the
vision of two eyes to give depth perception.
Seeing
things in a simple one-eyed way
keeps them flat.
Seeing them
with two-eyed complexity
adds depth.
It is the
very incongruity of priestly vocation
that gives it depth.
Like
Beethoven called upon to make music
even when he was deaf,
you will be called upon to preach
the gospel
even when you cannot
hear it.
If you do,
you will feel like a hypocrite.
If you
don’t, you will feel like an apostate.
There is no
way out but through,
no way through but to serve
faithfully
out of your
vows and not the fleeting feelings of the moment.
No priest is
ever so good or so bad
as people think.
But the
complexity of a human person
undertaking a holy role
creates depth.
The tension
between your call
to a devout and holy life on the one
hand,
and your
natural human existence on the other,
the tension between them is charged
and challenging.
That’s where
the growth happens.
A parallel
tension happens in the principal sacrament
at which the priest presides.
In the Holy
Communion there are two compelling ways
to see what is going on.
One of them
is a family meal.
By coming
together, singing together, praying together,
finally eating and drinking
together,
we form and celebrate
our human bonds.
“Blest be
the tie that binds.”
That is the
horizontal level of communion.
It is people
joining hands in their shared humanity.
That is part
of it.
Last week, I
heard a seminary professor say that was all of it.
Last month,
I heard a neighboring bishop say
he would not ordain anyone who
thought
that was all of it
-- because the horizontal communion
alone
has no depth.
Something
cosmic is afoot.
When we
gather as a community,
we surrender some of our ego to the
community.
We surrender
enough of our individualism
to sing the same song, to say the
same prayer,
to affirm the same
Creed.
Then at the
offertory, the community gives itself to God.
The alms,
the bread, and the wine represent the people.
We place our
lives on the altar.
As one of
our prayers puts it,
“And here we offer and present unto
thee, O Lord,
our selves, our souls, and bodies . . . .”
But this is
more even than our own group spiritual practice.
In the Eucharist,
we act on behalf of the whole creation.
We put the
cosmos on the altar.
We give back
to God the whole Reality God has given us.
We give it
back to be blessed, broken, and shared again.
The
Eucharist is the cosmic gift exchange,
in which God gives everything,
which we give back in gratitude,
that God may give anew
in grace.
That is the
vertical dimension of communion,
the bond of earth and heaven, human
and divine,
the temporal realm with eternity.
Yet, the
Eucharist is also our family meal,
our ritual of caring for one
another.
The
Eucharist is our relationships, however flawed they may be.
W. H. Auden
called our fumbling attempts
at love “all the failed caresses.”
That is
communion too.
The great
cosmic communion is absolutely bogus
unless it arises out of the family
meal.
So you see
there is a parallel between the Eucharist and the priest,
a fitting parallel.
For each,
there is division between the direct experience
and a vastly more profound meaning
– a meaning rooted in faith.
That is the
way it is with all sacraments, including ordination.
For years, I
tried to live into my vocation as a priest
by vigorously employing the things I
knew.
They taught
me things in the course of my formation.
I knew them.
I still know them. And I thought that must be
what I am for – to be the go to guy,
the one who knows.
After 20
years, I am gradually coming to accept
that nobody much cares what I know,
that my knowledge won’t heal broken
relationships,
broken bodies, or broken
hearts.
Being a
priest isn’t about what you know.
It has
something to do with who you are.
It has
something to do with what you represent.
It has mostly
to do with the tension between the two.
The first
wrong way is to forget who you are
and identify with being a priest.
The second
wrong way is to deny your priesthood
and try to persuade people to you
are just yourself.
You are not
just yourself. You are yourself in holy orders.
The
incongruity is intolerable without a mountain of faith,
a well of hope, and treasure trove
of love.
Now just a
word for the congregation
on your part in the care and feeding
of priests.
You will
sometimes see through their meaning
to their true humanity.
That is an
occasion for connection.
Connection
is good.
But mostly
we see priests
as better or worse than they are.
That is
fine. It is part of the process.
But whenever
your priest seems gilded in glory,
wise, compassionate, and holy,
remember what you are seeing
is actually a reflection
of your own soul.
That’s the good
news.
The bad news
is that when your priest seems
monstrous, controlling, oppressive,
hypocritical,
spiritually lax or
fanatical,
these images too are reflections.
Good priests
can serve us well if we remember to own the goodness.
Bad priests
can serve us well if we remember to own the badness.
Always the
challenge and the opportunity is to see each other
through the eyes of faith.
When we look
at each other through worldly eyes,
we see two dimensional cartoon
heroes and villains.
But through the
eyes of faith, we see depth.
We see
children of God, beautiful and broken,
saints and sinners by turns and all
at once.
We see
mixtures of dust and light, divine in origin and destiny,
all too human in process.
Thomas
Merton said that the saints are not saints
by virtue of their own sanctity but
by their capacity
to appreciate the
sanctity of others.
May God
sanctify us all with the grace of appreciation,
the grace to see each other in our
depth,
the grace to live in the tension
between
who we are and what we mean and are
meant to be.
