TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION

“Order” and “presbyter” are not everyday words in our vocabulary, since we think of order as a quality of life rather than a collective noun, and “priest” usually does just fine in everyday conversation. Yet each word has deep roots in our tradition. At an ordination we select men for service to the community.

 Ordo is a Latin word drawn not from pagan religious life but from Imperial Rome. It meant a distinct body standing apart from the people, such as a body of people responsible for civil governance, senators for example. Think of the selectmen or board of governors in your civic home, and you will get the idea. The church borrowed the term to describe the place of certain people within the people of God, thus the “order of deacons,” “the order of presbyters,” and even “the order of virgins, catechumens, widows, neophytes, penitents,” and so on, as distinct groups within the church.

 Just as ancient Rome had various uniforms for the ranks and stations in civil life, so too did certain garments give clues to membership in an “order” in the church. So, our tradition favors the idea of an ordination liturgy not as receiving something so much as being received. This is clearly expressed in the liturgy. The “kiss of peace” is given only by priests to the newly “ordained,” not by the faithful, the deacons, or the bishops who are present.

—James Field, © Copyright, J. S. Paluch Co.