By Stephen Robbins
“Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be.” (Jn 12:26)
Over the past few years at Saint Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, I have had the blessing to sing in the choir at the diaconate ordination for the New York dioceses. This passage above from John’s Gospel is the Entrance Antiphon for the Mass of Ordination of Deacons.
Each year, while we sang this verse as I saw my friends process up the aisle, preparing to lay down their lives for Jesus, I felt my soul flooded with immense joy. I would feel a fire burning within me, desiring to likewise lay down my life for Him as I looked forward to my own ordination one day. I too wished to serve Him and to follow Him wherever He led me. After so many years of formation, it is hard to believe that now it is my turn to lay down on the floor in submission to His will!
Throughout my initial years of formation, I have sometimes been so excited to be a priest that I wished I could just fast forward to ordination day. I thought much like Saint Peter at the Last Supper: “Why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you” (Jn 13:37).
I felt a great desire to do heroic things for Christ, and still do. Yet, the Lord in His mercy has shown me over the years that following Him as a deacon and eventually as a priest is not about my own merits in desiring to be a hero, but receiving a gift that can only be given by the Lord Himself.
Pope Benedict XVI, commenting on Saint Peter, says, “He must learn that even martyrdom is no heroic achievement: rather, it is a grace to be able to suffer for Jesus. He must bid farewell to the heroism of personal deeds and learn the humility of the disciple. His desire to rush in — his heroism — leads to his denial.”
Like Peter, I have come to learn that my vocation is not something that I have earned, but a gift, and boy am I grateful for it!
As May 15th approaches, please pray for my classmates and me, that we may more fully “conform our way of life always to the example of Christ,” as we will promise on ordination day. We are extremely excited to serve you, the people of the Diocese of Camden, following the example of the Good Shepherd, who “did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt 20:28). May the Lord bless our Diocese with an increase of vocations, and may Camden flourish!
Stephen Robbins, Third Theology, attends Saint Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y.
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