Hands of a deacon

A few weeks ago, before the rite of election of the catechumens in our parish on the first Sunday of Lent, we had a special rite of acceptance into the catechumenate of two young men who had been unable to get to the parish celebration in December of the rite of acceptance into the catechumenate.

The signing of the catechumens in the rite of acceptance is, for me, one of the most moving rites. The presider and then the sponsors sign the senses of the one who will become a catechumen. The rite here doesn’t have the signing of the feet, as is found in the US ritual, and so I have introduced it in our parish. It is moving to see the presider and the sponsors kneeling before the one who wants to enter the People of God.

But this time, after singing the hands of the two young men, remarked that he was glad to feel their callouses, signs that they were working men.

Thinking back this reminded me of my ministry as a deacon.

While I was discerning how to respond to my bishop’s invitation to consider the permanent diaconate, I came across this quotation of Father Paul McPartlan who wrote:[1]

“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.”  

I am an anomaly as a permanent deacon.

I am single, celibate for all my life. There are perhaps less than five percent of us celibate deacons, who are not in transition to the priesthood or members of religious orders.

I also work full time in a parish. Most deacons have full-time work outside the parish – some are professionals, others are manual workers. They bring their world of work with them to the altar, showing in a concrete way that the altar and the workplace are not to be separated.

As I understand it, that was one of the concerns of the priests in cell block 26 of the Dachau concentration camps when they wondered why the church’s response to the threat of Hitler and Nazism was so weak. As Deacon William Ditewig put it, “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?” Was the clergy so separated from the daily lives of people that they didn’t see the evil at their doorsteps? Did the church need persons who would bring the experience of their daily life to the altar? Did they need persons who would be the “eyes and ears” of the church in the everyday world

I think that’s a part of what Pope Saint John Paul II was referring to when he said in a 1993 general audience:

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.[2]

What I as a deacon do outside the liturgy is as central to my diaconal identity as what I do at the altar.

In an article[3] Fr. Paul Mc Partland sent me, he wrote:

In preparing the gifts all of the work of the deacon promoting communion between the bishop and the people, solidarity between the Church and the world, and the link between the altar and the workplace is symbolized. All of that work can be seen, in ways more or less remote, as preparation of the gifts: alleviating suffering and hardship so that the needy can feel the love of the Lord, hear the Gospel and respond to it (see Acts 6:1-6); being alongside people at work, sharing their troubles and dreams, helping them to see that all of those matter to the Lord who came to save us and that nothing is beyond the scope of his mercy; keeping the Church’s leaders and members aware of the marginalized and the abandoned, and seeking in every way to facilitate contact and care. In countless practical ways, the deacon is called to connect the world to the saving sacrifice of the Lord, and to help transform the raw material of human life into spiritual sacrifices. If priests must “teach the faithful to offer the divine victim to God the Father in the sacrifice of the Mass and with the victim to make an offering of their whole life” (PO 5), the task of deacons is to help the faithful to do so and to show them how.

Are my hands embracing the poor and the sick? Am I taking up the shovel and the broom to help clean not just the church but the homes of the poor? Am I washing the poor man who has been in his bed for weeks without a bath?

One experience at a diocesan liturgy to celebrate the canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta brought the connection home to me.

I was purifying the vessels after communion. The hosts that we use here have lots of particles and so I was trying to carefully consume the particles and clean the ciboriums. I looked and there in the middle of the aisle in the auditorium were kids from Amigos de Jesús, a home for kids who were orphaned, abandoned, or being raised in precarious situations. I had gone several times to their center and met the kids and spent some time with the volunteers. I also know the directors as well as their priest chaplain (who had not yet been ordained at the time of this Mass.)

As I looked up, I immediately sensed the connection of what I was doing with what they do at Amigos de Jesús. I was caring for the smallest particle of Jesus in the hosts. They are calling for those who are smallest in this world. As I would not want to neglect to care for the smallest particle of the Eucharistic Body of Christ, I don’t want to neglect the smallest and most abandoned child in this world.

The Eucharist is where Jesus and the abandoned of this world come together. As my hands care for the Eucharist, so too must they care for the least among us. Without the one, does the other make sense.

In fact, I feel there is more than a casual connection between them. There is a necessary connection. Thus I have changed the quote of Fr. McPartland:

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.

I write these words on the feast of the martyred bishop Saint Óscar Romero, forty years after he was gunned down at the altar, at the end of his homily. These were the last words he preached, connecting the Body and Blood of Christ with the reality of the world he lived in.

May this Body immolated and this Blood sacrificed for humans nourish us also, so that we may give our body and our blood to suffering and pain — like Christ, not for self, but to bring about justice and peace for our people.
Let us join together, then, intimately in faith and hope at this moment of prayer…[4]

And let us bring our hands – so that Christ may use them for the healing of our world.

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[1] Rev. Paul McPartlan, “The Deacon and Gaudium et Spes,” The Deacon Reader (p. 67)

[2] 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.

[3] Msgr. Paul McPartlan, “Priesthood and the Deacon”, Chicago Studies, Winter 2017, Volume 56:2. pp.48-49

[4] Archbishop Oscar Romero, Voice of the Voiceless: The Four Pastoral Letters and Other Statements, p. 193..  (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985)