Seminarian John Pankratz leads procession at St Peter’s in Rome
By John Pankratz
As it says in the Rite of Ordination of Deacons, I will promise at my ordination “to maintain and deepen the spirit of prayer that is proper to my way of life.” Prayer is the essential fuel that sustains the life of any Christian. Yet as the rite indicates, a life of prayer is especially proper and fitting for a Christian man who is ordained to be a cleric. Put simply, a cleric who does not pray is a man whose life is nonsensical and fraudulent. Deacons and priests are men of God, and a man of God must be a man of prayer in order to be what he was ordained to be.
For me prayer is my soul’s communication with God ordered towards loving union with Him. Prayer can take on many forms. It occurs whenever I raise my mind and my heart to receive from God and to give myself back to Him. The rite assumes that this is not something that has just begun on my ordination day, hence the promise not only “to maintain” but also “to deepen.” I will be an effective and faithful minister of the Gospel only to the degree that I am in union with God through prayer. This relationship with God and deepening of it was first initiated by God before I was ever born, and it has been repeatedly renewed by God’s grace throughout my lifetime. I am called because God loved me first. The conscious response of loving obedience to this call to relationship is both the duty and the glory of every Christian soul, and especially for me as a man called to be God’s minister on earth.
Following this, it is important to realize that both my duty and my free loving response are not opposed to each other, rather they mutually reinforce my relationship of union with God. Differing from my previous state of life as a single lay Catholic, at ordination I will take on additional responsibility on behalf of the Christian people, particularly the people of our diocese, by solemnly promising to pray for them and for the whole world. This duty, which I will take up out of freedom, is manifested in a special way in my celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours. In my daily recitation of the Liturgy of the Hours I enter in an intimate way into the eternal and sacred dialogue between Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride the Church. With Christ I intercede for his spouse the Church before the Father, that she might be filled with Divine life and grace. And with the Church I bring the needs and desires of the People of God to the throne of Christ the Bridegroom, with loving trust that he will provide everything for her. Within the Liturgy of the Hours the prayers are predominantly from the Book of Psalms, and in the Psalms this dialogue between the Divine Bridegroom and his Bride the Church finds its most privileged expression in human language. Through my solemn promise at ordination I will enter into this ongoing and eternal reality in a special way.
In summary, I must be a true man of prayer, such that my life does not make sense apart from the maintaining and deepening of my spirit of prayer. Through prayer, I communicate with God in the deepest recesses of my soul, and the union that follows becomes the fount and source of my life and ministry. And through my solemn promise, I will freely take upon myself the duty of prayer with and for the People of God, especially through my daily celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours. In this way, as a mediator between God and man through faithful prayer, I will fulfill the calling solemnized at my ordination to be a true servant of God and his people. John Pankratz is a seminarian for the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings currently studying in Rome and is expected to be Ordained a Deacon in October 2020.
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