Diaconate Ordination
Bishop James D. Conley
Cathedral of the Risen Christ, Lincoln
May 23, 2014
Bishop Bruskewitz, my brother priests and deacons, beloved seminarians, dear friends in Christ,
Today in this Cathedral, ten men will be ordained as deacons of Jesus Christ. Our Church teaches that today they will be completely transformed: imprinted with a mark of Christ that will remain with them forever – “indelibly” in the words of the Church. Today they will become, forever, ministers of the Word, ministers of the altar, and ministers of charity.
I want to thank you, my brothers and my sons, for saying, “yes” to God. You are about to be ordained deacons in the Catholic Church; you will thus enter into the clerical state of life, you will publicly profess your promise of lifelong celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom and you will make your promises of obedience to me and my successors.
I also want to thank your parents and your families who are here this evening to support you with their love, their prayers and their affections. Thank you for giving your sons and brothers to the Church, to serve the flocks that will be entrusted to their care. We first learn the meaning of charity, generosity and service within the sanctuary of the family. And it is from the family that vocations to the Church are born. Again, thank you.
The Gospel reading from Saint John teaches us that the men we ordain today are consecrated to the Lord: belonging no more to the world than Christ himself belonged to the world. Instead, the deacons we ordain today “belong to the truth.”
Brothers and sons, your lives today are consecrated to the truth. You express the Incarnation of the Word himself in the proclamation of the Gospel. You express his sacramental presence in service at the altar. And you express the love of Jesus Christ in the charity of your own lives.
Today, you are consecrated to the truth, the truth that is expressed in the loving commitment of your lives, the truth that will set you free. This is the meaning of your diakonia: that your lives are forever consecrated to an imitation of Jesus Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. In the ministry of humility—of service—you are consecrated today to share forever in the Paschal Mystery.
Each of you is here because you have answered the call of Jesus Christ. But in a very real way, today as deacons you are called anew. And each day of your diaconal ministry, you will be called, again, and again, and again by Jesus Christ. Blessed John Henry Newman says that “in truth, we are not called once only, but many times; all through our life Christ is calling us. He calls us on from grace to grace, and from holiness to holiness… on and on, from one thing to another, having no resting place, but mounting toward our eternal rest, and obeying one command, only to have another put upon us. He calls again and again, in order to justify us again and again, and again and again, and more and more to sanctify and glorify us.”
Christ calls us from grace to grace—from holiness to holiness. Today he brings you a new grace. And he calls you to a new kind of holiness. But I propose to you today, my brothers, remember that your diaconal vocation is a call that will remain with you forever. In a year’s time, by the grace of God, you will be ordained priests. Perhaps there is a temptation to see today’s ordination as simply another step along that journey, a final rite that must be completed before the real grace, and vocation, of ministry begins.
Brothers—you will be priests, God willing. But for the rest of your lives, you will also be called to diakonia – to a life in service to our Lord and his Church. Today, you are to be configured to Christ the Servant in a way that will remain with you forever. The grace that God pours out on you today will remain with you until the end of time.
In a particular way, I would like to mention a grace that God has poured out on the Diocese of Lincoln. Two of the men who will be ordained today—Gerald and Shanaka—are among the four Sri Lankan seminarians our diocese has been blessed to know and sponsor over these past four years. Two others are here with us also: Deacons Asitha and Aranga. Deacons Asitha and Aranga will return home to Sri Lanka, for good, on Monday morning to be ordained for the Archdiocese of Colombo next April. Gerald and Shanaka will report to their summer assignments here in Lincoln at the Cathedral and Saint Patrick’s as they prepare for their last year of theology at Mount Saint Mary’s. I would like to thank all four of you for blessing the Diocese of Lincoln. God called us to welcome you with open arms, and it is we who have been blessed. As you go forth—in diaconal and priestly ministry, let me remind you of the ministry of Blessed Joseph Vaz.
Blessed Joseph Vaz was Sri Lanka’s fearless missionary saint. In the 17th and 18th century, he brought Catholicism to Sri Lanka after it had been banished by the Dutch. For more than ten years, he was the only priest in your country. He converted thousands of souls to Jesus Christ. He was a missionary servant. As you go forth to Sri Lanka—be missionary servants. Be fearless witnesses to Jesus Christ. Be bold, and courageous, and generous—for the sake of souls. May you be the new saints—the new missionaries—of Sri Lanka. And may you bring Christ to your nation, as you have brought him to us.
Beneath my chasuble, I am wearing the dalmatic of a deacon. The very same dalmatic that you will be vested in, once I lay hands on you and ordain you deacons. The Church instructs the bishop to wear a dalmatic when he ordains, when he consecrates holy oil, and when he celebrates the solemnities of the diocesan church. I wear a dalmatic to be reminded that diakonia is at the heart of holy orders—that the fullness of orders cannot be separated from the ministry of service.
Today, as you are ordained, we become brothers in diakonia, bound forever, in a new and intimate way, in the diakonia of Jesus Christ.
The exhortation I will read to you in a few moments says that you should be “disciples of him who came not to be served, but to serve.”
To fulfill the ministry of the deacon, dear brothers, you must be disciples of Jesus Christ. Discipleship — real, authentic and intimate communion with Jesus Christ — is at the heart of the Christian life—and at the heart of diaconal ministry. To be effective deacons, you must be disciples of Jesus Christ. And intimate friendship with Jesus Christ doesn’t happen by accident. It takes immersion in the Scriptures, it takes a committed and regular life of prayer, particularly the prayer of the Church through your devout and daily recitation of the Divine Office, it takes a free and committed love of the celibate life, a full sacramental life, an authentic Christian community, and direction in the spiritual life.
As you begin your diaconal ministry, I pray that your discipleship in Jesus Christ will imbue in you what Pope Francis calls a “missionary dynamism.”
Pope Francis says that we who are ordained “need to ‘go out’ in order to experience our own anointing, its power and its redemptive efficacy: to the ‘outskirts’ where there is suffering, bloodshed, blindness that longs for sight, and prisoners in thrall to many evil masters. …The power of grace… comes alive and flourishes to the extent that we, in faith, go out and give ourselves and the Gospel to others, giving what little… we have to those who have nothing, nothing at all.”
Blessed Mother Teresa knew this truth very well. She also knew that unless our lives of charity are centered on the mystery of the Lord’s presence in the Eucharistic sacrifice, Holy Mass, then we will be unable to see him in face of the poor. And to do this, she told us that we must “live the Mass” each day – to see the Eucharist as a sacrament of love and a sharing of lives. We must find Jesus, she said, in the radiant bread and wine so that we can recognize him in the streets of sorrow and suffering.
Blessed Mother Teresa put it like this: “Our lives are woven with Jesus in the Eucharist. In Holy Communion we have Christ under the appearance of bread; in our work we find him under the appearance of flesh and blood” — under the distressing disguise of the poor. She goes on to remind us that, “it is the same Christ. I was hungry, I was naked, I was sick, I was homeless.”
For the rest of your lives, dear brothers, you will be called, in ever new and unfolding ways, to go out and live the Paschal Mystery in the spirit of diakonia. May God be with you. May you be true disciples of Jesus Christ, consecrated to the truth with servants’ hearts. And may you become saints, alive in the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity.
