Consecration

This year we said goodbye to a brother priest in our diocese. After he reposed in the Lord, his widow sent a box to the cathedral containing some of his belongings—vestments, a chalice and paten, and some books. Among these items, I unpacked a prayer rope that had clearly been in use for many years. Its outer threads revealed the effects of friction as the knots were passed through the fingers with each Jesus Prayer. His prayer rope had become threadbare through love and prayerful use. Far from reducing its value, though, these marks of use made it all the more special: it had known a prayerful priest over many years. 

I was asked recently by one of the youngsters of our parish how we could tell if something had been blessed. For context, we had just prayed a blessing over a collection of crosses on Holy Cross Day this past September. I said there were three ways to tell: first, you could see the priest blessing it; second, you could see that it now had a special and singular place in a Christian’s life; and third, you could see that it had made someone more prayerful over time. The day of blessing is the setting apart of something that imparts a measure of grace to it. The flowering of that grace, however, takes time and obliges a prayerful participation with it. To bless something is to give it a place in the liturgy of Christian life, and through time the end of that gift of place and purpose becomes manifest. Blessing is not the gift of a passive state but rather of a potency to aid the faithful unto everlasting life. It is to endow it with a life beyond mere existence.

This week we celebrated the ten-year anniversary of our Bishop’s consecration. Just like that youngster with his blessed cross, we might ask at this milestone moment: how can we tell that a bishop has been consecrated? As it turns out, a significant portion of the liturgy for consecration concerns the people’s recognition of the person in front of them as their bishop. At one point of the service, the Archbishop addresses the people to say: “Dearly beloved, we do present unto you this undoubted, true, and right lawful Bishop and Reverend Father in God.” As I reflect on the day I heard those words as a thurifer tucked back in a nook of the sanctuary, it seems worthy to consider the ways we can take confidence that there is, indeed, a bishop among us. 

As with all blessings, the consecration of a bishop begins with an examination that the matter of the blessing is appropriate to receive it. For a bishop, this means a public profession of his orthodox theology, and formal attestations of his right to stand for consecration, reflecting his due election by the Synod and the approval of the College of Bishops. When the visible and immediate witnesses have had their say, the Archbishop sings the Litany of Saints, calling upon God and all the host of heaven to attend mercifully to the event at hand, to bear their own witness to it in a unified action of heaven and earth. Before that united company, the bishop-elect is called to stand for a viva with his consecrators concerning the manner of his Christian life and his earnest belief that he is called to this office. Upon the completion of that examen, the consecration may commence.

At this point we witness a break with all that has come before. As is the case with all sacraments, there is, in setting apart, a threshold past which what is done cannot be undone. In the conferral of the sacrament of Orders, the ordinand prostrates himself on the floor in the shape of the cross. It is, on the one hand, the most profound gesture of worship we have as Christians. We are utterly submitted, God above us and the dust (from which we came) beneath us. It is an image of death, of course, the only other time we are set before the altar in any way like that is in our caskets at our requiem. Here the bishop-elect dies to a life that is not yet conformed to this new vocation. He loses one life so as to receive it anew from the Lord. It is there that the consecrators sing over him the Veni, Creator Spiritus, invoking the Holy Ghost to be to this lowly worshiper the Lord and Giver of Life, to enkindle and inspire, to comfort and guide, to empower and magnify. 

When the bishop-elect arises, the consecrators (and every bishop present) lay hands on him after the form of the Apostles and pray for him to receive in that moment the Holy Spirit just invoked for the ministry at hand with the words of St. Paul to St. Timothy: “And remember that thou stir up the grace of God, which is given thee by this Imposition of our hands; for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and soberness.” The bishop-elect is then anointed with the sacred chrism, first on the head and then on the hands. As with the kings of old, this is a symbol of divine authority and blessing that comes from God above to and through the one anointed. It is the visible sign that the authority to bless comes from the Lord through his hands. But this anointing of the bishop signifies the highest order of priesthood to become an anointer of priests, a confirmer of the faithful. But in the chanting of Psalm 133 that follows, with the words “how good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters dwell in unity…” we are led to see the bishop’s anointing as a visible point of unity, a point around which the faithful may gather to be gathered into the one Church, as it has been since the Apostles.

