About once or twice a year, I put up the hood on my habit. It's a rare thing and something I only do during specific times. Usually the hood goes up once during the Triduum when in the midst of all the intense liturgy and people, I need more than anything else to have a private moment with God. Occasionally, I will put up my hood during a time of prayer during one of our community retreats for the same reason.

This month has been beyond packed with a visit from family, adjusting to being a cleric, helping organize an interfaith panel, parish ministry, a new postulant in the order, long hours for some projects at work, and an upcoming visit to a community in Lancaster. We don't wear our habits during our day-to-day lives, but every once in a while I hit a span of time where I wish we did and I could simply put my hood up in the midst of all the busy-ness. More than just a moment of silence or time alone, there is something about being with God for that moment in time while completely enveloped in the habit of one's vocation that becomes a tangible expression and reminder of who and what I am, why I do what I do, and the bond between me and God in midst of the swirling activity.

Last Sunday evening I served my first full Mass as a cleric. For various reasons the past few weeks have been filled with a bit of upheaval, and the past three weekends have been intense liturgically, first with Holy Week, followed by the profession of final vows by a Carmelite in the jurisdiction the next Sunday, and then my own tonsuring and receiving of the surplice the Sunday after that. By contrast, last Sunday's Mass was wonderfully ordinary for which I am beyond grateful.

There's this myth that religious life is this mountain top experience, when in reality the majority of it is lived in the everyday and the ordinary. It's not that mountain tops don't have their place. It's just that they aren't what ultimately define one's vocation any more than the extravagance of a wedding defines a marriage.  Vocation, whether it be religious life, parenthood, marriage, being clergy, healing, teaching, or any combination of callings, is rooted in the every day. Bad days, good days, happy days, grumpy days, boring days, joyful days, angry days, disappointing days, energetic days, tired days, easy days, frustrating days, hard days. It's in all these days that vocation takes root, grows or withers, flourishes or dies, is forged or is shattered. Mountain tops can inspire and give a perspective that is only possible from on high, but the air is thin and wind can be cold; and at some point, one returns to the warmth and ordinariness of the plains.

Our formation program for Holy Orders (priesthood or diaconate) lasts a good number of years and there are a number of reasons for that. Some of it is practical. There are required classes to take and those take time. But it would be a mistake to ascribe the necessity for that time to only those classes.

During one of our recent classes, Fr. Joseph brought up the topic of what it means to live and make choices as a priest and "ontological change"*.  And that brought me to a dead halt in the middle of the discussion.

Why that phrase doesn't cause more people to come to a screeching halt or at least a very, very long pause when considering this vocation has always baffled me.

Ontological change---a change in the core of one's very being.

I've read a number of articles addressing this. Some of which have been helpful and many which have not. The best one quoted a priest saying that "If you aren't a priest the day before your ordination, you aren't suddenly going to become a priest the day after." And so this process begins long before ordination. To change one's very being and to be able to grapple with that change is  the work of formation---the work of a life---all embedded, forged, and  lived in the ordinary and the everyday.

And so beyond the formal instruction, time living this vocation in smaller steps (minor orders) in the midst of the ordinary is necessary grace. And so I find myself grateful to be in the midst of the ordinary and within a community that is giving me the time and space to learn what it means to live into this one day at a time.



* Sidenote: I'm not convinced that priesthood is the only vocation that has this effect---parenthood, marriage, almost any vocation embraced to the full will do this. But the nuances of this point are a discussion for another day.

Source: Psalm 95 and John 10

1. Rock of our salvation
2. God
3. Maker
4. Door of the sheep
5. Good Shepherd

More information about this project can be found here: 52 weeks & 260 names of God. 

I've lived in cities my whole life and absolute love it,  so the shepherd imagery has always been a bit lost on me. It's one of the main images used in the Introductory prayers that start Morning Prayer but even there, the imagery has been difficult to embrace. This changed a few years ago after a friend on Facebook posted a picture of a female shepherd.  I don't know why that made a difference, but that image captured something of gentleness and fierce protectiveness of the shepherd and the bond between shepherd and flock that the passage from John's Gospel alludes to but that never quite came through fully for me in past images. 

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father —and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheepthat are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life —only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” John 10: 11-18

I tried to find the actual picture, but no luck so the one here will have to do. 

How have you found meaning in the image of the Good Shepherd?

Psalm 95

Oh come, let us sing to the Lord!
Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving;
Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms.
For the Lord is the great God,
And the great King above all gods.
In His hand are the deep places of the earth;
The heights of the hills are His also.
The sea is His, for He made it;
And His hands formed the dry land.

Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture,
And the sheep of His hand.

Today, if you will hear His voice:
“Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion,
As in the day of trial in the wilderness,
When your fathers tested Me;
They tried Me, though they saw My work.
For forty years I was grieved with that generation,
And said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts,
And they do not know My ways.’
So I swore in My wrath,
‘They shall not enter My rest.’” 

