Investiture Reflections: Becoming a Kierkegaardian Hero

Being invested with the ecclesiastical garb is considered by many as the highlight or the peak of one’s life here in the college seminary and as someone who can attest to this, I’d like to share my reflection about it with the help of my friend, Soren Kierkegaard. His “Knight of Faith” is something which I really think is apt to describe what it means to wear the cassock and surplice.

He infinitely renounces the love that is the substance of his life.

Kierkegaard proposed for a creation of a whole new kind of human being as he aims to achieve his infamous “Authentic Existence”. This kind of human has an almost superhuman kind of strength and greatness. Wearing the garb transforms one to different person indeed, which is why I think that to wear something like that means to become a man of change, a man of faith, a Knight of Faith, just as what Soren is saying.

There are so many things that entails that beautiful cassock and surplice. The garb itself symbolizes so many things and to the one who wears it is expected so many things. It is a symbol of blessing, which asks a seminarian to be always grateful for it and to never forget to be. It is a symbol of power , which asks a seminarian to use it for nothing but service. To use it for selfish reasons is a very, very wrong move. The garb also symbolizes responsibility which asks a seminarian to be responsible for it. All of this makes a whole new kind of human being. All of this makes one a Knight of Faith.

During the Investiture, after almost crying of joy as I wore my cassock and surplice, there was one thing that the bishop said that I believe I’ll never forgot and that was his statement: “Tungkulin ninyong manindigan sa ating pananampalataya. Kayo ang dapat and kaunahang manindigan dito.” Upon hearing this, I immediately told myself that we’re college seminarians, not a bunch of Holy Priests or Martyrs. But then, it’s what we are entitled to do as a seminarian and at the very basic, as a Christian. To become a Knight of Faith is to be a Guard of the Faith. To be one entails defending the faith at any cost.  That is what it is.

In the middle of a world swallowed by chaos and so many upheavals, we were invested. Just in the same timeline wherein modernity is paving its way to the very corners of every place, we wore our garbs. Now that the world and all its peoples have their different concerns and most aren’t paying attention to the things of the world, we faced them with a new identity. The world right now is scary and true, just like the Knight of Faith feels the disconnectedness of things in his bones, we feel the world in us as well yet it is in me that I find the strength to unify my world, to hold it together with an act of will, my faith.

Soren Kierkegaard said that his Knight of Faith is one who could grasp his own freedom and create his own destiny and indeed, this is what the seminary is teaching in the very first place. It teaches us to discern what it is that we really want. To be a knight of faith is to grasp and understand the meaning of our lives specially now that we are under the formation walls of the seminary. To understand why we do things and comply to everything with obedience. To be free and to create my destiny is to understand my existence and that’s when, I believe, the authenticity of one’s own existence begins.

My favorite description about this Kierkegaardian Hero is that which says that it is an individual who has looked profoundly into the world of men and has seen that in the deepest level that we are alone, for this hero is alone with his God. To become like one is to be with God and to be with nothing else and no one else but God. It is an expectation for an invested seminarian to have a look at the world deeply for him to realize that there’s nothing in the world to depend on but God alone.

Kierkegaard once said: “Each shall be great in proportion to the greatness with which he strove. For he who strove with the world became great by overcoming the world. He who strove with himself became greater by overcoming himself. But he who strove with God became greater than all.”

For me, this sums up my investiture. It felt great, being invested. And why is that? Because we become great by overcoming the world and ourselves and we did it with God.