This is a translation of a revised version of a talk I delivered at the Major Seminary Our Lady of Suyapa, the national seminary, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on September 20, 2016, at the invitation of the seminary rector, Father José Mario Bacci.
On July 15, 2016, Bishop
Darwin Andino ordained me a deacon for the diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán,
Honduras. I am the third permanent deacon ordained in Honduras, the first in
our diocese, and the first celibate permanent deacon in Honduras.
If you had told me three
years ago that I would be an ordained deacon, I would have given you all the
reasons why not. Now I think I can give you some reasons why.
I believe that I am a
deacon because this is the way the God wants me, at this stage of my life, to
live out my baptismal commitment – to love God and love my neighbor, believing
in God, and letting myself be formed into Christ Jesus, prophet, priest, and
servant-king – with the help of the grace of the sacrament.
At the end of August, my
pastor, Padre German Navarro, asked me about my experience as a deacon. In one
sense, I am not doing much more than what I was doing before my ordination –
training catechists and leaders of youth groups, preparing materials for
workshops, visiting distant communities, bringing them communion. Some things
have changed: I am baptizing, preaching, burying the dead, and assisting at the
altar. But, looking from the outside, not much has changed.
I think that not doing
much new can be seen as a confirmation of my ordination. Looking back, I see a
pattern emerging that has led to my ordination and my ministry as a permanent
deacon. There are threads that God has woven in my life so that I assume the
mantle of deacon.
I grew up in a blue
collar family, outside of Philadelphia. My father wasn’t Catholic, but I was raised
as a Catholic, studying in the parish grammar school.
This was the time of the
beginning of the civil rights movement and I began to be aware of the racism
and injustice in the United States.
I thought I had a
vocation to the priesthood with the Franciscans and spent high school and two
years of college in their minor seminary. I left because I was not mature
enough to really live as a priest.
Those seminary years,
1961 – 1968, were very formative for me, marked by a number of events.
The Second Vatican
Council, 1963 to 1965 was an important event for the church and for me, as I
saw the church opening to the world.
I had developed a strong
interest in the liturgy and this became closely related to social justice. In
the US, the movement for liturgical reform was tied very closely with social
justice, beginning in the 1930s with the work of a Benedictine monk, Fr. Virgil
Michel, and others.
Those seminary years were
the years when the civil rights struggle became more intense, with the
nonviolent struggle of US blacks and the nonviolent leadership of Martin Luther
King, Jr.
In my high school years,
I became aware of the holocaust and Nazism. I was a Little concerned about what
seemed to be a weak response by the Catholic Church and wondered how I might be
called to respond to social evil.
During these years, the
war in Viet Nam intensified. Even though I would have a religious exemption
when I registered for the draft, I still wondered if I could ever participate
in war.
When I left the seminary,
I began to study philosophy at a Jesuit university, the University of Scranton.
I was involved in the church as well as in anti-Viet Nam war protests.
Afterwards, I studied four years in graduate school in New York City at a
private university, where three of my professors were Jewish émigrés from Nazi
Germany. I got a Masters’ degree but left New York before finishing my
doctorate.
I
worked for several years in a variety of jobs.
First
I taught for two years in a small Catholic high school in Indiana – religion,
freshman English, choir.
Then I moved back to
Scranton where I worked in a home for children and youth with social, psychological,
and behavioral problems. I also taught philosophy part-time at the university,
After several years I was
informed that there would not be any opportunities to teach the following year.
So I applied for a position with the Vermont Ecumenical Council as coordinator
of efforts to promote peace from the perspective of faith.
I worked there for 13
months and then spent six months as a volunteer for the Fellowship of
Reconciliation, an interfaith pacifist organization.
I returned to graduate
studies, this time at Boston College, another Jesuit university, where I taught
two classes a semester, took three or four classes for three semesters, and
prepared to write my dissertation.
In my fourth semester there, after
finishing all the classes and pre-doctoral examinations I needed to take, I
only had to write the dissertation.
But I felt a certain
restlessness. I loved teaching and was ready to write the dissertation but I
felt something missing.
