“The Qualities Needed for the Deacon’s Service to God’s People”
Homily, Ordination of Permanent Deacons
May 17, 2025; St. Mary’s Cathedral
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Introduction
We certainly have witnessed some amazing history in these last few days. The election of Pope Leo XIV as the first American Pope has certainly captivated the entire world. We can say that Pope Leo is “American” in the full sense of the word, that is, both North and South. He speaks of building bridges, and he is in himself something of a bridge, given the breadth of his experience in different parts of the world and at different levels of leadership. The cardinal-electors certainly had to consider the qualities of every viable candidate, taking into consideration the qualities necessary for the visible leader of our Church at this time of history. And their selection has given us a renewed sense of hope.
The Qualities of Ordained Ministry
Such qualities so necessary for leadership in the faith, though, are truly perennial, that is, they are qualities needed for any man of God in service to God’s people in any moment of history. We see these qualities outlined for us in the First Letter of St. Peter, and they are likewise reflected in the promises the elect are about to make, what they will commitment themselves to in their diaconal ministry.
This, really, is the whole point of their formation: five years of study, experience and growth in the human, intellectual, spiritual and pastoral qualities necessary for them to be equipped for carrying out ordained ministry. It is good for us, then, to reflect on these promises, what our brothers are committing themselves to in presenting themselves for ordination as deacons.
The Service of Stewardship
First of all, they will be asked: “Do you resolve to be consecrated for the ministry of the Church through the laying on of my hands and the gift of the Holy Spirit?” This commitment corresponds to the exhortation St. Peter gives us: “as each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace”, and, “whoever serves, let it be with the strength that God supplies”.
The deacon is a servant, he is ordained to be the very image of Christ as the one who came not to be served but to serve. To be ordained to the diaconal order is a gift, a gift that is to be expended in service to God’s people, along with all of the personal gifts that God has entrusted to these servants of His. And these gifts are truly entrusted, on loan as it were, to be used for God’s purposes. For this is the meaning of a steward.
The steward is the one to whom the master entrusts the administration of his goods, so that the master may have an increase. The goods the steward administers are not his own, they belong to his master, but the master trusts the steward to administer them in a profitable way. The deacon must model for all of the Christian people this call to serve God as stewards, using the gifts God has entrusted to us for His purposes and the spreading of His love – that is the increase that God awaits from us.
Humble Charity
Next our brothers will be asked: “Do you resolve to discharge with humble charity the office of the Diaconate, so as to assist the priestly Order and to benefit the Christian people?” What does St. Peter say about this? “[L]et your love for one another be intense”.
Humble charity is Christian love in action, love, as St. Peter describes it for us, that is “intense.” That is to say, energetic, always other-focused, for Christian love imitates the love of Christ himself: not a sentiment, or a passing pleasurable feeling, or a sense of burning passion, but the gift of oneself to another. It is the love that lowers oneself in sacrifice for the good of the other, without any regard for what one receives in return: loving the unlovely and the unlovable; embracing the one whom you find repugnant, as St. Francis embraced the leper; loving in spite of insult and injury or of just simply receiving nothing in return, “not getting anything out of it”. This is the love of one who has come to serve and not to be served, the man of God who expends the gift God entrusts to him for the sake of the sanctification of God’s people.
Preaching by Word and Deed
Next, the elect promise the following: “Do you resolve to hold fast to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience, as the Apostle says, and to proclaim this faith by word and deed according to the Gospel and the Church’s tradition?” Or, as St. Peter puts it: “Whoever preaches, let it be with the words of God”.
The deacon shares in the ministry of preaching with priests and bishops, as we see in the story from the Acts of the Apostles we just heard proclaimed, in which the deacon Philip goes to where Christ has not been heard before in order to proclaim his Gospel and bring others to salvation. Preaching is proclaiming the faith by word: the man of God is to preach with the words of God, that is, not his own opinions or personal preferences, but the unadulterated truth which God has revealed to us through His Son Jesus Christ. Which preaching is not possible without first listening to God: the one who preaches is to be silent before God in order that God may speak to him, so that he may preach God’s word to His people, the word they need to hear and receive in order to know, love and serve Him well.
The deacon, though, is also called to proclaim the word of God by deed: in St. Peter’s description, this is the commandment to “[b]e hospitable … without complaining”. The deacon for the most part lives in a secular state and with secular employment. He regularly interacts with those who are far away from Christ, and in doing so, he must give them the welcome that Christ wishes to extend to them. This sort of hospitality, though, especially characterizes his ministry: the deacon is the specialist in going to those physical and existential corners of existence where people are invisible to most others going about their day-to-day lives in society: the incarcerated, the immigrant, those who are living on the streets. Diaconal service exercised with humble charity is in itself the proclamation of the word of God by deed.
Prayer
Finally, the candidates for ordination promise: “Do you resolve to guard and increase the spirit of prayer proper to your way of life …?”, and then, “Do you resolve to conform your manner of life always to the example of Christ, whose Body and Blood you will handle at the altar?” St. Peter gives us some insight into what this means when he tells us: “Be serious and sober-minded so that you will be able to pray.”
The duty to pray is foundational to all else, for without it, it will be impossible for the man of God to conform his manner of life to that of Christ. St. Peter’s exhortation is to go about this in a way that is serious and sober-minded, for this is what makes prayer possible. Let us think about this.
