Deacon Dan Wright

Where Teaching and Diaconate Meet

It's not often that I find myself in the news. Certainly with the kind of news we might see nowadays this can be considered a good thing I suppose. 

However, recently I was honored to have been selected to be profiled on one of the local Austin news programs for my work as a teacher. During the interview I was asked to explain what a deacon is and does. My comments about it were somewhat brief, so I was delightfully surprised to find that once the editing was done my role as a deacon took the forefront. 

I share this positive human interest story with you, and as always I seek your continued prayers that the work I do truly will always make a difference. Again, I am honored--but perhaps even more I am humbled and called to an even greater degree of Christian service.

To Be Who God Has Made Us to Be

All things are in the hands of the Lord, as the reading from Samuel in the Morning Prayer today reminds us.  I reflect on this briefly today after having a busy night—family responsibility, as well as work taken home, is part of being a deacon.   Today required a little more of me.

The diaconate is really a very different kind of ordained ministry in that in most cases it involves a job during the day and family to care for and to participate with in life.   Often life, my family and work, calls me to participate in ways that I don’t always anticipate but that I meet with readiness.

I’m quite thankful for my family.  They offer me exactly what I need in order to do what I do at the parish and at school.  They offer the balance I need and thus I am able to keep things in the proper perspective.  Our life is in the hands of the Lord: God has made us to be who we are.   God gives us what we have so that we might consecrate it and sanctify it as his instruments.  

God asks us to take responsibility in what he has given us.  He asks us to take ownership and identify with the life we have.  Life is not given to us to run away from or to hide from its difficulties and challenges.  God asks us to face it head on with faith.  God urges us to meet difficult situations—and perhaps difficult people—with strength, with love, with unfailing faith.

…the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and he has set the world upon them.  He will guard the footsteps of his faithful ones… (from 1 Sam. 2)

Let us go forth this day to be who he has made us be, and let us do it with faith.

Deacons in the News

It's not every day that we find news articles on the diaconate, so I was surprised to find two recently.  Here's an excerpt from the first, in which the Pope discusses the Permanent Diaconate:

I would like to...express my joy and my gratitude for the Council, because it revived this important ministry in the universal Church. I should say that when I was archbishop of Munich, I didn't find perhaps more than three or four deacons, and I very much favored this ministry because it seemed to me to belong to the richness of the sacramental ministry in the Church. At the same time, it can equally be the link between the lay world, the professional world, and the world of the priestly ministry -- given that many deacons continue carrying out their professions and maintain their positions -- important or those of a simple life -- while on Saturday and Sunday they work in the Church. In this way, you give witness in the world of today, as well as in the working world, of the presence of faith, of the sacramental ministry and the diaconal dimension of the sacrament of Orders. This seems very important to me: the visibility of the diaconal dimension.

Naturally as well, every priest continues being a deacon, and should always think of this dimension, because the Lord himself made himself our minister, our deacon. We can think of the gesture of the washing of the feet, with which he explicitly shows that the master, the Lord, acts as a deacon and wants those who follow him to be deacons, that they fulfill this role for humanity, to the point that they also help to wash the dirtied feet of the men entrusted to us. This dimension seems very important to me.

On this occasion, I bring to mind -- though it is perhaps not immediately inherent to the theme -- a simple experience that Paul VI noted. Each day of the Council, the Gospel was enthroned. And the Pontiff told those in charge of the ceremony that he would like one time to be the one who enthrones the Gospel. They told him no, this is the job of the deacons, not of the Pope. He wrote in his diary: But I am also a deacon, I continue being a deacon, and I would like to also exercise this ministry of the diaconate placing the word of God on its throne. Thus, this concerns all of us. Priests continue being deacons, and the deacons make explicit in the Church and in the world this diaconal dimension of our ministry. This liturgical enthroning of the word of God each day during the Council was always for us a gesture of great importance: It told us who was the true Lord of that assembly; it told us that the word of God was on the throne and that we exercise our ministry to listen and to interpret, to offer to the others this word. It is broadly significant for all that we do: enthroning in the world the word of God, the living word, Christ. May it really be him who governs our personal life and our life in the parishes.

Read the full article here.

I also found a discussion by Deacon Keith Fournier on the role of the deacon.  May the Lord bless us with sufficient humility to be of service to all!

On the Permanency of the Permanent Deacon

A reader commented in the previous post, asking:

We have a friend who was ordained in the permanent diaconate. Does that mean he can't ever change his mind, and go on to become a priest? My husband was thinking that due to such a clerical shortage, this deacon ought (and would be the type) to pursue that, but it's called permanent diaconate for a reason--yet it seems likely there is some dispensation or form to release him from the diaconate into pursuing that?

Fortunately, to address the question we are now able to consult the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops document National Directory for the Formation, Ministry, and Life of Permanent Deacons in the United States, which was approved in 2003 and released for publication in 2005.  For those of us in the diaconate, the National Directory was a long-awaited document that answered many questions, for which the responses tended to vary regionally.

It does, in fact, seem reasonable that there should be some permission or other means available by which a widowed or celibate deacon might enter the priesthood.  After all, people do change directions in life, and it's true that many deacons possess the qualities that go into making good pastors.

I have, in fact, known of several deacons who became priests after being widowed.  Though this certainly has never been the norm, even before the release of the Directory.  There are also occasions that I am aware of in which the transition from deacon to priest didn't work out.

In one case, with which I am familiar, a deacon became a priest and then subsequently left the priesthood to remarry.  Naturally, such mishaps might give rise to practical arguments against ordaining men to the priesthood who have been accustomed to married life.  However, in my opinion, this in itself is not a strong argument against allowing deacons to become priests.  The stronger argument simply has to do with the permanence of the order.

What does the Directory have to say about all this?  Here's an excerpt that gets right to it:

Since the history of the order over the last millennium, however, has been centered on the diaconate as a transitory stage leading to the priesthood, actions that may obfuscate the stability and permanence of the order should be minimized.  This would include the ordination of celibate or widowed deacons to the priesthood.  "Hence ordination [of a permanent deacon] to the priesthood...must always be a very rare exception, and only for special and grave reasons..."

However, the document goes on to leave open the possibility of ordaining a permanent deacon to the priesthood given that the diocese adheres to the correct protocol and insures the suitability and proper education of the candidate.  Still, it is clear that the role of the permanent deacon is, typically and most suitably, to remain a deacon throughout life.

Nevertheless, in the case of the deacon in the question, I would advise him to consult with his bishop and be in prayer and discernment.  Some the Lord called as teachers, and some to be prophets.  Others he called to be evangelizers, and still others to be apostles.  By the same reasoning some are called to be priests, and others the Lord calls as deacons. 

Whatever the calling, our role--our responsibility--is to accept God's will in our lives and to rejoice in that which we do.  Our responsibility also is to discern the call of God and to be ready to go forth when he calls.