When I was a young, I wanted to be an “Army Man.” I was a history nerd and history frequently involves conflict, so many of my childhood icons were in the military. The heroes of history always seemed to be the guys who won battles and I wanted to be just like them … that or a ditch digger. I had a colourful book about construction equipment and the ditch digging machine looked like the most fun.

When I got to high school, I wanted to be in politics. All of the influence, intrigue and idealism infatuated me. Well, maybe mostly idealism. I wanted to change society and make the world a better place. I was in student government just because I loved getting elected. You couldn’t imagine a rush like the sophistry of convincing people I was the best candidate to fill a pop machine. There were huge dreams and a small soapbox.

In college I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to help the marginalized. There was endless injustice and I was chomping at the bit to rail against it. Pro bono work held the majority of my interest but the paycheck was tempting too.

As an adult, I just wanted to be a dad. No career could compete with raising a child. I was going to empty myself into the little one and leave a legacy in the goodness I could impart to them. Nothing kept me up at night like the prospect of family.

There is nothing wrong with any of those goals. They’re actually quite good, but I had a selfish interest in all of them. I wanted to put more of myself into the world around me. What is asked and what is needed isn’t for courageous people to form their world into their image but for holy people to sanctify it. Sanctification is not an exercise of personality. It is an unceasing effort to step aside from one’s self and let God bring his grace into the world. God willing, a few years from now I will be asked to look back on all of those dreams and give cast them aside, to give up the imagined image I had of myself and allow myself to become Christ’s image. I’ll be asked to take all of my dreams and desires, all of them, and die to them. An ordination might as well be a funeral. The call of Christ is to come and die and the life of a priest is a prolonged martyrdom. An ordination is a funeral and the collar is a casket.

None of this is bad news, despite how it sounds. Christ bids us to come and die and he tells us we will rise with him as well. If an ordination is a funeral, a priest is a vision of the resurrection. Being lost in Christ means losing our own dreams and agenda and allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed in his wild, extravagant love. It is not the life I had planned for myself. It is life being lived to the absolute fullest. This love is worth the reckless abandon of putting aside wishes and ambition. It’s worth dying for, no matter how long that takes.