I saw an ad for a
position at St. Thomas Aquinas Church and Catholic Student Center at Iowa State
university in Ames, Iowa, working in campus ministry and justice and peace
ministry. I had heard of the parish. The combination of working with students
and justice and peace work from a faith perspective responded to my vision of
my calling. I applied for the position, went for the interview, and was hired.
There The parishioners
introduced me to the situation of Central America, especially the refugees
fleeing the wars in El Salvador and Guatemala. In 1985 I made my firsts visit
to Central America and fell in love with El Salvador, which I visited many
times. Monseñor Oscar Romero, now blessed, became a great inspiration for my
ministry.
The parishioners also
moved me to direct contact with the poor and I began to involve others indirect
service to local poor.
In 1992, I spent seven
months of a sabbatical in El Salvador, working for six months in the parish of
Suchitoto with the Salvadoran pastor and five US sisters. They sent me to work
in the farthest region of the parish, a four hours walk from the city of
Suchitoto. I lived with a family, sleeping in a hammock to avoid displacing
anyone from a bed.
It was a time of great
blessing – working with the people, helping the pastoral work, training
catechists, and living with a family – eating tortillas and salty beans, going
to the river to bathe, using a primitive latrine. But I woke each morning with
a deep sense of thanksgiving.
I also began to teach
classes at the university, in both philosophy and religion. I also worked a bit
with the national Catholic Campus Ministers Association, planning a national convention.
I was generally content –
and planned to continue until retirement. At times, I looked for other
positions – but almost always seeking to combine faith and peace and justice,
often with students.
But something happened. Hurricane
Katrina hit New Orleans.
Soon after this happened,
a college student I worked with bothered me so much that we organized a group
to go help in New Orleans for the 2006 spring break. We worked with Catholic
Charities, cleaning out and cleaning homes which had flooded.
One day we went to empty
the house of a black woman who had raised her children and grandchildren in the
house. As we were emptying out the house, with her looking on, God hollowed out
a place in me, emptying my heart.
God was calling me to
something more. It was a classic case of what Ignatius Loyola called the
magis.
Sharing this with my
spiritual director, she asked me, “Why?” My immediate response, without
thinking was, “To serve those most in need.”
Two months earlier, I had
told her that I was content with my work and had no intention of changing it.
But now, I wanted to change, leaving the security of my employment.
What had happened? I had
encountered a real person suffering, which provoked a meditation of the
limitedness of life. I experienced a lack of attachment to my possession. But,
above all, God opened me, he hollowed out a place in me, so that God could fill
it with a life of service more committed directly with the poor.
I had a friend whom I
knew from Suchitoto. Sister Nancy was working in the dioceses of Santa Rosa de
Copán, Honduras. She arranged a meeting with the bishop, Monseñor Luis Alfonso
Santos, who gave me a green light to work in the diocese.
Bishop Santos wanted me
to work in campus ministry at the Catholic University campus, but I wanted
something more. Some Franciscan sisters opened the way for me to help in a
kindergarten in a poor neighborhood as well as to visit the local prison
helping in a literacy program. I also often visited Hogar San José, a home for
malnourished children under five, run by the Missionaries of Charity.
A priest invited me to
visit his parish, Dulce Nombre de María, and I soon began to regularly visit
the parish helping with catechists and other projects, after consulting with
the bishop.
Later, in 2009, Monseñor
Santos asked me to help in Caritas as associate director. I worked as a
volunteer there and helped in some projects and had the chance to participate
in several national Caritas projects on peacemaking. I especially enjoyed the opportunity
to help the diocesan program in Catholic Social Thought and prepare a book for
the base communities. It was a real blessing to work with leaders in several of
the deaneries of the diocese.
I continued to work in
the parish of Dulce Nombre even as I worked with Caritas.
But at the end of 2014,
after consulting the new bishop, Monseñor Darwin Rudy Andino, I left Caritas to
help full time in the parish.
