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When Navy Capt. Bradford E. Ableson was vested at his ordination on Aug.25, he was wearing a stole he had not seen since he was a young man some 25 years ago.
The bright red and yellow stole was special to him then and is cherished today, he said. It was made by an Oklahoma fabric artist who incorporated a Seminole pattern into its design, and like many priests’ stoles, this one has a story behind it that provides insight into his vocation.
Two days before his ordination, Ableson was visiting an art museum with the Episcopal priest he says was “my father in the ministry” – the Rt. Rev. Gerald McAllister – when “out of the blue, I asked, ‘Didn’t you used to have vestments with an Indian design? I always thought that was so cool an Episcopal bishop in Oklahoma would wear that.” The bishop, Ableson said, “paused and said, ‘Yes, I did. I’m glad you remembered that.”
Later that evening, Ableson once again saw the stole, which McAllister received shortly after his consecration and had worn many times over the next three decades. The bishop and his wife gave it to Ableson as a gift. “It is without a doubt one of my most cherished possessions,” Ableson said. His mentor had an even more important role in his ordination that day, however, as a co-consecrator with our bishop, the Rt. Rev. Edwin F. Gulick.
Currently chaplain adviser to the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command based in Omaha, Neb., Ableson, a lifelong Presbyterian, attended an Episcopal Church in 1982 in graduate school and spent a year in 1983 at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest. He discontinued his candidacy for the priesthood, but later went on to become an ordained Presbyterian minister. He became a Navy reservist in 1985, going on active duty two years later. There he met Capt. Jay Magness, who became his mentor in the Chaplain Corps until Magness retired in 2003. Magness, our diocese’s canon to the ordinary, introduced him to our bishop and the process began that ended with his ordination into the Episcopal priesthood involving not two but four bishops. (The Rt. Rev. George E. Packard, bishop suffragan of chaplaincies, was a concelebrant, and the Rt. Rev. Joe G. Burnett, bishop of Nebraska, hosted the ceremony.)
The significance of this did not go unremarked. As Magness pointed out in his homily, their presence vividly embodied the apostolic nature of our church and Brad’s call to serve this denomination.
Serving again as mentor, Magness spoke of the essential dimensions of the Church that our leaders must maintain. Our priests, he said, must serve with holiness, which includes knowing where authority and power begin and end, and with catholicity. Anglican catholicity, he cautioned, is not some form of orthodoxy as some argue. “People of this church have spent far, far too much time, effort and energy trying to live into a unique concept of Anglican and orthodox.” He also noted that our leaders must do the hard work of maintaining unity. “I am aware that while some tear at the unifying fabric of the church, you as a shepherd know that the fabric which they attempt to destroy is the very substance of our risen Lord.”
More than 100 people, traveling from as far away as Rome and Hawaii, attended the ordination at Trinity Cathedral in Omaha. Among them was a longtime friend, the Rev. Logan, who served as his presenter. Ableson said they met 24 years ago at the Seminary of the Southwest, but lost touch for several years. In 2000 they reunited after Logan joined the Navy’s Chaplain Corps. Since then, Ableson said, he has had the “pleasure” of being Logan’s mentor, noting that a “wonderful circle of life” has been fulfilled with Logan presenting him for ordination.
