Priesthood:
As a priest, it will be your task to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to fashion your life in accordance with its precepts. You are to love and serve the
people among whom you work, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. You are to preach, to declare God’s forgiveness to penitent sinners, to pronounce God’s blessing, to share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the celebration of the mysteries of Christ’s Body and Blood, and to perform the other ministrations entrusted to you.
In all that you do, you are to nourish Christ’s people from the riches of his grace, and strengthen them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come.
Deaconate:
My brother, every Christian is called to follow Jesus Christ, serving God the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit. God now calls you to a special ministry of servanthood directly under your bishop. In the name of Jesus Christ, you are to serve all people, particularly the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely.
As a deacon in the Church, you are to study the Holy Scriptures, to seek nourishment from them, and to model your life upon them. You are to make Christ and his redemptive love known, by your word and example, to those among whom you live, and work, and worship. You are to interpret to the Church the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world. You are to assist the bishop and priests in public worship and in the ministration of God’s Word and Sacraments, and you are to carry out other duties assigned to you from time to time. At all times, your life and teaching are to show Christ’s people that in serving the helpless they are serving Christ himself.
When I look at these two calls, I get it. I get why deaconal is what people are seeing, but here is an offer I would like to make–What if the person who connected the church to the community actually was able to give the sacraments? How much more powerful would be that connections. For being to see this person engaging religion and them at the same time instead of saying, now that you are all connected–go that way to get a blessing? I don’t know if that makes sense at all, but it is something that I find important when I think about ministry. What if our ministry really was out there instead of in here?
I still struggle with what I am doing with my life at this point–I go to work and I come home. For me that is so much, I have little left for anything else. I have been going to the gym. My goal is to get my body right since I have been doing all this inside work. But at this point I feel like I am not doing a lot of different things, but none of them are really speaking to my spirit. We’ll see if these Wednesday things begin to get me excited about life again. I am not sad about life, but just present waiting to know what the next step is. What is going to happen after this year is over, where I will be living, working, how I will be making money to pay off debt. All these things are really too much to handle…. Who really knows what the future holds. God, what’s up?
Pursuing Call 