God Is in His Heaven...

... all's right in the world. Or at least that dominated as my foremost thought this weekend.

The seminarian who served his pastoral year partly at the College received his ordination to the transitional diaconate on Saturday. I rode down first to Madison, in the middle of nowhere Virginia, with a couple of great guys. In Madison, we switched cars and flew down winding country roads with a native. We ended up in Farmville, still in the middle of nowhere, at the small parish where he was being ordained.

Driving down the country roads, our windows down, music up, the smell of country around us, I could breath deeply and relax fully in a way I cannot during my days in the city here. It broke my heart to know that I will not live out that part of Virginia, when I love best of all, because my work will keep me tied to civilization.

The actually ordination brought me in touch with God as little has this summer. The deacon-t0-be walked in looking serious and thoughtful, very unlike the last ordination I attended, where the seminarian looked bridal during the procession. When he was presented to the Bishop, however, he began to glow. His joy was beautiful and infectious. I couldn't stop smiling and I didn't want to. The ordination and Mass proceeded that way: his face alternated between serious and engrossed in the depth of the moment and complete, abandoned joy.

The ordination itself consists of a rite that includes the seminarian prostrating himself, being vested in deaconly garments, and being handed the Book of Gospels, which he is to learn, believe, and spread. Then the new deacon hugs all the priests and deacons who attend, and Mass proceeds with the deacon on the altar with the other ordained people, rather than in the congregation with the laity.

I watched our new deacon and thought how utterly right it looked as he stood distributing the Precious Blood on one side of the church while the other seminarian who spent time at the College stood on the other, mirror images of newly ordained deacons.

On the way home, we stopped in Madison and looked at the Milky Way. The stars also felt right in my life, and the whole trip had a retreat feel.