Ordination to the diaconate - Feast of St. Columba

Feast of St. Columba and the anniversary of my ordination to the diaconate,

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, on God, for ever and ever.  Amen. 

St. Francis

A Prayer Attributed to St. Francis
Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.


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My Pentecost sermon was done without manuscript, so I'll post the audio soon...!

Happy Pentecost!

All of you are one!

Galatians 3:23-4:11 (NRSV)

Galatians 3
23 Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. 24 Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.

Galatians 4

My point is this: heirs, as long as they are minors, are no better than slaves, though they are the owners of all the property; 2 but they remain under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. 3 So with us; while we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world. 4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. 6 And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" 7 So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods. 9 Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits? How can you want to be enslaved to them again? 10 You are observing special days, and months, and seasons, and years. 11 I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted.


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Pope John XXIII

Pope John XXIII is one of my heroes.  May we also have the courage and conviction to support and become leaders in the church such as he was:

. See everything: overlook a great deal: correct a little.

“Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.”

..here is a bit about him from The Episcopal Cafe....

John XXIII, Bishop of Rome, 1963

Cardinal Roncalli, a former Vatican diplomat enjoying the honourable semi-retirement of the Patriarchate of Venice, was elected John XXIII in 1958 largely because he had few enemies, and because no one involved in the election thought that he could do much harm; he was seventy-six and it was (rightly) thought that he would not enjoy a long period in office. After the last exhausted years of Pius XII, it was sensible to look for a man of peace who would give the Church a chance to find a decisive leader to set an appropriate direction for the future. . . .

The new pope’s ebullience and boundless curiosity, so disconcerting to churchmen conscious of papal protocol, was matched by a shrewd ability to get what he wanted. What he wanted did not coincide with the wish of prominent members of the Vatican’s Curia to defend old certainties without much further discussion. Instead, to the horror of Curial officials, in 1959 he threw everything open to discussion by announcing his intention of calling a new council to the Vatican. . . .In 1962 more than two thousand bishops [arrived] in Rome, with Europe contributing less than half of their number. The bishops had been consecrated from within an ecclesiastical system paranoid about Modernism, but they brought with them a myriad of different practical experiences of what it was to be a Catholic in 1962. . . .

This unprecedented gathering of Catholic leaders listened with fascination to a pope who in his inaugural address spoke excitedly of the providential guidance of the world’s inhabitants to “a new order of human relationships,” and, far from lecturing the world, criticized those “prophets of misfortune” who viewed it as “nothing but betrayal and ruination.” . . . All the defensive draft documents so carefully prepared by the Curia were rejected and replaced with completely different texts. Two crucial agreed documents [Lumen Genium, “The Light of Peoples” and Gaudium et Spes, “Joy and Hope”] have remained central to the council’s legacy—they have provided a springboard for action to some Catholics, an obstacle course to others. . . . The whole statement breathed the happy confidence, already expressed in Pope John’s opening address, that the Church need not fear opening discussion with those outside its boundaries.

From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch (New York: Viking, 2009).