Toward a spirituality of service - in the form a critical book review

I didn’t think it was possible. A recent book on a spirituality of service, Discovering Christ the Servant: A Spirituality of Service, by Deacon Dominic Cerrato, Ph.D., mentions the poor ten times but does not make their existence a matter of major concern. 

How is this possible? 

This type of spirituality can be disincarnate. The author may speak of a spirituality of the sacrament of the present moment, but the sacrament of the poor is ignored. As Pope Francis wrote in his 2021 Message for the World Day of the Poor, “The poor are a sacrament of Christ; they represent his person and point to him.”

This is a very brief critique that I need to develop. I admit I may be missing something in the deacon’s two books. But I want to open a larger discussion of a spirituality of service for the deacon and for the entire church. 

The spirituality espoused by the author is intent on making oneself like Christ the Servant – but I think it is a disembodied Christ with little connection with the embodied poor around us. 

I would trace the author’s error back to three major issues I have with the book.

First of all, there is little discussion of the Baptismal call to conform oneself to Christ – Prophet, Priest, and Servant-King.

This is interesting since, in an earlier work, Encountering Christ the Servant: A Spirituality of the Diaconate, he cites number 1547 of The Catechism of the Catholic Church, on page 23.

… While the common priesthood of the faithful is exercised by the unfolding of baptismal grace … the ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood. It is directed at the unfolding of the baptismal grace of all Christians.

The second is that the author subordinates his spirituality of service for the laity to a diaconal spirituality.

I think he’s got it backward.

At one point he writes “…an authentic and complete lay spirituality of service is not possible today without the diaconate and the indispensable role it plays in the Mystery of Salvation.” (p. 21).

Further on he notes, “servant spirituality is both old and new. It’s old in that it draws heavily from the great Catholic spiritual traditions and is grounded in the ancient order of the diaconate.“ (p. 27).

As noted above, I see the servant spirituality is rooted in our Baptism. It is not derivative of a diaconal spirituality, though a diaconal spirituality ought to make public this spirituality and its relationship with the Eucharist.

Thirdly, hierarchalism is present, though obscurely, in the author's understanding of Holy Orders.

I understand that the Catholic Church has a hierarchy, but it’s in service to the Body of Christ, the Church, and the world. For this reason, I find the author's Establishment Hypothesis very problematic.

“Step 4: The apostles, having received this gift-of-self from Christ in the forms of the priesthood and diaconate, now gift themselves, in the forms of that same priesthood and diaconate, to their successors, the bishops. 

Step 5: The bishops, having received this gift-of-self from the apostles in the forms of the priesthood and diaconate, now gift themselves to priests and deacons through the conferral of Holy Orders. 

Step 6: The priests and deacons, having received this gift-of-self from the bishop in the forms of the priesthood and diaconate, now reveal in a distinctive and complementary manner the whole Christ (Christus totus). As a result, they gift themselves to the laity through evangelizing and the sacraments. 

Step 7: The laity, having received this gift-of-self from priests and deacons, now gift themselves in the living out of their vocations for the salvation of the world. (pp. 58-59).

In this reading, those who are ordained appear as those who give the gift-of-self, whereas it would be better to say that God gives the gift-of-self through the Church, The Body of Christ, through the ministry of the bishop, priest, deacon.

I much prefer the much more inclusive ecclesiology of Yves Congar, OP, in Power, Poverty, and the Church, p. 49:

…ordination is not only the hierarchical transmission of powers but also the consecration of the action by which the Church orders her charity and builds herself into a body in realization of the ministry that is concomitant with the state of being a Christian. To have a vocation to the priesthood, to prepare and present oneself for ordination, and eventually to receive consecration from the bishop is to be called to Christian service in a more concentrated, more specific way, to be qualified to become a leader in this service and publicly to accept its character, having first accepted it in one’s heart and striven to be worthy of it.

There is one other concern I have that I cannot at this time articulate very well. While reading both books, I find myself concerned that some of the author’s expressions might lead to a dualism. In Encountering Christ the Servant, the author, while discussing the work of John Collins, writes on page 88)

The deacon’s service is first and foremost to God rather than to the people; only in God and with His grace can he truly serve the people.

Is there really such a distance between serving God and serving the people? 

FINAL THOUGHTS

I need to study these works more – as well as two recent books that I find much more holistic: Father Scott P. Detisch’s Being Claimed by the Eucharist We Celebrate: a spiritual narrative for priests and deacons and Deacon Tim O’Donnell’s The Deacon: Icon of Christ the Servant, Minister of the Threshold. I wrote on Tim O'Donnell's book in an earlier blogpost, here. 

I have written this so that we can begin to reflect more on the theology and spirituality of the diaconate, especially in terms of its relationship to Baptism and the deacon’s relation to the entire People of God.