The word “serious” here carries the sense of “keeping the mind safe”. We might say that it is an exhortation to preserve one’s sanity. There are many times, my brothers, when you will need to remember this exhortation! After all, our Lord is sending you as he sent those seventy-two disciples we just heard about in St. Luke’s Gospel: as lambs among wolves! Sanity, though, is the quality of seeing all things in proper proportion. As Pope St. John Paul II once told a bishop – as recounted to me by the bishop himself – a fanatic is “someone who thinks that one piece of the pie is the whole pie”. Sanity allows us to see all things in context (to see where each piece of the pie fits within the whole pie), and it guards us from unbalanced fanaticism on the one hand and uncaring indifference on the other.
St. Peter then couples this with the command to be sober-minded, which means to act sensibly. It is acting with our eyes always on the ultimate goal, the life of heaven, which manifests itself in the joy that only Christ can give. If the man of God is to give true pastoral care to God’s people to help them make progress on the way to salvation, he must see all things in proper perspective, and always in relation to our ultimate goal, life on high in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The End of It All
At the end of responding together to each of these commitments, the promises of the ordinandi reach a sort of crescendo, culminating in the promise of obedience made by each one individually, kneeling before the bishop. Obedience: this is the spirit of selflessness, the deacon’s gift of self to the Church, not approaching his ordained ministry as a project he carves out for himself, or some sort of a crusade to remake the Church in his own image, turning everything into the way he would like it to be. This does not build bridges!
No, that is not the point of it all. What, after all, is the purpose of a bridge? A bridge is not an end in itself, even if some are so beautiful that they are worth beholding for their own sake (we know a lot about that around here!). A bridge, rather, is a means to an end: a way of traversing a chasm; a bridge makes it possible to cross from one side of the chasm to the other. The whole point of the deacon’s ministry, then, is to direct the people of God to cross the bridge: Jesus Christ.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is the one who spans the chasm between heaven and earth, he is the bridge through which we can reach the life of heaven from this earth which is passing away. Only through him do we get to heaven. Which, after all is said and done, is the real point of it all – as St. Peter puts it: “that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ”. This is what God created us for, for His glory – His glory is our lasting joy, it is our human nature made fully alive.
Conclusion
I wish, then, to take this opportunity to thank all you who have accompanied our brothers to this day of their ordination: wives (some of them) and family members and friends, professors and formatters, pastors, fellow parishioners, and so many others. You have helped equip them with the qualities and virtues necessary to carry out their diaconal ministry according to the mind of the Church, as we hear so aptly described in the First Letter of St. Peter and as we see reflected in the promises to which our brothers will now commit themselves: all for the glory of God and the sanctification of God’s people. Amen.
SUMMARY IN SPANISH
La elección del Papa León XIV como el primer papa estadounidense ha captado la atención del mundo entero. Nos hace reflexionar sobre las cualidades necesarias para el liderazgo en la Iglesia hoy en día. Sin embargo, son cualidades perennes, es decir, necesarias para que cualquier hombre de Dios brinde atención espiritual al pueblo de Dios en cualquier época. Estas cualidades se encuentran en los compromisos que nuestros hermanos asumirán al pronunciar sus promesas antes de ser ordenados diáconos. Son también las cualidades de las que habla San Pedro en su primera carta, que acabamos de escuchar proclamada en nuestra Misa de hoy.
El diácono está “consagrado al ministerio de la Iglesia”, que es un don que Dios le otorga para servir a Su pueblo como buen administrador de Su gracia. Debe hacerlo con “humilde caridad” para beneficiar al pueblo cristiano. Este es el amor mutuo que se debe mantener “en continua actividad” del que habla San Pedro, un amor que busca siempre el bien del otro sin importar lo que se reciba a cambio: amar a los que no son amables ni dignos de amor, amar a pesar de los insultos y las ofensas. El diácono también está llamado a proclamar la fe con palabras y obras: es decir, debe predicar como “mensajero de las palabras de Dios” y ser “hospitalario sin quejas”. Debe escuchar primero a Dios para comunicar Su palabra a Su pueblo y no su propia palabra, dejando de lado cualquier opinión o preferencia personal que pueda interferir con la transmisión de la pura verdad de Dios que el pueblo de Dios necesita escuchar y recibir. Y debe demostrarlo con toda su vida, brindando hospitalidad a quienes están lejos de Cristo y a menudo son invisibles para los demás: los encarcelados, los inmigrantes recién llegados, los que viven en la calle. Finalmente, el diácono debe ser un hombre de oración, pues esto es fundamental para todo lo demás, ya que sin oración le será imposible «conformar su vida siempre al ejemplo de Cristo».
Sus promesas culminan entonces en la promesa de obediencia, que cada uno hace individualmente arrodillándose ante el obispo. La promesa de obediencia consiste en entregarse con abnegación allí donde el obispo determine que la Iglesia más necesita su servicio. Debe rechazar cualquier inclinación a crear su propio proyecto o a intentar rehacer la Iglesia a su propia imagen y semejanza, transformándola en lo que él desearía. Solo con esta pureza de espíritu logrará el propósito fundamental de su ministerio diaconal y, de hecho, el propósito mismo de nuestra existencia cristiana en este mundo: «que Dios sea glorificado en todo, por medio de Jesucristo».
Les agradezco a todos los que hasta el día de hoy han acompañado a nuestros hermanos durante los últimos cinco años de su formación, la cual ha sido para que adquieran las cualidades necesarias para toda buena obra propia de la orden diaconal. Que Dios los bendiga por su bondad y por su amor desinteresado, y que nuestros hermanos sean mensajeros del amor, la verdad y la bondad de Dios para Su pueblo. Amén.