Ordination of Priests
Welcome to Liverpool Cathedral for this service of Ordination of Priests.
We are delighted to welcome those to be ordained, their families and friends, members of the parishes and communities from which they come and in which they will serve, and those who have supported them as they have explored and discerned their call to this ministry.
An extract from the Introduction to the Ordination Services by the House of Bishops of the Church of England:
“The ministry of the Church is the ministry of Christ, its chief shepherd and high priest. The ordained ministry is Christ’s gift to his Church, and in their life and ministry, bishops, priests and deacons are called to speak in Christ’s name and build up the Church of which he is the head. In this way the whole body of the Church is ordered in faithful response to the Lord’s summons to share his work.
The ministry of priests (who continue to exercise diaconal ministry) is focussed in calling the Church to enter into Christ’s self-offering to the Father, drawing God’s people into a life transformed and sanctified.
In all aspects of the Church’s ministry, Christ’s mission is the fundamental and unifying reality. Christ’s ministry and mission turn the Church outwards towards the world that God so loved that he sent his only Son. And they prepare the Church for that goal and end of all things, when Christ himself will present to the Father a world made perfect by his work, when all his people share in the joyful communion of love that binds the Father and the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.”