It is then that the bishop is gifted with the outward symbols of his office, the visible ways we know there is a bishop among us. First, he receives his ring with the words: “Receive this ring, the seal of fidelity. Guard well and maintain the Faith. Keep spotless and protect Holy Church, the Bride of Christ and thy Spouse.” Second, he receives his pectoral cross with the words: “Accept the sign of the Cross…as a sign of the Cross, Passion, and death of Christ unto the defense of thy body and soul: that through the grace of divine mercy, after thou hast completed thy present journey, thou mayest merit to return home uncorrupted unto salvation.” Third, he receives his mitre with the words: “Exercise without reproach thy high Priesthood. Remember thy charge as the Steward of God and the Ambassador of Christ. Sanctify the faithful. Proclaim the Gospel. Make full proof of thy ministry.” Fourth, he receives the Bible with the words: “Give heed unto reading, exhortation, and doctrine. Think upon the things contained in this Book. Be diligent in them, that the increase coming thereby may be manifest unto all men; for by so doing thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee.” Fifth and finally, he receives the pastoral staff with the words: “Be to the flock of Christ a shepherd, not a wolf; feed them, devour them not. Hold up the weak, heal the sick, bind up the broken, bring again the outcasts, seek the lost. Be so merciful that you be not too remiss; so minister discipline that you forget not mercy; that when the Chief Shepherd shall appear, you may receive the never-fading crown of glory.” 

The outward signs with which the bishop is invested remind us of how we are to look for a bishop. Anyone can dress like one, but the insignia are signifiers of an expected grace at work in them, made visible in the fruit of their lives. Are they faithfully married to the Church? Are they bound from the heart to the Cross of Christ? Are they an ambassador of Christ in how they present the Gospel? Are they men of the Bible, regular in opening it to the eyes, ears, and hearts of others? Do they feed Christ’s sheep and protect them from the wolves? It is in these considerations that we are directed to look at a person of whom to expect these questions to be answered with ‘yes.’ We then arrive at that moment of recognition when the Archbishop presents the invested bishop as undoubted, true, and right lawful to his people for them to receive with thanksgiving to God. We sang the Te Deum that day and then shared our first Eucharist together as the recipients of a gift. As with all the sacraments, all the people of God are implicated even if the recipient of the sacrament is one. The revelation of a new bishop is a kind of epiphany that the vocation of a diocese is being provided for and strengthened. And that provision and comfort obtain in the life of each faithful Christian. Our life in Christ is changed by the presence of a bishop. It is an objective change the effects of which we go on to know; but the change happens whether we are attentive to it or not. It is a new fact for the people of God.

I return to the answer I gave to that young man when he asked how we could tell if something had been blessed: first, you could see the priest blessing it; second, you could see that it now had a special and singular place in a Christian’s life; and third, you could see that it had made someone more prayerful over time. Undeniably, the first two conditions were met before the eyes of those who looked on ten years ago. But it is the third matter that I know would loom as most significant in the heart of any good bishop, any good priest, any good Christian. Having all been blessed in our manner and anointed for the labors of Christ, we should rightly ask: have I helped those who are mine to become more prayerful? This is, I think, one test of the mystery of sacramental efficacy: has this person/event become an occasion for an encounter with Jesus Christ?

It is not mine alone to wax effusively on that question, though I could. I know that a bishop would not seek praise after what he would surely call ‘only ten years.’ Bishops think in terms of the whole stories of lifetimes and epochs. I would not so imperil the perspective and humility of a good bishop. But to conclude this meditation, I would ask each of my readers a favor. Consider for a moment the phrase ‘a life of prayer.’ Whose face comes to mind? Whose voice do you hear? Around whom do you smile and shake your head that it has come up as a topic, yet again? Whose guidance has unveiled the journey into God over careful, patient years? Who helped you to see and encounter Jesus better? I know the answers to those questions for me. I know how ubiquitous those words, and the actions that flow from them, have become in our diocese and beyond over these ten years. I have seen and known how I would speak of that third sign of blessing. And with that condition met, we can have confidence that we have seen a consecration, the blessing of one who blesses us. We have been blessed. We have been given the gift of being shepherded by someone who knows our names, who has carried our stories, who has remained at his post, and who has pointed us to Christ.

Glory to God for all things.