Ordination Booster Shot

Today was the annual Holy Week ritual of the service of renewal of ordination vows for clergy of the Diocese. In some ways it seemed a little strange to be renewing my vows only three months after I was ordained priest. I guess it’s sort of like a booster shot for a vaccine.

The service was held at St. John’s, where I was ordained as a deacon on June 3, 2006, and as a priest on January 6, 2007. When we arrived, we were told to vest (cassock, surplice and stole – yea!, I got to wear the beautiful new red stole the St. Alban’s Vestry gave me as an ordination gift) and to take a seat in the church. I ran into Jeff Wilhelm, the rector of St. Stephen’s Beaumont, who was a year ahead of me at Seabury and was my neighbor in the seminary apartments. We decided to sit together, forming the contingent of recent Seabury grads. Jeff went into the church to take a seat while I stopped to talk to several of the priests in my Fresh Start group. Ironically, the seat Jeff chose put me in the exact same spot where I sat for both my ordinations. How appropriate that my first renewal of vows took place in the exact spot where I was originally ordained.

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