Quotes on my mind
“If you’re not a priest the day before ordination, you won’t be the day after.” - An unidentified Jesuit.
"Ordination recognizes and brings to fruition a process that has been going on for some time in a person’s life." --Richard G. Malloy, SJ
"As in the case of Baptism and Confirmation this share in Christ's office is granted once for all. The sacrament of Holy Orders, like the other two, confers an indelible spiritual character and cannot be repeated or conferred temporarily." --#1582 Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC)
"...The character imprinted by ordination is for ever. The vocation and mission received on the day of his ordination mark him permanently." --#1583 (CCC)
"In calling the act "sacramental," we are recognizing that it is not just the authorizing of certain persons to perform distinctive functions in the Church, but it is a conferring of grace on these persons themselves. The special ministries are not to be understood exhaustively in functional terms; they also have an ontological dimension, they are ways of being in the Church. The call of a person to the ministry and his response, and then his solemn ordination, affect him in the depth of his being." --John MacQuarrie, Principles of Christian Theology
"The word that has been traditionally used by theologians to designate this ontological dimension of ministry is "character". There is nothing magical about such character, nor does it fall ready-made from heaven at ordination. Ministerial character...is a formation of the person, the building of a distinctive pattern of personal being...the functional and ontological understandings of ministry are complementary, not competitive. It is through doing the acts that character is formed, then character in turn informs acts. Ministerial functions without the depth of ministerial character would be only an outward appearance." --John MacQuarrie, Principles of Christian Theology. See CCC #1582 above for an example of the use of character.
"We stress again that there is nothing magic about such character; and just as the calling to the ordained ministry can be understood as an extension of the election that belongs to all Christian experience, so ministerial character can be understood as a special development of the character which baptism opens to all Christians." --John MacQuarrie, Principles of Christian Theology
((Disclaimer: Gender exclusivity in the quotes are par for the course in the Roman Catholic Church regarding ordination. MacQuarrie wrote in 1966 and revised 1977, so his language is exclusive but he could entertain the idea of women's ordination.))
"Something happens. Robert will still be in this community, he will still be who he is, but some things will change." -- Gil____________________________________________________
Seminarians and divinity school students loooooooooooovvvvvvvvveeee to talk about what happens at ordination. If you have nothing to do for an hour and a half, find yourself a Baptist, an Episcopalian, a Methodist, a Pentecostal, a Roman Catholic, a non-denominational rep, a theologian not in an ordination process, and an atheist; put them at a table (alcohol optional but preferred); utter the phrase "ontological change" and "ordination" and sit back; they will take it from there.
Yes, we love to talk about it...and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk...I'm making the talking motion with my hand.
Okay, both hands back on the keyboard. On to writing about it.
We tend to talk a lot about "ontological change." That's a fancy way of saying that God does something to a person during the ordination that changes the person's very existence in the world and in relation to the world. The debate, in its simplest terms, is whether such a change happens, or whether we are asking God's blessing on someone "set apart" for ministry but does not make the person something "other" than as human as a lay person.
(There are good reasons to debate this, and I'll give two questions that seem to drive the debates but I will not address them here. First, does the idea of an ontological change seem verifiable in the life of ministers? Second, does this concept of ontological change create a "specialness" about clergy that necessarily denigrates the ministry of the laity, or implies the laity are not as close to God?)
I used to join in these conversations, but as ordination approached I got to a point where I did not want to talk about what "happened" at ordination. I could talk about being excited about ordination, about plans for after ordination, but I dreaded the conversation about what "happened" at ordination.
The dread reached a high point the Monday before the ordination. I went out with a few friends after a final exam was finished. Thanks to me and Emilie (another Arizonan ordained on the same day as me) being there, the conversation turned to ordination, and the conversation eventually turned to what "happens" at ordination... as it does. A friend who was there has a fairly low sacramental theology while I have a fairly high sacramental theology. This makes for a lot of playful banter back and forth. That particular day his banter was well-intentioned goading, but goading all the same. I wasn't feeling it that day. Any other day-- especially, say, three months ago--it would have been fine; that day it was a bit rougher on me. I didn't bite the bait he left.
I am a reserved person in the first place, but that day my reservedness was notable, and people asked if I was okay with the conversation. In general I was 'okay' but a tad troubled. It seemed to me that day to be a lot of people talking with some definitiveness about a speculative matter of theology that was soon to be part of my concrete experience.
When one person asked me if I was okay, I answered (in some form) that I had no idea what would happen at ordination, but I would be happy to talk about what the two months before ordination had felt like. I was experiencing the run-up to ordination at a personal level -- in mystical relationship to God -- that called me to silence, solemnity, and openness instead of trying carve out an a priori understanding of what was going to happen to me in the ordination service, or following the service. I did not want to create a certain expectation for God to fulfill, given how often in my life God has preferred to surprise me.
And it made so much more sense to talk about what I could talk about: my experience of God that had seemingly ramped-up since January--more frequent, more intense. Parts of my life opening to God in new, deeper ways. I didn't think some of the things were coming. From February to mid-April I experienced sleepless nights, nightmares, the gnawing of inadequacies and impurities that hung about me. Dreams blended segments of my life and my new-coming identity. I sought Confession, received absolution, and was spurred to do so by God much sooner than I had planned. I experienced in a very real way the simultaneous "yes" and "no" of God's judgment that affirmed my belovedness and kept (and keeps) calling me to the fullness for which I was made. Orientation. Disorientation. Reorientation. My identity, my being, was shifted before I landed in Phoenix.
