BY KELSEY THOMAS ’21
COPY CHIEF
“I was like, ‘I don’t really have a lot to do with my time. I’ll join this choir for this church, like, why not?’” the Rev. Rachael “Jac” Essing ’20 said, reflecting on her journey to the diaconate. “And then I find myself telling the bishop, ‘Yeah, I [can] commit my life to this, actually.’”
On Saturday, April 10, Essing was ordained to the Sacred Order of Deacons at Christ Church Cathedral in Springfield, Massachusetts. The service was livestreamed to the church’s Facebook page so all who were unable to attend the event in person could celebrate the milestone remotely. Though Essing jokingly described her religious journey as a “stumble,” the four years she spent in the formation process, actively contemplating and learning from professors at different theological schools, indicate otherwise.
“I was 23 when I officially started the process and entered as a postulant. … I got my psych evals done, [and] I met with a couple of committees for the diocese,” Essing, now 27, explained. “I was able to do that concurrently with [Province 1] School for Deacons.”
During this time, Essing read “Many Servants: An Introduction to Deacons” by Ormonde Plater, which she said altered her view of ministry. She recalled thinking, “I don’t have to be a rector at a parish and deal with broken toilets … and try to also answer how the [Holy] Trinity is like, one God but three?” The realization that another option existed, one that more closely aligned with her passions, left a major impact on her understanding of holy servitude. “I can just focus on like, trying to help people understand that they are beloved children of God, and that we maybe all deserve food and shelter and belonging to one another? … That’s dope, I wanna do that,” she added.
Though the knowledge Essing gained during the formation process helped cement her decision to join the ministry, at this time, she had already spent years proving her commitment to the Episcopal Church. In 2015, she joined the Lawrence House Service Corps, a faith-based internship program sponsored by All Saints’ Episcopal Church in South Hadley, where she spent two years volunteering in the local community.
As a Lawrence House intern, she served as a peer chaplain at Mount Holyoke’s own Eliot House, planning interfaith events and offering students her unique spiritual perspective. Today, she works with Enlace de Familias’ House of Colors program in Holyoke but remains connected to Lawrence House as its pastoral assistant.
Essing described being “humbled” during her first year at Lawrence House. “I had two housemates who were just a couple years older and way cooler than me and, like, way smarter and more informed about … the happenings of the world,” she said.
In 2017, Essing transferred to Mount Holyoke as a junior from a community college in her home state of Iowa. She admired the “passion for social justice” that she saw in her peers and credits her time at Mount Holyoke for widening her perspective. “Everyone [at Mount Holyoke] is very eloquent and hard-working and quick to provide feedback,” she said. “I saw [that both] in the classroom and in conversations, especially with Eliot House.”
Essing graduated from Mount Holyoke in the fall of 2020 with a sociology major, a religion minor and a Nexus minor in nonprofit organizations. Sitting in her first sociology class as a “misty-eyed Iowan girl who just want[ed] to help people,” she came to recognize the importance of being not only well-intentioned, but well-informed.
“Being a sociology major [made] me realize even further just how little I knew and how much I could learn by just straight up listening to people,” Essing said. “Part of the diaconate is community organizing, and [the first step of] a lot of community organizing is … asking questions and shutting up and listening.”
Essing is a proud Western Massachusetts-transplant who considers all she does for the area not a “job,” but a form of “community organizing.” When she thinks ahead to the next step — being appointed to a parish — she has no specific preferences as long as she gets to stay with the communities she’s spent years getting to know.
“I really like serving the communities of Hampden County — Springfield and Holyoke, specifically — and would be open to others. And other than that, I don’t have, like, a preference over ministry of ‘I want to be in food justice’ or ‘I want to be in prison chaplaincy.’ Some deacons might have those preferences,” Essing said. “I don’t, just because, one, I am new, but two, like, that just doesn’t work for my understanding of the diaconate [as] community organizing.”
One day, when Essing was 14, she agreed to go on a weekend retreat with a friend — a “church thing” — a trip that ended up changing the trajectory of her life. “What a weird, weird thing. If I didn’t say yes to my friend’s invitation, … I guess I’d still be in Iowa,” she reflected.
But the Venerable Janice L. Grinnell, archdeacon of the Episcopal diocese of Rhode Island, who gave the sermon at Essing’s ordination, expected nothing less of Essing.
“I wish that you could see all of the people who are watching you from afar so that you could know how many of us are here to support you not only today, but in all of your days to come,” Grinnell said to Essing in her sermon. “You have blessed all of us who you have touched in the time that we have known you — family, friends, peers in school and colleagues, now, in ministry.”
“It’s still very surreal, even after Saturday,” Essing confessed. But she expressed gratitude for where she’s been and hope for where she’s going.
“I don’t need to have it figured out,” Essing said. “I don’t need to have this picturesque goal and, like, a guidepost along the way, as much as I would like that sometimes, if I just keep, like, waking up and trying my best.”