Billie Abraham takes her vows – and a church|FROM THE CLASSROOM TO THE PULPIT

Published 12:00 am Monday, October 6, 2008

A vocation is persistent.

Billie Abraham’s journey to the Episcopal priesthood has demonstrated this truth over and over again, she said, sitting in her office at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Bovina.

“If you talk to almost any priest, most will say it was not a direct calling,” Abraham said. “There can be lots of hoops to jump through. They are necessary hoops, though, because they slow you down enough to discern what it is that God wants you to do.”

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Abraham’s vocation persisted as she spent years doing other work — teaching school, raising a family, serving as hospital chaplain and overcoming illness. It came to fruition on Sept. 21 as Abraham — her three children, their spouses and her two grandchildren among her presenters — was ordained at St. Alban’s.

More than 200 people — standing-room only for the church that normally seats 120 — came to sing, receive Holy Communion and celebrate the persistence that brought Abraham to that day.

“I’m just so happy that she’s happy and healthy, and that she followed her dreams,” said Amy Burr, a Vicksburg native and resident, and the youngest of Abraham’s children. “This is something she has wanted for a very long time.”

The Right Rev. Duncan M. Gray III, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi, officiated at the service, which also was attended by priests and retired priests and chaplains from Vicksburg, Port Gibson and Jackson-area Episcopal churches. As Abraham was consecrated, the clerics gathered around and placed their hands on her. Gray then placed the red stole signifying priesthood around her shoulders and gave her a Bible “as a sign of the authority given to you to preach the word of God and to administer his holy sacraments.”

Abraham turned, smiled at the congregation, and with a deep sigh and a voice that broke slightly, said, “The peace of the Lord be always with you.”

The service also included a sermon preached by the Rev. Sylvia Czarnetzky of The Chapel of the Holy Cross in Madison, several readings and the bishop’s “examination” of Abraham — questions related to her call to the priesthood and commitment to ministry.

Reflecting on the ordination several days later, she said, “I never expected that many people to be there.”

 “I was so aware of the hands, when they laid hands on me, the pressure and the realization of how powerful touch is.”

Abraham’s work has always been people-centered — 13 years in the classroom, teaching first grade and kindergarten, then three years as a hospital chaplain ministering to cancer patients. Sometimes she faced rejection. Not everyone wanted spiritual comfort, sometimes telling her to get out of the room or simply turning their backs to her when she came in the room. But others asked for her. Going on rounds with the oncologist, Abraham was often able to build relationships with patients, going back later to visit with them one-on-one.

“There is offering to pray with them, but it’s being present and listening that people really need — just being with them as they work through their fears or doubts, or affirm their beliefs.” Her experience there assisted her own spiritual formation, she said. “It’s pastoral care that I love. It’s not a vertical thing — liturgy, then worship, then people. It’s all mixed in together, a relationship. It’s God and the people working together.”

Though privately she’d already had inklings that she was headed toward priesthood, it was her spiritual adviser in the chaplaincy training program who first voiced the possibility: Had she ever considered becoming ordained as a priest?

“Once that question was asked, I knew I needed to do some talking,” she said. In addition to her adviser, she met with a local priest and began discussions with what’s known as a discernment committee, grappling with questions such as, “Why do you feel God is calling you?” and, “What is it that you are called to do?”

In January 2000, divorced and with her children grown and attending college or on their own, Abraham left Mississippi for Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. “It was the ideal time to do it,” she said.

Going back to school was something her children definitely supported, but took a while to understand. “It was a slow process for them to accept, but they knew I loved to study and that I was studying something I was passionate about.”

She lived on campus and, at first, took classes in spiritual topics she wanted to explore. Eventually she earned a master’s degree in divinity and finally enrolled in The College of the South, the Episcopal seminary in Sewanee, Tenn.

While she was in Washington, Abraham’s grandson Jack, now 10, visited her every year. He has memories of those visits, she said, but what is more important to her is that Jack is growing up thinking that church, with his grandmother as the priest, is a natural part of life, just as Gray grew up with his father and grandfather, Duncan Gray Sr. and Duncan Gray Jr., serving as bishops before him. “He was just ‘in’ that environment,” she said of Gray. “My grandchildren will grow up with that.”

Abraham grew up with a hunger for church and spiritual things. Raised as a Roman Catholic, she went to Mass six days a week, sometimes seven. “Liturgy and the sacraments have always been such a big part of my life,” she said. “I can’t imagine life without a spiritual community.”

Even when battling serious illness that could have sidetracked her progress, Abraham found spiritual growth, spending time “in silence, to discern what God’s will is.”

Abraham finished seminary in 2006 and, last year, spent “a remarkable summer” in the Holy Land, studying at St. George’s College Jerusalem and traveling both on her own and as part of coursework. She was also able to go “to England on pilgrimage to important sites in the Episcopal Church.” When she returned home, she entered the search process and soon was back in Vicksburg, having been selected by the Bovina church as its new priest.

Gray estimates that 30 percent of Episcopal priests in Mississippi are women, and said that Abraham’s journey gives her a unique ability to minister.

“She has not simply persisted through the difficulties and challenges, she has grown — spiritually, emotionally —and she is a different person today than she was when I first met her about seven years ago. What she offers is a spiritual depth arising out of her life experiences. And a part of that is her capacity to understand tragedy and the brokenness of human beings.”

Burr, her daughter, said, “We’re just excited and so glad to have her back here. She’s got all of her children, her family, friends, and now she has her church family with her, as well.”

As Abraham began her priesthood last week, she said developing those relationships with the families at St. Alban’s was her first order of business. She quoted the final verse of the closing hymn from her ordination service: “Brother, Sister, let me serve you, let me be as Christ to you; pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant, too.”

“I can look back and say that when doors were closed, they were closed for all the right reasons — even when I didn’t understand it at the time,” Abraham said. “God was in the doors that were opened and in the doors that were closed. Some things happened that slowed me down because that was exactly what I needed to do — because vocations are persistent.”