Page 202 - Demo

%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK190 Jack FritscherOnly the Communion rail separated those special ones from pew upon pew of lay people kneeling at their seats and overflowing to stand in the aisles. An invitation to an Ordination was a social and spiritual coup far beyond any wedding. Watching the women and men and children all directly beneath my perch in the choir loft, I could close my eyes and hear how different the chapel sounded than when filled with five hundred silent, obedient boys. I loved the visitors%u2019 attentive reverence, their awe, their whispers, their voices responding to the bishop, their palpable happiness that their son or brother was about to be ordained a priest forever. I loved the powdered scented sweet smell of their bodies.I drifted, Sancta Lucia, with the hypnotic sing-song, Sancte Johannes, of the Litany. I wondered if anyone famous, Sancta Agnes, sat in the chapel crowded, Sancte Philippe, with a thousand outsiders. Once, years before, Pat O%u2019Brien, the movie star, had come to a second cousin%u2019s Ordination and the priests had told Pat O%u2019Brien they hoped sometime to have his movie where he played Father Duffy to show the seminarians. They were sorry they could never remember that picture%u2019s name. I could not see the visitors%u2019 faces, but I knew they were the army of parents and relatives and nuns who followed the Pope%u2019s admonition of %u201cnurturing vocations.%u201d I wondered if I invited President Kennedy or Princess Grace if I%u2019d even get an acknowledgment.Actual Ordination occurs when the bishop anoints the young man%u2019s hands, which are tied together with white cord. The bishop lays his hands on the young man%u2019s head and says, %u201cThou art a priest forever according to the Order of Melchisedec.%u201dAt that moment, God brands an indelible mark on the soul of the new priest%u2014a mark so indelible that no one, not Rector Karg nor the Pope himself, can ever take it away.So great is the sacrament of Holy Orders that all the clergy in the sanctuary rise up and join in a long line. While the bishop and Rector Karg and two dozen monsignors and the hundred visiting priests imposed their hands one after the other on each of the sixteen heads, in the choir we sang the surging hymn, %u201cHoly God, We Praise Thy Name.%u201d%u201cHoly God, we praise Thy Name.Lord of All, we bow before Thee.All on earth Thy Scepter claim.All in heaven above adore Thee.Infinite Thy vast Domain,everlasting is Thy Reign.