Me (in reaction to a Facebook posting about becoming a cleric this Sunday): Ah, well...I must admit that my own prayer here tends to run along the lines of "Oh dear God, please don't let me #$@* up.

Indie Bishop A: Just don't sneeze while the bishop is tonsuring you ... unless of course you want to be a trend setter with a rather unique doo ... :)

Bishop of my jurisdiction: Especially since my understanding is that the bishop plans to shave the jurisdiction's logo in the new cleric's head (a logo that the new cleric designed, I might add).

Indie Bishop B:  In addition to shaving the logo, you might consider selectively dying the remaining hair in rainbow shades, thereby reinforcing the understanding of inclusivity in your jurisdiction.

Me: Sigh...okay, I've changed my prayer to "Oh dear God, please don't let Tim totally mess up my hair."

There are good sermons. There are great sermons. Then there are those that cross into a class all of their own...this is one of those.
____________________________
-by Fr. Michael Shirk
originally posted on his blog: http://schmeology.blogspot.com/2012/04/easter-vigil.html
Preached Easter Vigil 2012
Watertown, NY

Genesis 1 & 2:1-2.
Exodus 14:24-15:1
Isaiah 4:1-6
Deuteronomy 31:22-30
Colossians 3:1-7
John 20:1-10

This is the night.
Tonight we stand on the brink.

We stand between Darkness and Light. “Darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”
We stand between Water and Fire. “The Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud...and the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea.”
We stand between Death and Life. Yesterday, we were there as our Lord was crucified and buried; tomorrow he will rise again.
We stand between Font and Candle, which re-present and partake of these things: The Font re-presents the dark waters of creation from which our new birth comes; the Red Sea through which we pass to freedom as our slavery to Pharoah is drowned; the tomb of our Lord which we partake of in our Baptism. The Candle re-presents the first Light of creation; the pillar of Fire which draws us, like the ancient Hebrews, forward to the promised land; and the Light of Christ - hidden in the tomb, and for us hidden in the rock of flint- hidden but not quenched as it sparks anew to grow and spread.

We stand between time and eternity. “Tonight Heaven and Earth are joined,” as Mother Anne sang. Every year, as time wends on its way, we remember this night: But, this night we do not only remember deeds of past times, tonight we are inundated with symbols to stimulate us to the realization that all these times are Now. We remember in the mystical sense, as we do at each Eucharist: “Do this in remembrance of me.” Mystical remembrance does not look backward to a past, but *inward* to an ever-present reality. THIS is the night.

What we find on this brink is God. In the pull between the Spirit in the Darkness, and the Word in the Light we find God especially exemplified as Love. In Love the world was created, that Man and God might exist in Love toward one another. In Love were the children of Israel led to freedom, and a land flowing with milk and honey. Through the Lord of Love himself were all things created - including each of us! - and through him we are sustained.
The contrary forces of the world would deny us that understanding; would, through the “knowledge of Good and Evil” exile us from the “garden” of unity with God, ourselves and with each other; Satan would hold us in a living Death of feeling alone. In the Creation story, God made “Adam” in his own image and likeness. We’re used to seeing “Adam” portrayed as a human male, one male among many others since. But Adam may also be “mankind.” Original sin is not something we inherited from the misdeed of an ancestor, it is the reality in which Mankind finds itself. But Christ came, not to reverse that reality, but to transcend it. “O wonderful providence of Adam’s transgression, that by such a death sin might be done away!” Love himself, ever present in us since our creation, is still able to burst the rocky tomb, and break the gates our hells in sunder. As the Athenasian creed rehearses, Christ is One, “not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God.” In Christ, manhood - Adam - each of us! is taken into God!

When we give the elements of the world to another, our own handle on them is diminished. The World operates on an economy of scarcity. But Heaven operates on an economy of abundance. Christ forshowed this in the Feeding of the Five Thousand. It is forshown in our candle tonight: every time the flame is divided, it is not diminished but rather increased! We participate in this reality every time we partake of the Eucharist: the body of Christ is divided as the bread is broken; but as it is slowly assimilated and transformed in each of us, his body is not in the least diminished, but spread! And so it is with Love. True love is not finite: Rather as one Loves the other, one’s own self is increased. The more we Love, the more the kingdom of heaven is realized. The world is not left behind, for Love requires the Other, and that painful division, that Good-and-Evil, and This-and-That which is found only in the World, in Time. But when we *Love*, time is infused with Eternity, and the Kingdom of Heaven is realized on Earth.

Let us then own this Great Mystery, that we might always be Risen with Christ. Let us Love one another that, as we prayed in our Collect, unto us may be opened the “gate of everlasting life.” Not a life that has no temporal end, but rather a life lived now in Eternity.

This is the night.