A Letter from the Archbishop Metropolitan
The Most Reverend + Kristina Rake, M.A.T.S.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
My dear friend in Christ~
I have often likened a vocation to Holy Orders to a fever or an itch that one cannot quite scratch. It is the noise that keeps us up at night. The constant ache in the back of our minds, as though we were forgetting something but cannot call to mind the misplaced information. Those with a religious vocation are set apart by this itch, this ache, and this fever of forgetting, because we are spiritually uneasy until we name that which is causing our ills.
It is not an unpleasant ache, mind you, but it is a powerful one. It is a compelling, delicious wound that begs to be healed. We caress it while we try to name it. It is a friend and a curse, like an unusual condition that causes us to hear our names being called over and over again—a sort of spiritual tinnitus.
Those of you with a lifelong vocation will recognize these attempts to put into words that which is ineffable: the very voice of God as He pulls the soul toward Himself. If we define a vocation in this way, as the lure that pulls the soul towards the fresh air of Eternal Life, then we can say that the vocation to the priesthood is one given to all.
However, I like to explain that there is really only one vocation: to love and serve God by loving and serving one another. It is not what God is asking of us that sets apart someone with a religious vocation. It is who we are that does so. We all answer that one call to serve God and our neighbor in different ways: as teachers, doctors, police officers, office clerks, construction workers, drivers, manufacturers, janitors, parents, nurses, etc. Our vocation is not so much the call we receive from God, but the distress beacon of our own hearts echoing back to God the thing we are, the person we are meant to be: clergy.
“The word of the Lord came to me:
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I dedicated you,
a prophet to the nations I appointed you.
“Ah, Lord God!” I said,
“I do not know how to speak. I am too young!”
But the Lord answered me,
Do not say, “I am too young.”
To whomever I send you, you shall go;
whatever I command you, you shall speak.
Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you…” (Jeremiah 1:4-8)
We were conceived with this appointment as clergy within us. It is the response to that general call of service that causes us to respond as we do. While so many others ignore the sweet voice of the one who calls us into the desert of service, we cannot. To us, it is not a theoretical vocation, nor is it a “church” thing that we can speak of at mass, and then abandon the moment we reach the parking lot.
Those of us who were placed into the womb with the priesthood within us experience this event as a lack. A vacuum. An element of our very personhood that has been removed and calls us, like the beacon of an airplane sunken deep within the sea. We hear the steady pulsing of that siren song of God and we meander towards it unconsciously as we live our life.
Some of us are fortunate enough to have been born into a religious family and so we have a name for this beacon early in life. Others of us, however, hear this beacon but have no religious context for it. It is a magnetic pole—the True North—towards which our entire life is oriented. However, we cannot seem to glean any meaning from it that satisfies our need to name, categorize, and dispense with it as we do with other elements of our life.
Because of this, every priest I’ve spoken to has a unique story of the twisting road that led them to their own fiat, their YES to this call towards which God oriented them before birth. Yet, every priest I’ve spoken to describes the same beacon using different terms. The unquenchable thirst. The itch that could not be scratched. The uneasiness in all I tried to do. The dissatisfaction with my studies or my career. The need to be constantly at prayer. The feeling that something was missing and that something was me.
We ourselves ARE the vocation. That is why there is such a variety of stories and ways in which people come to say “yes” to the priesthood. The calling, though, is the same because God is unchangeable, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. This is why there is so much similarity in the process of discernment and growth towards that final assent to God’s intention for our lives.
St. Catherine of Siena said of religious vocations, “If you are what you should be, you will set the world on fire.” Our Lord said the same thing: “I have come to set the world on fire. Oh, how I wish that it were already burning.” (Luke 12:49).
What is this fire? How does it relate to a religious vocation?
In scripture, the word fire is most often used in its typical fashion, referring to a physical conflagration; metaphorically, however, it can also refer to a psychological fire (of the heart or mind), the Spirit or Presence of God, the pain of eternal torment, or a trial one must face in order to serve God.
The fire St. Catherine is speaking about entails almost all of these metaphorical flames. Once we say our “yes”, though—once we make that choice to become what we were born to be—the entire world is set ablaze for us and by us.
The fire of scripture now applies to our own lives. Our hearts and minds are ablaze with the zeal of the Fear of the Lord as we stand in awe of this development in our eternal soul. We experience an excitement and a burning desire to begin the life that has been marked out as our portion.
