Lord, send forth upon him the Holy Spirit, that he may be strengthened by the gift of your sevenfold grace to carry out faithfully the work of the ministry.This mention of the Holy Spirit connects the ordination of a deacon with the Sacrament of Confirmation, in which the bishop or his delegate priest prays for the confirmand to receive the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, right judgment, courage, knowledge, reverence and wonder and awe in God’s presence.”
You enable your Church, Christ’s body, to grow to full stature as a new temple... formed into a wonderful pattern of unity by the Holy Spirit... And so, in the first days of your Church, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, your Son’s Apostles appointed seven men of good repute [see Acts 6:3] to assist them in the daily ministry...Like the rite of diaconal ordination, the rite of ordination to priesthood makes clear, in terms of the Holy Spirit’s work, the connection between the new priest and the faithful he is to lead and to empower:
Almighty Father, grant, we pray, to these servants of yours the dignity of the priesthood. Renew deep within them the Spirit of holiness... By their manner of life, may they be examples of right conduct. May they be worthy coworkers with the Order of Bishops, so that by their preaching and through the grace of the Holy Spirit, the words of the Gospel may bear fruit in human hearts and reach even to the ends of the earth.On one hand, the “Spirit of holiness” which the ordaining bishop calls on to renew "deep within" the new priest, is the same Spirit who continually renews the call to holiness applicable to all Christians. On the other hand, if we understand the prayer of consecration of a priest linguistically (“Spirit of holiness” derives from the Latin, “spiritus consilii,” or Spirit of counsel), priests share in the Spirit in the counsel, or good judgment, of the “order of bishops.” A priest, then, is a bridge between all the faithful, inspired by the Holy Spirit to live the universal call to holiness, and bishops, inspired by the same Spirit to govern the Church. The rite of ordination of a bishop reinforces this unity in the Holy Spirit:
So now pour out upon this chosen one the power that is from you, the governing Spirit whom you gave to your beloved Son, Jesus Christ; the Spirit given by him to his holy apostles, who founded the Church in every place to be your temple for the unceasing glory and praise of your name.As such, the bishop, who governs in communion with his brother bishops and the head of the College of Bishops, the Pope, is united also with priests. In turn, priests are inspired by the Spirit of holiness to which all are called. Deacons in particular are ordained to serve the more direct needs of the faithful, lay and ordained, by disseminating upon the world the manifold yet interrelated gifts of the Holy Spirit, who is forever one God with the Father and the Son. - * pneumatological comes from the Greek pneuma: breath, wind, spirit; and legein: to speak Top: CNS photo/Crosiers Inset: CNS/Paul Haring
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