05.10.2023
CITI Ordinands Commissioned as Student Readers
Five Ordinands at the Church of Ireland Theological Institute were commissioned as Student Readers yesterday evening (Wednesday October 4) by Archbishop Michael Jackson.
Matthew Campbell (Down and Dromore), Cennis Chikezie (Meath and Kildare), Luke Hawkins (Meath and Kildare), Victoria Hawkins (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory) and Joshua Pringle (Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh) are first year Student Ordinands at CITI. Archbishop Michael Jackson presided at the service in the College Chapel which was full to capacity for the occasion.
The students were presented to the Archbishop for licensing by the Revd Dr Patrick McGlinchey who coordinates student placements. Student readers are called to lead worship, proclaim the word and assist in the distribution of the bread and wine of Holy Communion.
The preacher at the service was the Archbishop. He focused on the readings [Exodus 17.1–7; psalm 78.1–4, 12–16; Philippians 2.1–13; St Matthew 21.23–32] and on what he termed the “fledgling Ecumenical Project of Deep Kenosis”.
St Paul, he said, was clear that he needed to help to correct an imbalance in understanding, however unpopular. “St Paul, through individual experience, through theological study and through personal insight into how God on earth lived and worked, has come up with the one word: kenosis (self–emptying) to describe who Christ Jesus was and what he did. And he knew that it had to do with the mind every bit as much as with the heart: Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness (Philippians 2.5, 6),” he stated.
The Archbishop said that the students in the Institute of Great Prayer and Long Study were being prepared and were preparing one another for collaborative learning to work wherever God called them to go and to be. They were being commissioned to serve as student readers in the diocese in which they lived and were passionate about wanting to share this teaching on kenosis, he added.
You can read the Archbishop’s sermon in full here.