Monday, June 19, 2006

Ordination Season

We're right into the season of ordinations now, certainly within the Church of Ireland anyway. With our church having the three-fold order of Bishops, Presbyters (also known as priests for etymological reasons, being a contraction of the word presbyter, meaning 'elder'), and Deacons, and with the office of deacon generally being for one year prior to the priesting, it means that candidates have two ordinations in two successive years...

Last night in the Cathedral we had the ordination of four Presbyters - Denise Acheson, Rory Corbett, Robin Harris, and Aonghus Mayes. Which means that for this week, there are no deacons in the Diocese of Down and Dromore, until Adrian Dorrian (a regular reader and recent comment contributor), Craig Cooney, and Paul Bates are ordained (DV) on Sunday night in Shankill Parish Church, Lurgan.

Anyway, back to last night for now. The anthem by the choir was 'Jubilate in B Flat' by Charles Villiers Stanford - for a taster, check out the link from the title. Some of the other hymns weren't really well known - or with unusual tunes, but we managed to get through ok.

The ordination season is bringing it home to me again about how soon it will be my turn - as the third years from college are ordained deacons over the next week or so...

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