One night, during the
three days Bishop Darwin was celebrating 500 confirmations in the parish. Padre
German Navarro, Monseñor Darwin, and I were sitting around the dinner table.
After asking me about my education and formation, the bishop asked me to
consider the permanent diaconate.
A few months before that,
Padre German had also suggested it but I explained to him some of my concerns –
including the possibility that the diaconate could create – or widen – the
breach between me and the people I serve. I still had those concerns, but I
promised the bishop to consider his proposal. By the way, Padre German had not
mentioned to the bishop his conversation with me. The bishop’s question came
from himself.
I immediately began to
study the diaconate, reading articles, books, and church documents in English
and Spanish. I talked with some of my friends here and in the US. I e-mailed a
priest friend – whom I’ve known since summer camp after fifth grade. He had
been the director of the diaconate in his archdiocese.
And I prayed.
Two months later, I told
the bishop that I was open to beginning the process.
Why the change?
The first article I read
was an interview with Deacon William Ditewig,[1] which
gave me a good idea of the meaning and roots of the permanent diaconate.
The Nazis imprisoned many
Catholic priests and Protestant pastors. More than 2,500 were held in the
Dachau concentration camp. There various priest began to discuss the situation
of the rise of Nazism: “…why wasn’t the church able to somehow influence
society to prevent all of this from happening? What can we do in the future so
this doesn’t happen again?”
In their reflections they
noted that the Church had visible images of Christ as priest and king, but it
did not have a tangible image of Christ the Servant. And so they discussed the
possibility of the permanent deacon where men with jobs in the secular world
would have a role in connecting the Church with that world.
After the war several
priests wrote major articles on the diaconate. In 1947, the Jesuit theologian
Karl Rahner began writing about the diaconate as a permanent state of life.
In the same article,
mentioned above, Deacon William Ditewig emphasized the centrality of service
for the deacon – as a permanent vocation.
I read many of the
documents of the Church. But paragraph 16 of Ad Gentes, the decree on
missions of the Second Vatican Council, was the clincher. I was deeply moved
when I read:
Where Episcopal
Conferences deem it opportune, the order of the diaconate should be restored as
a permanent state of life, according to the norms of the Constitution on the
Church.60 For there are men who are actually carrying out the functions of the
deacon’s office, either by preaching the Word of God as catechists, or by
presiding over scattered Christian communities in the name of the pastor and
the bishop, or by practicing charity in social or relief work. It will be
helpful to strengthen them by that imposition of hands which has come down from
the apostles, and to bind them more closely to the altar. Thus they can carry
out their ministry more effectively because of the sacramental grace of the
diaconate.
I realized that I had
been trying to live – without ordination – the vocation of the deacon. Maybe, I
pondered, I need the sacramental grace of the diaconate to live that life of
service more profoundly, with greater conviction, and more attuned to Christ
Jesus the Servant.
What became clearer to
me, reading many books and church documents, was that, without knowing it, a
diaconal/servant spirituality had been a part of my life for decades.
THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE DEACON
For me, the spirituality
of the deacon has several aspects, including
The deacon ought to live the kenosis, the emptying of
Jesus, making himself servant.
The deacon is an animator, a driving force for service.
The deacon is a sacramental sign, an icon of Christ the Servant.
The
deacon ought to make visible the link between faith and life, between the altar
and the world.
The
deacon is a martyr, a witness of Christ.
Kenosis, emptying:
For
me, the deacon ought to become like Jesus in his emptying, going lower in order
to be a servant, a slave of all:
Have
among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
Who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
Rather,
he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
coming
in human likeness;
and
found human in appearance,
he
humbled himself,
becoming
obedient to death, even death on a cross.
Philippians
2, 5-8 (NAB translation) [2]
Animator
of service
Pope Paul VI said that the deacon is
an animator, a driving force for service.[3] He
doesn’t do everything, but animates all the faithful to live as Christ the
Servant.