Then I was in Phoenix. And I was there a few days before the ordination, so I worked in wonderful conversations, quiet, prayer, and worship with St. Brigid's Community. Dinner with St. Brigid's Community was wonderful and affirming in that it gave me an opportunity to reflect aloud about my formation. In honesty I think the formation of seminary is the same as every other Christian's formation. The only difference is that seminary offers an accelerated experience in hopes that the program moves people to a position where they are able to faithfully and maturely exercise spiritual servant leadership once they graduate.
I was ordained on May 5th at 10am. We ordinands needed to be there at 9am to get ready for the procession, but more importantly to sit in prayer. Sitting in prayer took me a while to do; pushing the excitement and nervousness back enough to quiet myself was difficult, but aided with a rosary. After completing the rosary, in the silence, I began quietly weeping for a reason I cannot fathom. The call affirmed? Nothing pointed me to think otherwise... Sadness? Definitely not...
Peace... love... healing... gratitude to God and all who have walked this journey with me... the womb of God...that is close enough. And there was nine of us being ordained, so there were nine different experiences of that silence.
We sat in prayer until the bishop came in to give a short talk. "There is no secret handshake. Just love the people."
The rest of the service was in turns an exercise in concentration through a whirlwind of activity, a fight to keep composure, and a holy experience from which I try remember every detail. (Ordinations are more like weddings than many suppose.) We were greeted by many people; we had lunch with friends, and then Laura and I returned to our friends' home for a quiet night in.
The next morning I woke up to my first full day of ordained life. Things had changed... but the trick is separating these changes into the perceived and the concrete, the external/institutional and the internal/ontological/spiritual (and don't let the dualisms I've hastily constructed fool you, none of these are as mutually exclusive as they appear). I'm not done with this work yet.
Externally, things are taking some getting used to. There is a collar around my neck. Friends and strangers are calling me by honorifics. I put on more or different vestments. I am now classified as "associated clergy" at my internship parish; blanket references to clergy now mean me. There is an authority that I need to sort out as I exercise it. There are people to serve, and I am finding that ministry's expression in my life. The freedom to use my own discretion encompasses a greater range of possible actions within a hierarchical Church.
In clericals, I am now no longer a stranger to most people, but a person to be actively ignored or engaged... and I never quite know how that is going to go as I walk by. Maybe what has changed for me is the effort I take to make eye contact and seem accessible. I ask people their names if we talk. I let people talk to me (at me?) on the train from Norwalk to Bridgeport. I don't mind listening; but I'm lucky to be out of school, so there is little that I feel like absolutely needs to get done that would cause me to close myself off in public.
But internally, I find it difficult to discern any major difference in myself between May 4th and May 6th apart from the fact that I have an authority, a servant ministry, and the discretion to explore both in ways that will leave me changed. I cannot yet sense an enhanced sense of holiness/sacredness that is not somehow tied to my experience of life in this world, which does not bother me at all. This world is the realm of God's action, and so I trust that God acted in the ordination. Personally, my experience of God months and minutes before the ordination point to the certainty of God's presence at the ordination. In the end I'm willing to accept Gil's statement I quoted above as a sufficient explanation of a mystery I am experiencing. And maybe it as simple as saying that the grace of God continually finds a way to affirm where I've been and where I am. If ordination added to that -- and I'm rather sure that it did -- then I am immeasurably blessed. And I am opening to discovering more about it.
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In terms of a theology of ordination, I follow much of what John Macquarrie has written, which I provide in quotes above.
I guess I need to say something about ontological change. Let's start with definitions! (Philosophers and theologians may need to forgive my brevity on these.)
Being (two meanings): 1) (v.)the act or energy of existence and 2) (n.)the existent entity in which this act expresses and manifests itself.
Ontology: The study of the nature of being, existence, and reality.
Ontological Change: a change in a way of being, a la John Macquarrie above.
My understanding of ontological change is that it is roughly synonymous with the processes of sanctification and Theosis, through which Christians grow into the fulness of Christ. I would take this to mean that Baptism is also an ontological change in which the person is brought into unitive Being with God. Every action that furthers that unity-- which is the human conforming oneself to Christ -- is then in some sense a change in being to the fulness of that which humanity was created to be. An ontological change. What the Church has done in naming sacraments is recognize particular actions of common and individual life, actions given by God in Christ to the Church or recognized for its exceptional character, as arenas in which our ways of being are reordered. The processes of sanctification/deification and our turning to the fulness of that God created us to be is not simply a static state waiting for dramatic movement (although growth in Christ sometimes happens like that), but a continuous process.
The first two quotes I placed above-- from the Jesuits-- bring to bear a truth that seems to go unmentioned too often in the conversations I have about ordination and what "changes." The work of God is not often an instant occurrence, but a process that works within our own history and our relationship to the Divine. It may be that the ordination service imposes an artificial point on a liminal process that lasts much longer. The ordination service asks the ordinand to commit to a formation that has begun and will continue, and asks that God's grace be bestowed upon the person so that the work of formation can be furthered (BCP 545). The service is where the community recognizes formation and asks God's blessing upon it, after which the church will consider the blessing given and the action done. The service is the work of the Church and God which becomes the outward sign of a spiritual grace that has been garnered over years of prayer and experience and will (hopefully) continue into the future. Being "made" a deacon/priest/bishop is not the work of an instant...and it seems to me to be better expressed as being made deacon as opposed to being made a deacon.
This view is, I think, consonant with what I've said above: that my own experience of ordination was a process of purgation and reorientation that lasted months and is not yet completed, and I've experienced this entire period as a shift in being. I think I was "deacon" the day before my ordination. On the day after, I could begin to act as "deacon" in its fullest expression with the authority and blessing of the Church through the grace of God. The external changes have been more obvious and, in terms of being, I continue to discern further what God calls me to be.
