‘Tis the season for ordinations!
I am getting lots of questions about what to give the newly ordained.
First and foremost, cash and gift cards are always welcome. It doesn’t seem very personal, but unless you are pretty close to the ordinand, well… I’ll put this delicately… we don’t mind one little bit.
For my next ordinations… as if that’s going to happen!… I’ll take ammo. Thanks in advance.
If you are looking for a book, try The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Ratzinger, though there is a strong chance that he’ll have it already. Another thought is something I have been reading during the last few days. I think it is going to be a great go-to tool in the future, as it provides excellent arguments, responses, and quotes. 
I am already thinking about how I can mine it for upcoming talks. Non-Negotiable: Essential Principles of a Just Society and Humane Culture by Sheila Liaugminas. It is new, so it is unlikely that he’ll have it.
If you go for books, and one link will lead to another, please use my amazon search box.
A gift certificate for your local clerical/religious goods store could work. He is going to have to buy some clerical stuff along the way.
You can perhaps do something collectively. A small group could give something larger, such as a set of Roman vestments or a 1962 Missale Romanum, the missal of St. John XXIII.
If you are in doubt, if you don’t know where a shop is, if you have no idea what you are doing, and even though you may in fact have a good clerical shop near where you live, in these USA you can always get good help from John in church goods at Leaflet Missal Company in St. Paul, MN. He is as traditional as you would ever want, and he can get his hands on just about anything and ship it. You can waste time running around wringing your hands, looking for a place, or you can make a few calls and get the job done. And the people at Leaflet are super. They even give seminarians jobs during the summer if they need them.
And there are always 5 pound packs of Mystic Monk Coffee and other things from their swag store. HERE And there is my swag store too! HERE
Perhaps the readers would like to chime in to say what they have recently, or no so recently, given to the newly ordained.
Perfice as the imperative “perfect” has the force of “bring to completion”. It could be perceived as “perfect” in an instant of time, by a sudden and all embracing act, or it could be construed as being an ongoing process of perfection, of bringing to completion. In a way the Paschale Mystery itself (remember that mysterium and sacramentum are pretty much interchangeable in these contexts) reflects this same problem of our perception of time and God’s work in time, or outside of time, or beyond time. The Paschal Mystery is both completed and not completed. Our redemption is “already” completed, but “not yet” completed. As Christians we live in this pilgrim life, this earthly continuum, in a constant state of “already but not yet”.
The 
Sadly, we also write with concern and dismay at the behavior that Cardinal Gerhard Müller recently exhibited toward women leaders of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) and especially toward Dr. Elizabeth Johnson CSJ.
From a reader…