Deacon James Keating has written:
The
deacon possesses no unique power by virtue of ordination but possesses a
mission in being sent by the bishop; he evokes from others the power that is
theirs by baptism.[4]
Icon of
Christ the Servant
The deacon is an
icon, a sacramental symbol of Christ the Servant
At their meeting in Puebla, Mexico, in
1989, the Latin American Bishops Conference wrote: Conferencia Episcopal Latinoamericana, Documento de Puebla, 697: “
“The
deacon, co-worker of the bishop and the priest, receives his own specific sacramental
grace. The charism of the diaconate, a sacramental sign of “Christ the
servant,” is very effective in bringing about a poor, servant Church, that exercises
its missionary function for the integral liberation of the human being.”[5]
Making
visible the link of faith and life, especially with the poor
The deacon
ought to make visible the link between faith and life, between the altar and
the world.
In a general audience in 1993 Pope Saint
John Paul II said:
A
deeply felt need in the decision to re-establish the permanent diaconate was
and is that of a greater and more direct presence of Church ministers in the
various spheres of the family, work, school etc., in addition to existing
pastoral structures.[6]
“The
deacon stands at the altar and prepares the gifts with clean hands, but he
stands also where the practical need is greatest, getting his hands very
dirty.”
This is
what being a deacon means to me. But I’d like to share my interpretations of
this quote which I “translated” into Spanish in this way:
El diácono atiende el cuerpo de Cristo en
el altar con manos limpias y llega al altar con manos ensuciadas atendiendo el
cuerpo de Cristo en los pobres y enfermos.
The
deacon assists/attends to the Body of Christ on the altar with clean hands and
comes to the altar with hands which are dirty from assisting/attending to the
Body of Christ in the poor.
I made
an even stronger interpretation:
El
diácono sirve en la mesa del altar con manos limpias, porque se le han
ensuciado las manos sirviendo en la mesa del pobre.
The
deacon serves at the table of the altar with clean hands because he has dirtied
his hands serving at the table of the poor.
The
deacon as witness, martyr
The deacon is an ordinary minister of
communion, and in a special way the minister of the chalice, the Blood of Christ.
He prepares the chalice during the offertory, he raises the chalice at the end
of the Eucharistic Prayer, he purifies the chalice.
The deacon ought to recall not only the
blood of Christ poured out for us, but hte blood of all the martyrs from the
days of the first martyr, the deacon Stephen, to the most recent martyrs in
Latin America and the Mid-East.
I
have a strong devotion to the saints, especially the martyrs – whether or not
recognized by the Church. I particularly cherish the memory of Lawrence, the
most famous deacon of Rome. I was blessed to be able to attend the
beatification of Monseñor Oscar Romero in El Salvador in 2015.
For me, la litany of the saints was one of
the most moving moments of my ordination. I felt enfolded in the cloud of
witnesses, especially the martyrs. I added a few names to the litany, including
Saint Clare and Saint Bonaventure, reflecting my Franciscan roots. I was very
pleased that the young man being ordained a priest at the same Mass had added
the name of Blessed Monseñor Oscar Romero. I suggested another blessed, Charles
de Foucauld, inspiration of the Little Brothers and Little Sisters of Jesus,
who was killed one hundred years ago in Tamanrasset, Algeria, on December 1,
1916.
The martyrs remind me that I have to be
ready to give my life for the people. I don’t want to die a martyr but I
experience great inspiration from the martyrs.
In the words of Archbishop Romero:
My
disposition ought to be to give my life for God, whatever might be the end of
my life. Unknown circumstances will be lived with the grace of God. El assisted
the martyrs and, if it is necessary, I will feel him very near when I hand over
to him my last breath. But more important than the moment of death is to hand
over to him all my life and to live for him.[8]
This spirituality has
sustained me for years – and I pray that it will continue to be evident in my
life as a deacon.
To conclude I’d like to
return to Padre German’s question: “How has your experience as a deacon been?”
What
has changed?
• I sense that the
sacrament had given me the strength, the grace to deepen my life with Christ
the servant.
