I am up extra early this morning. I will be leaving for the office in about 15 minutes, having been up since 4 AM.
I strikes me that Lent is about half over now. I wonder if the world has made many changes since its beginning a few weeks ago. Lent is a time of sowing seeds and fertilization of the soil. We have to wait for the sudden eruption of growth that will undoubtedly occur. For us, time is such a linear thing, one day leading to the next and a lifetime being about 75 years, that we tend to think God is slouching, delaying and is chronically late. The truth of the matter is time is ever present in God’s sight and present for all time. The seeds of change sown during Lent will come to fruition and a great harvest will be gathered. We may not be living our earthly lives at that time, but we will see the fruit in the life to come.
The ordination prayer for deacons begins, “Draw near, we pray, Almighty God, giver of every grace, who apportion every order and assign every office; who remain unchanged, but make all things new.” God makes all things new even in his immutability, his perfection, his stability. Newness in the midst of the eternal “now,” the eternal constancy characteristic of God. It is God who gives us our calling, our office, as deacons and who calls us into the workings of his trinitarian life through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit who binds us to his Son, Jesus in his oneness with the Father. Through our ordination, we are given an authority which comes from the Father, the authority of compassion, forming us into the Icon of Jesus the Servant. Our union with Jesus in this way is truly an outpouring of the Holy Spirit into the world, an outpouring which has lasting effects.
May God bless each of you today in a special way.
