Editor's Note
“An Unseen Love”
On each occasion when a priest is ordained, I think of a poem by a priest of the Archdiocese of Dubuque, IA, Father Raymond Roseliep (1917-1983). Father Roseliep and his work are not well known these days, but during his lifetime he was considered a master in English of the haiku – that short, three-line form of poetry that originated in Japan. Not all his work was haiku, though, and the poem I recalled as Father Romen Acero and Father Michael Spurr were ordained is about his own ordination, in 1943.
The poem is called “The Linen Bands,” and refers to a part of the Ordination Rite in what is now called the Forma Extraordinaria. In this form, after the Bishop anointed the palms of the ordinandi, he would close the hands so that both palms met, and one of the attendants would bind them with a strip of white linen.
The priest unbolted strands of white, and bound
My thumbs and fingers, like an open wound.
Thus I was tied to Christ, or Christ to me.
Ten years later, that part of the ceremony is the priest’s most powerful memory of that day:
My hands are busy in a blessing way
since then, and they absolve and they unite,
and in our several sacraments, anoint;
they pour a water that is life. Today
I pause to wonder why they often shake
when lifting bread so light within the Mass…
… and I live to comprehend the meaning underneath the stringy bond
That holds them to an unseen love….
Though the form of Ordination has changed, Roseliep’s poem expresses an awe at the act of priestly Ordination that has not. When Father Spurr and Father Acero were ordained last month, you could see it the eyes of the congregants and especially in the eyes of the new priests and their brother priests in attendance. This sacrament is one of those moments in the life of the Church when you feel that the Mystery of God’s own Life is very close indeed.
You can read about Father Spurr and Father Acero on page 12 of this issue, and see pictures of a wonderful moment in the life of our Diocese: the Ordination of two new priests. Thanks for continuing to send me your comments at 715 Nazareth Street, Raleigh, NC 27606 or reece@raldioc.org.