My writing has been ‘stuck’, it seems, for the past many months. I never intended to write in this space about work or career-related things, but realistically, that’s what has been draining me from an ability to put thoughts into words.
Late last year my godfather was ordained to the priesthood.
Bishop Anthony (Antiochian) performed the ordination, and it was the first time I ever heard him speak. He speaks with a quiet, almost nerdy, humility and a dry sense of humor that I quickly fell in love with.
His homily was gentle, powerful.
It took me a while to find the video of the ordination service, but as I watched the homily again, even four months later, I find myself deeply stirred, carefully holding back tears from the coffee shop I’m writing in.
“…when [Jesus] healed all those with unclean spirits and all those who had physical illnesses, and when he multiplied the loaves of bread in the wilderness, which is very interesting because, remember, in the book of Genesis, the thing that the people wanted when they were in the wilderness was bread. And now Jesus is in the fields, and he multiplies the bread for them, and he shows them that he is God in the same way that he showed himself in the Old Testament when the slaves went from Egypt, crossing the wilderness. I don’t know if you put that together. And then He’ll say that I am the bread that comes down out of heaven; whoever eats of this bread shall never hunger. And whoever eats of this bread, in him is life.”
The service was over three hours long with Matins, and as I found myself sitting there in that place, I felt as if heaven had quite literally (yes, I’m using that correctly) come down to earth. I wish I never had to leave. I wished the service would have carried on for the rest of my life, and that we could have celebrated the Eucharist together over and over again until our days came to an end.
At the end of the service, in the hustle and bustle of everyone moving and going everywhere, I walked up an aisle beside my godmother, who quietly said to me, “I don’t know how anyone could not fall in love with Orthodoxy…”
Her pensive reflection wasn’t a judgment. It wasn’t a comment on what other traditions have or don’t have. It was a longing. A hope and an invitation. It was a wish and a prayer that all men, women, and children could have the pleasure of the experience in which we had just taken part.
A few weeks ago, I was speaking on the phone with a friend who had also attended the ordination service. He had spent nearly his entire life in the Protestant church, but over the past few years his relationship with the church had become quite complicated. Though he has left the church, he would say that he has not “left Jesus.” He asked me about the ordination, and I described to him much of what I wrote above. He then said, “It’s so interesting to me that you were in heaven, and I was in hell.”
I found it sad. Interesting maybe, intellectually, especially in the context of how Orthodox theology often describes hell, but sad that he was not able to see or experience what I had seen and experienced - as if we were in two entirely different worlds, but sitting one chair apart.