As our Heart of Compassion International Faith Community welcomes you today, Sydney of Toledo, Ohio, we who are gathered in the priesthood of the people, will ordain you in the laying-on-of hands.
Since early Christian time, Jesus’
disciples laid hands on those called to serve the rapidly growing communities
of Christians. Bonded in solidarity, they worshipped in church houses at great
risk to themselves. They responded graciously to each other in recognition of
their discipleship and their closeness to Jesus, who invited them to love one
another, as he had loved them.
This love was expressed in their prophetic witnessing to the people as
they continued ministering and teaching, as Jesus had modelled so well.
These were dangerous times for the
early Christians, as it had been a dangerous time for Jesus. He fully lived the
public life that led to his necessary surrender to the political forces bringing
him to his death. Yet, in the face of those realities or perhaps because of
them they led their lives of service to the poor and marginalized. They
undertook strenuous travels such as are required in foundational endeavours.
They had names both familiar and
unfamiliar to us: Phillip, Barnabas, Theophilus or Theo we might say, and Andy
or Andronicus and the martyr, Stephen. There was Mary, Mother of Jesus, Mary of
Magdala and many other women, And then there was the other Theo, Theodora, the
woman bishop, as well as bishop Aleksandra Veneranda, and later, but still
early in Christian history, and as far away as France, Maria Venerabilis and in
Ireland, bishop Bridget of Kildare. Archeologist Dorothy Irvine, identifies
these women through catacomb depictions along with priests Flavia Maria, Vitalia,
Leta, and many women deacons: Athanasia, Phoebe, Agatha, Posidonia, of Greece
and Macedonia, in Rome, Junia, in Alexandria, Apolonia and in Jerusalem, deacon
Sophia.
And today as in early Christianity, we
ordain another woman deacon. It is my privilege as a bishop in the Association
of Roman Catholic Women Priests to be validly ordaining Sydney in apostolic succession.
She follows a long line of ordained in the Roman Catholic male tradition that
we women carry forward. Every time we ordain a Roman Catholic woman now, I hear
myself praying to them and saying with them: “We were here once. Now we are
back.”
For Sydney, humble service is
paramount in her way of being in the universe. In the gospel reading from John,
Jesus washes the feet of the disciples just prior to going forward into his
dying. The hospitable heart, the open compassion, and mercy inherent in his way
of approaching his task speaks of consummate graciousness towards others, even
when his own fears for the suffering he would soon undergo were intensely
present.
In this, we understand what the call
to serve is like and this is the call of a deacon. As a professed lay Carmelite
of 50 years, Sydney is thoroughly acquainted with the deep contemplative and
simple way of life adopted by the discalced Carmelites. She lives a life of
simplicity and deep spirituality. It is this that she will engage in her coming
ministry with the small, sacramental communities she will gather.
The discalced Carmelite discovers the
meaning of the word in the struggles of her religious formation. Discalced
means “barefoot” and the significance of this reality would certainly hasten an
understanding of a simple lifestyle.
This was just one of the changes
envisioned by Teresa of Avila, the 15th century mystic and leader of
her Carmelite community. She was attuned to the need for reforming the monastic
ways of Carmel life. Laxity had set in that prevented her Sisters’ spiritual development
in simplicity and poverty, their initial purpose and commitment. I became
interested in this simpler way of being when Sydney suggested that she would
like an apron instead of a stole as the symbol for her service as a deacon.
Teresa engaged other reforms that
took her all over Spain. She established new monasteries with a new rule that
would challenge the corruptions in the religious life of the times. As in our
Roman Catholic women priest movement, we are one with Teresa by challenging the
poverty of thought and vision in the current clerical caste priesthood of our
Roman Catholic Church.
We have a Church structure that is
still monarchical and grounded in patriarchal rule. It is a very long way from
there to finding the capacities to entertain ideas and practices for equality
of all kinds though, most specifically, gender equality. And yet, we are
traveling around the world where we are speaking and practicing a model of
priesthood for the sake of our beloved Church and with and for the people of
God.
“This is not for you alone,” bishop Patricia Fresen said to
me when I was ordained a priest in the St. Lawrence ordinations, in 2005. No,
it certainly is not for me or for any of us who come forward for ordination,
valid ordinations begun in 2002 by Roman Catholic bishops in good standing with
the Vatican. They knew that the ordination of women would never happen and they
took a bold step to simply begin.
In the Roman Catholic women priest
movement, we bring forward something needing to be born as did Teresa in her
time, and as did Paul and all the apostles and disciples, men and women, in
their time. They were starting again and continuing. They were pulling forward
a necessity that had been forbidden, but a necessity, nevertheless, a necessity
meant for someone else and not themselves.
These ordinations are for the People
of God. They are for you. Our ordinations dwell in our deep thirst for change, the
way change has always come to be in our Church. We could not be more Roman
Catholic. No fanfare, rather a long chastening of our priesthood in a fiery
furnace of apparent refusal that eventually comes to be seen as true and authentic
because of this testing.
Now in our worldwide women priest
moment, we have 222 ordained women in 13 countries, including 16 bishops. By
the end of this weekend, there will be 226 ordained persons: two priests in
Albany, New York, a deacon in South Africa; and Sydney, our deacon. Very soon
Sydney will be vested in her stole/apron while extending her many gifts beyond
the tasks of housekeeping.
“Once a deacon always a deacon,” the
very first bishop in our movement, Christine Mayr Lumetzberger from Austria
taught us. And so it is for all of us in this new time of a renewed Acts of the
Apostles.
We are in contemporary time and
tomorrow’s time is not yesterday’s, even though all are inextricably linked. In
our Priesthood of the People of God, we are deacons all. Thomas Merton, a modern day
contemplative in action, teaches us that we need to be deeply mystical and
contemplative, in our spirituality. But we can no longer go away to our private
cell, as in the monasteries of past centuries, to experience that growth. Rather,
we serve in the here and now, responding to the needs presented to us daily.
Some days we whirl in it; mostly we are filled with a passionate love inspired
by the Spirit of God and one another.
Teresa of Avila knew how to do this
as she bumped around in an ox drawn cart. Stricken by attacks of malaria (the
same disease that possibly afflicted St. Paul during his many travels), she
knew the risks and perils of her calling in conditions of extreme hardship. The
papal nuncio to Spain described her as “a restless disobedient gadabout who
teaches as though she were a professor.” Yet nothing deterred her. Teresa’s
intimate relationship with Jesus sustained her, as He does us.
The complexities we face today,
amidst rapid global change and political unrest, are possibly greater than in
any other time in history. To what now are we called?
Our brother, Pope Francis, invites us
into the “field hospital.” The field hospital is wherever our feet land – our
homes, our workplaces, our places of worship and our cities. Here is where we serve
as Jesus and his early Christians did, as did Teresa of Avila. The influx of
Syrian newcomers at the doorstep of our Windsor community lands us at the
centre of a call for hearts of compassion. Will we wash the feet of the dear
neighbour, both local and global?
And as we move outward to walk this
journey, I conclude with St. Teresa’s most famous prayer:
Let nothing upset you,
Let nothing startle you.
All things pass.
God does not change.
Patience wins all it seeks.
Whoever has God lacks nothing.
God alone is enough.