Our lives also begin to burn away: the chaff—the accrual of all things unimportant—flies upward and disappears into its own spark. The expectations we had for our lives before our vocation was named; the portions of our self-image that didn’t truly describe us; our illusions about what we were meant to be; our perception of our own strengths and weaknesses; essentially, anything that would hinder our complete surrender to this spark within us that is ready to join with the fire of God’s love for us must be sorted, tossed into the air, and burned in the fire of the Holy Spirit.
Our psychological fire now makes sense. That irresistible desire to love others in any way possible and the recognition people had of that love within us makes more sense now. Almost all vocations I know found ways to serve others as they sorted out the business of their true selves. Many become nurses, counselors, teachers—caregivers, all. That unmistakable zeal for helping others finally finds its home in our true being, the name God gave us in the womb. The name of Priest.
What of the trials we must endure for God? Any step toward God causes God to run toward us. However, that doesn’t mean we will not pass through the fires of our own challenges. We must now study, pray, come out as a priest to our family and friends. We must now work with God to burn away their expectations for us. They, too, had plans for us. They, too, thought of us in a different way. Some of our friends and family will immediately recognize the name we have accepted for ourselves, priest. Others, however, will strongly reject it. What about their own hopes for us? What about the hopes we shared with them? What of that life we had already marked out for ourselves? It doesn’t seem compatible with this new direction we are taking.
“The human heart plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps.” (Proverbs 16:9)
Our hearts make plans for us. However, the Lord takes over and moves our feet onto the true road for us. In this way, the Lord brings us to the path we did not choose for ourselves, but that we would have chosen had we understood our purpose in the beginning.
“Then with all this, pray to God to make your steps firm in the true path.” (Ben Sira 37:15)
Our true destiny is the road we were meant to walk. If we are bold, we pray to God to place us on that path to His intentions for us. Sometimes, His intentions and ours are in perfect sync. Sometimes, however, they are not.
It’s a good thing God allows U-turns.
As you walk this path of discernment, remember, your heart is planning a way for you. If you pray and listen, if you work and surrender to God’s plans for you, then your steps will lead you into the true path, whether you realize it or not.
Allow the God who loves you to move you along the board of life. If you trust with your whole heart, the fire of the Holy Spirit will lift you and place your feet firmly on the way that you should go.
May God richly bless your journey. Amen.
Your Sinful Servant in Christ,
Bishop + Kristina Rake
Presiding Bishop, AAOCC
The Most Reverend + Kristina Rake, M.A.T.S.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
My dear friend in Christ~
I have often likened a vocation to Holy Orders to a fever or an itch that one cannot quite scratch. It is the noise that keeps us up at night. The constant ache in the back of our minds, as though we were forgetting something but cannot call to mind the misplaced information. Those with a religious vocation are set apart by this itch, this ache, and this fever of forgetting, because we are spiritually uneasy until we name that which is causing our ills.
It is not an unpleasant ache, mind you, but it is a powerful one. It is a compelling, delicious wound that begs to be healed. We caress it while we try to name it. It is a friend and a curse, like an unusual condition that causes us to hear our names being called over and over again—a sort of spiritual tinnitus.
Those of you with a lifelong vocation will recognize these attempts to put into words that which is ineffable: the very voice of God as He pulls the soul toward Himself. If we define a vocation in this way, as the lure that pulls the soul towards the fresh air of Eternal Life, then we can say that the vocation to the priesthood is one given to all.
However, I like to explain that there is really only one vocation: to love and serve God by loving and serving one another. It is not what God is asking of us that sets apart someone with a religious vocation. It is who we are that does so. We all answer that one call to serve God and our neighbor in different ways: as teachers, doctors, police officers, office clerks, construction workers, drivers, manufacturers, janitors, parents, nurses, etc. Our vocation is not so much the call we receive from God, but the distress beacon of our own hearts echoing back to God the thing we are, the person we are meant to be: clergy.
“The word of the Lord came to me:
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I dedicated you,
a prophet to the nations I appointed you.
“Ah, Lord God!” I said,
“I do not know how to speak. I am too young!”
But the Lord answered me,
Do not say, “I am too young.”
To whomever I send you, you shall go;
whatever I command you, you shall speak.
Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you…” (Jeremiah 1:4-8)
We were conceived with this appointment as clergy within us. It is the response to that general call of service that causes us to respond as we do. While so many others ignore the sweet voice of the one who calls us into the desert of service, we cannot. To us, it is not a theoretical vocation, nor is it a “church” thing that we can speak of at mass, and then abandon the moment we reach the parking lot.
