Dear Friends,
This upcoming Saturday, April 29, Archbishop Lucas will ordain Doug Lenz a deacon. He is being assigned to our parish to serve in diaconal ministry. Deacon Larry Mruz, who has been assisting at the Mass on Saturday evenings, will also be assigned to work with us at St. Frances Cabrini. This is wonderful for our parish community. In this Easter season of Good News – it is good news indeed. You may wonder, but just what does a deacon do that cannot be done by a lay person in the parish?
The ministry of the deacon existed in the early church, but fell out of use during the 6th century. It always remained in use in the Eastern Church and was restored in the West by the Second Vatican Council. In the Acts of the Apostles, the ministry of deacon started because the apostles could not do everything being asked of them. The felt they had an important ministry of teaching and preaching, but the needs of widows and orphans and people who were poor or ill were being neglected. Therefore, they asked a group of men to focus their primary work on service to those in need. That is still the case today. The deacon’s primary ministry is of service to those in need.
The deacon goes through a four-year training program in theology and prayer so that they will be prepared to preach. They are ordained for service to the wider archdiocese and not just to the individual parishes. They work for the archbishop, not the local pastor. They are asked to have a broader view than just a parish view. Unlike a lay person in the parish doing some form of service, the deacon makes a lifelong commitment to the ministry. Once they are ordained a deacon, they are always a deacon. That commitment of permanence to service speaks loudly to the wider Christian community especially in an age when people do not make lifelong commitments. I also like to say that they have a ministry of “connecting the dots” – they link the Word of God with the work of service.
The “connecting the dots” is best seen in their ministry at Sunday Mass. The deacon is required to proclaim the gospel. There are other actions he might do during the liturgy that could be performed by others. However, there is a logic to the deacon doing them, especially the general intercessions. Why? Because it ought to be the deacon who really knows the needs of the community and knows the needs of the people. If the deacon is perceived as the servant to the community in every sense of that word, then when you see the “servant” in action liturgically, it should speak of the connection between prayer and service. People should see the deacon and think, “That’s also the guy who visits the sick and those in jail,” or, “This is the guy who goes out and works at the shelter, and now he’s challenging the rest of us, in his homily, to join him.” There ought to be something in the way a deacon preaches that is different from the way I preach. They live in the world, they are husbands and fathers, they go to work each day…they can answer questions like: How do I bring the message of Jesus to my workplace? How do I talk to my neighbor about joining us at church? How do I find God in my marriage?
I think it is significant that the deacon gets the last word at Mass. The Latin ending of the Mass is “Ite, missa est” and that does not mean, “Go, the Mass has ended.” It is a bit hard to translate, but Ite is a Latin word that a Roman commander would use to address his troops. It means “march.” And missa est meant that the Eucharist had already been sent to the sick, now we are being sent, the church is being sent. The deacon is saying, “We’ve got to link this Eucharist with mission. Let’s go do that.”
Please, welcome soon-to-be Deacon Lenz and Deacon Mruz to our parish. If you are aware of some need that is not being attended to, bring it up to them. And, following their diaconal example, I invite the rest of us to think about our own service to those in need.
Peace,
Fr. Damian