This past weekend the youth confirmation candidates participated in a two day retreat. Their art project was to make chasubles for themselves. A chasuble is the sleeveless, poncho like garment worn by the celebrant at the Eucharist. In the church of England the one who presides over the Eucharist is call the president. In the United States that word has obvious baggage, so the authors of our Book of Common Prayer call the presider in the Episcopal Church the celebrant. But aren’t chasubles only worn by priests? Hebrew scripture speaks of the people of Israel as a royal priesthood; a holy nation. St. Paul speaks of the priesthood of all believers.
In the early church of the second century chasubles were worn by each person, men and women, in the Eucharistic assembly. The priest, originally called presbyter, which in Greek means wise elder, would be the one set apart to preside, preach and teach; someone has to do it; but the point to be made here is that the assembly gathered is the celebrant. It is the assembly that consecrates the bread and the wine; the bread and wine symbols of our very lives and labor, transformed at our behest into the body and blood of Christ, a profound symbol as well of a shared life of sacrifice for the nurture of our world….we now body and blood given for the world’s sake.
In as much as we, the people of God, are predisposed to live a life of loving sacrifice, we are all priests, all saints…all windows onto the nature of God Godself. It was moving to see the ardor with which our youth gave themselves to this project, and moving to see them proudly wearing the vesture of priesthood in the service this past Sunday. Perhaps they already had an instinctive understanding of their true nature; their true calling. I won’t forget it, and neither will they. Some of our youth one day will actually be ordained to the priesthood, but they will be one among peers….peers of the promise….peers whose only work is to consecrate the world…re-imagining the world into the way God intends it….a royal priesthood, a holy people…bearers of God’s very life….royal vesture indeed.