Those of us who were placed into the womb with the priesthood within us experience this event as a lack. A vacuum. An element of our very personhood that has been removed and calls us, like the beacon of an airplane sunken deep within the sea. We hear the steady pulsing of that siren song of God and we meander towards it unconsciously as we live our life.
Some of us are fortunate enough to have been born into a religious family and so we have a name for this beacon early in life. Others of us, however, hear this beacon but have no religious context for it. It is a magnetic pole—the True North—towards which our entire life is oriented. However, we cannot seem to glean any meaning from it that satisfies our need to name, categorize, and dispense with it as we do with other elements of our life.
Because of this, every priest I’ve spoken to has a unique story of the twisting road that led them to their own fiat, their YES to this call towards which God oriented them before birth. Yet, every priest I’ve spoken to describes the same beacon using different terms. The unquenchable thirst. The itch that could not be scratched. The uneasiness in all I tried to do. The dissatisfaction with my studies or my career. The need to be constantly at prayer. The feeling that something was missing and that something was me.
We ourselves ARE the vocation. That is why there is such a variety of stories and ways in which people come to say “yes” to the priesthood. The calling, though, is the same because God is unchangeable, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. This is why there is so much similarity in the process of discernment and growth towards that final assent to God’s intention for our lives.
St. Catherine of Siena said of religious vocations, “If you are what you should be, you will set the world on fire.” Our Lord said the same thing: “I have come to set the world on fire. Oh, how I wish that it were already burning.” (Luke 12:49).
What is this fire? How does it relate to a religious vocation?
In scripture, the word fire is most often used in its typical fashion, referring to a physical conflagration; metaphorically, however, it can also refer to a psychological fire (of the heart or mind), the Spirit or Presence of God, the pain of eternal torment, or a trial one must face in order to serve God.
The fire St. Catherine is speaking about entails almost all of these metaphorical flames. Once we say our “yes”, though—once we make that choice to become what we were born to be—the entire world is set ablaze for us and by us.
The fire of scripture now applies to our own lives. Our hearts and minds are ablaze with the zeal of the Fear of the Lord as we stand in awe of this development in our eternal soul. We experience an excitement and a burning desire to begin the life that has been marked out as our portion.
Our lives also begin to burn away: the chaff—the accrual of all things unimportant—flies upward and disappears into its own spark. The expectations we had for our lives before our vocation was named; the portions of our self-image that didn’t truly describe us; our illusions about what we were meant to be; our perception of our own strengths and weaknesses; essentially, anything that would hinder our complete surrender to this spark within us that is ready to join with the fire of God’s love for us must be sorted, tossed into the air, and burned in the fire of the Holy Spirit.
Our psychological fire now makes sense. That irresistible desire to love others in any way possible and the recognition people had of that love within us makes more sense now. Almost all vocations I know found ways to serve others as they sorted out the business of their true selves. Many become nurses, counselors, teachers—caregivers, all. That unmistakable zeal for helping others finally finds its home in our true being, the name God gave us in the womb. The name of Priest.
What of the trials we must endure for God? Any step toward God causes God to run toward us. However, that doesn’t mean we will not pass through the fires of our own challenges. We must now study, pray, come out as a priest to our family and friends. We must now work with God to burn away their expectations for us. They, too, had plans for us. They, too, thought of us in a different way. Some of our friends and family will immediately recognize the name we have accepted for ourselves, priest. Others, however, will strongly reject it. What about their own hopes for us? What about the hopes we shared with them? What of that life we had already marked out for ourselves? It doesn’t seem compatible with this new direction we are taking.
“The human heart plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps.” (Proverbs 16:9)
Our hearts make plans for us. However, the Lord takes over and moves our feet onto the true road for us. In this way, the Lord brings us to the path we did not choose for ourselves, but that we would have chosen had we understood our purpose in the beginning.
“Then with all this, pray to God to make your steps firm in the true path.” (Ben Sira 37:15)
Our true destiny is the road we were meant to walk. If we are bold, we pray to God to place us on that path to His intentions for us. Sometimes, His intentions and ours are in perfect sync. Sometimes, however, they are not.
It’s a good thing God allows U-turns.
As you walk this path of discernment, remember, your heart is planning a way for you. If you pray and listen, if you work and surrender to God’s plans for you, then your steps will lead you into the true path, whether you realize it or not.
Allow the God who loves you to move you along the board of life. If you trust with your whole heart, the fire of the Holy Spirit will lift you and place your feet firmly on the way that you should go.
May God richly bless your journey. Amen.
Your Sinful Servant in Christ,
Bishop + Kristina Rake
Presiding Bishop, AAOCC