In the consecration
prayer, the bishop prays;
Así,
también, en los comienzos de la Iglesia, los apóstoles de tu Hijo, movidos por
el Espíritu Santo, eligieron siete hombres de buena fama, como auxiliares suyos
en el servicio cotidiano, mediante la oración e imposición de manos, los dedicaron
al servicio de los pobres…
In
the first days of the Church moved by the Holy Spirit, the apostles of your Son
appointed seven men of good repute to assist them in the daily service… By
prayer and the laying on of the hands the apostles dedicated them to the
service of the poor.[9]
•I now sense myself more sensitive
to the sick, the weak, the aged, those in need. I am visiting the poor a little
more frequently and I will try to visit once a month the malnourished children
under five in the Hogar San José in Santa Rosa, run by the Missionaries of
Charity.
 |
| Going with Juan Ángel (RIP) to take communion to his ill parents the day after my ordination |
In the examination of the
person chosen for the diaconate, the bishops asks:
¿Quieres
mantener y fomentar el espíritu de oración que corresponde a su manera de vida
y, en este espíritu, según su estado, cumplir fielmente con la celebración de
la liturgia de las horas, en nombre de la Iglesia, más aún, en nombre de toda
la comunidad?
Are you
willing to maintain and deepen a spirit of prayer appropriate to your way of life
and, in this spirit, to celebrate faithfully the Liturgy of the Hours in the
name of the Church and, even more, in the name of for the whole community?
• I feel myself in
solidarity with the world when I pray the Liturgy of the Hours. The night of my
ordination, praying the psalms of Vespers, I had the sense that I was praying
with and in the name of the Church and the community.[10] Even
when I didn’t personally fear the anxiety of the psalmist, I felt that I was
praying in the name of those who were anxious and troubled in spirit.
• I also find myself
praying even more the Jesus Prayer.
•I even feel myself aided and strengthened in the face of temptations.
• More than anything
else, I feel a deepening of my baptismal call, a call to be conformed even more
to Christ the Servant.
That
is what being a deacon means to me.
[1] A call of their own: The role of deacons in the
church, US Catholic, June 2014.
http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/201406/call-their-own-role-deacons-church-28973
ὃς ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων οὐχ ἁρπαγμὸν
ἡγήσατο τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ,
ἀλλὰ ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν μορφὴν δούλου
λαβών,
ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος…
[3] …inspirador del servicio, o sea, de la diaconía de
la Iglesia ante las comunidades cristianas locales, signo o sacramento del
mismo Jesucristo nuestro Señor, quien no vino a ser servido sino a servir.
El Papa Pablo VI, Carta
Apostólica Ad Pascendum
[4] James
Keating, “Themes for a Canonical Retreat: The Spiritual Apex of Diaconal
Formation,” Forming Deacons: Ministers of Soul and leaven
[5]
“El diácono,
colaborador del Obispo y del presbítero, recibe una gracia sacramental propia.
El carisma del diácono, signo sacramental de «Cristo Siervo», tiene gran
eficacia para la realización de una Iglesia servidora y pobre que ejerce su
función misionera en orden a la liberación integral del hombre”.
[6] Papa Juan Pablo II, Audiencia General, Deacons
Serve the Kingdom of God [Los diáconos sirven el Reino de Dios] (6 de
octubre de 1993), núm. 6.
[7] Rev. Paul McPartlan, “The Deacon and Gaudium et
Spes,” The Deacon Reader (p. 67)
[8] Monseñor Romero, Cuaderno
de Ejercicios Espirituales, 25
febrero 1980.
[9] The English
reads: “In the first days of your Church under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,
the apostles of your Son appointed seven men of good repute to assist them in
the daily ministry, so that they themselves might be more free for prayer and
preaching. By prayer and the laying on of the hands the apostles entrusted to
those chosen men the ministry of serving at tables.” Notice that the Spanish
speaks of entrusting to them “the service of the poor”, where the English
reads, “serving at tables.”
[10] The English version of the rite invites the deacon to
pray the Liturgy of the Hours for the Church. The Spanish invites him to pray
the Liturgy of the Hours in the name of the Church and the whole community.
Quite a difference.
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