In April I began another pilgrimage: that of reading through the New Testament in Greek. It's slow going, what with me being such an abysmal Greek scholar and everything, but I love it. And, just as the slow procession across Spain, one small step at a time sees progress being made towards Santiago, so this morning, slowly, word by word, I traversed the great arc of the New Testament. Today I had reached John 13, part of that section in the fourth Gospel in which the author describes Jesus' commissioning of his apostles to act in his stead after he is gone. It's twelve men and a few others in a largish room, and seems to take just long enough for a meal and a talk. And I couldn't help thinking of my own, glorious ordination to the episcopate , a ceremony in a much larger room, involving far more people and a longer span of time. In my case there were a couple of hours of ceremonial actions. In the case of the apostles there was just one: Jesus stripped him...