Recently, I was heading out of the building on the elevator when a classmate of mine, out of nowhere, said, “So, we’ve got four months.” The comment took me off guard, and I immediately began to mentally calculate how many months remained before June 26. Sure enough…it was four months.
These last few months before ordination are filled with preparations and things to do. It seems that each member of my family has been assigned a particular duty. Lists are made, items checked off, and new lists are formed. Errands are being run, e-mails sent back and forth, and phone calls often run long into the night. Yet, in the midst of all this activity and preparation there remains one central calming and stabilizing element: encountering Christ Jesus. Increasingly, over these last few months we who with God’s help will be ordained this summer cannot help but feel ever more intensely that desire to be conformed to Jesus Christ, and with him at the center all the other activities fall into a secondary place.
As I go through all of my applications, essays, and paperwork that I completed when I began this journey of formation, I am repeatedly struck by the Lord’s providence at work. Even in times of trial and difficulty one can see the invitation of the Lord to grow and become more like Him, and it is in those often unexpected encounters that one’s faith grows, one’s heart is softened, and one’s relationship with the Lord is strengthened. In my breviary, there is a card with a passage written by St. Theresa of Avila (which is addressed to each Christian), but which as ordination approaches I have been reflecting upon in light of the call to priesthood:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassionately on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Have a Blessed Lent, and keep us in your prayers!