[Magdalen] Catching up

[Grace Cangialosi]

I'm sitting in the rather weak sun on my porch, trying to decide if it's too cold to stay out here. It's supposed to turn bitterly cold tomorrow, so I'm making the most of this respite.

This past weekend was a whirlwind. I drove to Philly on Friday for the ordination Saturday of a former directee at the Philadelphia Cathedral, spent Saturday afternoon with Carol and Andre Trevathan for some birding at a wildlife refuge, a driving tour of the city and the obligatory Philly cheesesteak at Abner's.
Sunday I attended the church where my directee celebrated his first Mass and then drove to Tom's River, NJ, to see friends I hadn't seen in 37 years--since our kids were little.
Drove home Monday  and got here just in time for the quarterly meeting of our Master Naturalist chapter.
Crashed on Tuesday...

The ordination service at the Cathedral made me realize that I need to get out of the Diocese of Virginia more often! It wasn't just the higher liturgy--which I expected--but the whole tone of the occasion and some of the nuts and bolts of it.
The presentation of the ordinands and the initial questions put to them took place at the baptismal font, which is on one side of the cathedral and has a baptismal pool as well as the regular smaller font, from which water flows into the pool.
Then the entire party processed to the front, and the liturgy continued. Somewhere in there we were all asperged (Is that a verb?) by the Bishop.
The Cathedral itself is beautiful and arranged unlike any I've ever seen--too complicated to describe here. You can probably find some pictures on their website.
There were two ordinands, both male, and during the singing of the Veni...Spiritus they prostrated themselves in front of the bishop. I understand the symbolism, but I'm REALLY glad I didn't have to do that--especially on a concrete floor.
The Nicene Creed and Eucharistic Prayer were from Enriching Our Worship.
After the service the two new priests remained up front to offer blessings to those who wanted to come forward. I've only seen that done once in our diocese, and it didn't take place inside the church, but on the way out.  My directee's (Jordan,) congregation was there in force, all dressed in red, and they all went forward for a blessing.
The Sunday service at Jordan's church was equally moving--and as long! The liturgy was straight BCP with Eucharistic Prayer B, and Jordan had eight of us listed as con-celebrants, and we all joined him at the altar for the Great Thanksgiving. Seven of us were Episcopal priests from a number of places, and one was a UU minister from Atlanta! All were African-American except me. In fact, the organist and one person in the congregation were the only other white people in attendance. The parish has a mixture of African-Americans and people from the Caribbean. Quite a few young people and children, and Jordan has already revitalized a youth group. He went there in July, was given the title of rector, even though he was just a deacon, because the bishop felt that was important for the congregation, which had basically been neglected by the diocese for years. They hadn't had a bishop's visit for three years. (Bishop Gutierrez is also new.). 
All in all, it was a wonderful day, and it was touching to see how the congregation has embraced Jordan and is enthusiastic about working with him. They've already had a vestry retreat up at Pendle Hill, led by Lloyd Casson, who used to head up the desk at 815 that had to do with ethnic minorities. He was there on Sunday--what a delightful man!
Enough--probably way more than you wanted to know!!