Brisbane Ordinariate Ordinations!

It seems strange, but a quick search of the Brisbane Archdiocesan website, and then a google or two, has failed to turn up any mention – other than reportage of the announcement of the date and venue some months ago – of the ordination of several incoming Anglicans for the Ordinariate this Thursday just past, the Feast of St Luke.

However, all is well, the happy event has indeed taken place, there has been no unforeseen delay: I finally found this mention in the weekly bulletin of St Stephen's Cathedral:

Thank you to everyone who assisted in any way with the Ordinations on Thursday evening. Your assistance was very much appreciated.

The bulletin also included this pleasant reflection, which I assume the author will be happy enough for me to quote in extenso:

Witnesses to Christ

I always get a certain thrill out of attending an ordination. Not only do they remind me of my own ordination, but they remind all of us that we are called to offer our lives in service of the Church and the Gospel. For me, an ordination stands as a pertinent reminder that the Church is not primarily about the past, but is in fact about the present and the future.

On Thursday night, as many of you would be aware, we celebrated the ordinations of Lyall Cowell and Tony Iball to the Priesthood and Stephen Hill to the deaconate. All ordinations are a significant moment in the life of the church; however these ordinations had an extra significance. These men were being ordained to minister to the newly instituted “Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross,” which is often referred to as, “the Anglican Ordinariate”. This ordinariate was created by the Holy Father as a vehicle to allow some Anglican communities to enter into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

In his homily on Thursday night, Archbishop Mark Coleridge made a very important point. While we can get caught up with a lot of “church speak” and perhaps even find the various complexities of the church’s structure bewildering at times, the purpose behind Thursday’s ordinations is remarkably simple. These men, like all ordained ministers and indeed the whole church, are called to witness to Christ. That is to say, they are called to look upon Christ with the eyes of faith, to hear his voice and to experience his power, and then to testify to the truth of what they have experienced. While members of the Ordinariate may speak in an accent which is new to the Catholic Church, the message is the same, Jesus Christ risen and active in our world.

The church does not speak with one homogeneous voice, with a single monotonous expression. Rather, it speaks with the rich sounds of many voices. All of us, in a certain sense, speak this message of Christ with a different accent. We each bring something unique, from our own perceptions and experience of Christ. The challenge for each of us is to add our own voices to the “great cloud of witnesses” which is the church.

Please keep [Deacon] Stephen, [and Fathers] Lyall and Tony in your prayers as they begin this new chapter in their lives as witnesses to Christ.

Fr Michael Grace

In any case, here is the Collect of St Luke, in two forms from the Anglican Patrimony, to pray for blessings on all involved, and all others:

Almighty God, who calledst inspire Luke the physician, whose praise is in the Gospel, to be an Evangelist, and Physician of the soul; May it please thee, that, by the wholesome medicines of the doctrines delivered by him, all the diseases of our souls may be healed; through the merits of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.  (1662 BCP) 

Almighty God, who didst inspire thy servant Luke the physician to set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of thy Son: Graciously continue in thy Church the like love and power to heal, to the praise and glory of thy Name; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.  (Book of Divine Worship)