This morning I preached to the Deacons at Deacon House (for the last time this year). They will all be ordained in the coming weeks, beginning with the Boston Ordinations a week from tomorrow.
Do you remember your first day in Seminary? How frightened you were? How unsure of yourself you were? How big and strange and impossible everything seemed to be?
But you persevered. Why? Because you had confidence in yourself and your own capabilities? Probably not-so-much. Because you knew you had the native abilities and the stuff it took to conquer the world? Doubtful.
You persevered because you loved Christ. Because you had heard the voice of Jesus whispering in your heart, Because every so once in a while, at a time you lest expected (but most needed it), you felt the cool breath of the spirit waft across your life. You persevered because you dared to call him Father and you knew he hear your prayer.
You persevered. Because, like Paul in Corinth, in the middle of a particularly fearsome panic attack, you heard the Lord say to you: “Do not be afraid…for I am with you.”
You persevered, as you will with the best of pastors, and the rest. As you will with the sweetest, loveliest most faithful parishioners, and the rest. As you will on good days, and the rest. You will persevere.
Just as you have through Seminary. On the days when all was consolation and light, and on the rest. For we travel through this valley, dear brothers, seeking only to discern God’s will and to find the strength to do it.
And on some days, even in Seminary, you probably felt like the mother in today’s Gospel, in anguish because the hour of your labor had arrived. The anguish of facing who you really are, the anguish of trying to become what God needs you to be, the anguish of the growing heart, the mind and the very depths of you.
But in these days you are also like that mother, knowing that God is about to bring forth new life through you. Thousands and tens of thousands of new lives, saved by God through your hands and led by Christ through your life to be happy forever with him in heaven.
And like that mother, who persevered through her labors, the memories of the pain will fade for you. For your heart is rightly flooded on these days with the joy that God has called you to be his Priest, in the image and likeness of Jesus his Son.
So let your hearts rejoice, for no one can ever take that joy from you. Dear brothers and sons, dear fathers, dear friends.
