Page 70 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 93, No. 3 Spring 2013

PERSPECTIVE
My budding piety did not go unnoticed.
I was baptized as an
infant according to the
liturgy of the Book
of Common Prayer,
though my family
was at best culturally
Episcopalian. Church,
except for an occa-
sional Christmas
pageant, was not
part of my childhood.
In 1950, at age 13, I entered the Second Form at
St. Paul’s. New boys, as I remember, were obliged
to audition for the Choir. If you had a passable
voice, you were drafted to sing for at least a year.
As a result, I found myself in the unfamiliar yet
fascinating realm of liturgy. The various parts
of the service, with their Latin names, together
with the soaring transcendence of the Chapel
“spoke” of something more than the world as I
had known it.
In those days, it was usual for Second Formers,
if they had not been already, to be confirmed at
the School by the Bishop of New Hampshire. Not
being one to follow the crowd, I initially decided
against confirmation. I was, however, confirmed
the following year in a much smaller class of
Third Formers.
This is where “prevenient grace” can do sur-
prising things. After confirmation, the priest
who had prepared us gave each of us a copy of
In God’s Presence, a little book of prayers and
devotional practices. It contained prayers to be
used before and after receiving communion,
together with prayers for morning and evening.
It also had a form for making one’s confession
in the presence of a priest. The rationale offered
for various practices and disciplines, such as
making the sign of the cross and weekly com-
munion, struck me as logical and right, so I did
everything the book recommended, including
making my confession to one of the clergy.
My budding piety did not go unnoticed. One
Sunday afternoon, after cider and donuts at a
clergyman’s home, my roommate returned
with the news that he had been told I should be
ordained. This annunciation was accompanied
by laughter – his, not mine – yet something was
planted within me that grew slowly into not so
much of a call, but a sense of what I can only
describe as rightness.
The prophet Jeremiah speaks of being “enticed”
by God. I think that is what happened to me: the
enticement was mediated largely by the Eucharist.
Without my being aware of it, Christ, through the
seemingly innocent wafer of bread and sip of wine,
was drawing me beyond myself into the force
field of his own deathless life and love.
“By the way of nourishment and strength/
Thou creep’st into my breast,” declared the
16th-century priest-poet George Herbert in
“Holy Communion,” a poem addressed to Christ.
“Only thy grace, which with these elements comes/
Knoweth the ready way/And hath the privy key/
Op’ning the soul’s most subtle rooms . . .”
The daily Eucharist celebrated in the chantry
chapel at St. Paul’s became an occasion of quiet
encounter, which served to intensify and confirm
a sense of call. And, for almost 50 years now,
as a parish priest in Pennsylvania, as bishop of
Chicago, and as presiding bishop of the Episcopal
Church, I have presided at the Eucharist in all
sorts of contexts, in various languages, and in
countries across the world. Christ, all the while,
has continued to creep into my breast, opening
the subtle rooms within me with the secret key
of his grace.
And to think: it all began, following my confir-
mation, on an inauspicious Sunday morning in
the Chapel of St. Peter and St. Paul at St. Paul’s
School. For this, I give thanks.
Frank T. Griswold ’55
25th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church
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