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Views from the Choir Loft

The Experience of Ordination

Fr. David Friel · July 26, 2011

In the two months I’ve been a priest, many people have asked what it was like to be ordained. What was I thinking and feeling during the ordination?

I could say a great deal about that wonderful day, but one of the most significant experiences for me came during the entrance procession. As we began processing, I heard this line: “Everything I have is yours.” It was very much interior, but nevertheless loud and clear. I recognized it as a passage from the story of the Prodigal Son. It surprised me, because that wasn’t going to be the Gospel read at the ordination, nor had I meditated on that parable during my ordination retreat.

Those are the words of the Father to the brother of the Prodigal Son―the brother who objects to the slaughter of the fattened calf for his wayward sibling. In the context of our procession, I was very consoled to hear those words as an assurance of the Father spoken directly to me: “Everything I have is yours.”

Later in the ordination, as I knelt down in preparation for the prostration, the roles reversed. I looked at the dome of the Cathedral and nearly spontaneously spoke the same words from my own heart to God the Father: “Everything I have is Yours.”

These first months as a priest have been a fascinating process of discovering precisely how the Lord plans to take possession of “everything I have.” I hope to share some of those experiences with readers going forward. Suffice it to be said for now that there is an outrageous disproportion in the exchange I just described. However fervent and sincere I was when I offered everything to God on my ordination day, it is nothing by comparison to what I have received, because God’s “everything” is infinitely larger than my “everything.”

And, yet, everything is still everything. No matter the size of our personal “everything,” it’s what God asks of us all.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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About Fr. David Friel

Ordained in 2011, Father Friel served as Parochial Vicar at Saint Anselm Church in Northeast Philly before earning a doctorate in liturgical theology at The Catholic University of America. He presently serves as Vocation Director for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and teaches liturgy at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary.—(Read full biography).

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Quick Thoughts

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    The organ accompaniment booklet (24 pages) which I created for the 4th Sunday of Lent (“Lætare Sunday”) may now be downloaded, for those who desire such a thing.
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    Vespers Booklet, 3rd Sunday of Lent
    The organ accompaniment I created for the 3rd Sunday of Lent (“Extraordinary Form”) may now be downloaded, if anyone is interested in this.
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    Listening to this Easter Alleluia—an SATB arrangement I made twenty years ago based on the work of Monsignor Jules Van Nuffel—one of our readers left this comment: “I get tears in my eyes each time I sing to this hymn.” I hope this person is weeping for joy!
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Random Quote

The Sacrifice is celebrated with many solemn rites, none of which should be deemed useless or superfluous. On the contrary, all of them tend to display the majesty of this august sacrifice, and to excite the faithful, when beholding these saving mysteries, to contemplate the divine things which lie concealed in the Eucharistic Sacrifice.

— Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566)

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