Deacon Ordination Mass 2018: Gift and Mystery
Cathedral of the Risen Christ
May 25, 2018
Bishop James D. Conley
Bishop Bruskewitz, Bishop Finn, my brother priests, deacons, consecrated religious, seminarians, families of our ordinandi, dear brothers and sisters in Christ -- dear Carson, Anthony and Allan, who, in just a few moments, will receive the sacrament of holy orders as deacons.
This evening we celebrate the ordination of these men, who take on the mystery of holy orders, and become deacons. They will enter more deeply into the life and vocation to which the Lord Jesus Christ has called them, from the very first moment of their existence.
As you men are ordained deacons this evening, you will continue your formation and preparation for ordination to the sacred priesthood. God willing, one year from now, you will be ordained priests of Jesus Christ. But with your ordination to the diaconate, you will now enter into the mystery of holy orders, and be configured anew to Jesus Christ.
This is an opportune moment, then, to reflect on the vocation to which the Lord has called you, a vocation that is both a gift and a mystery for you, and for the Church.
Above all else, the vocation to which the Lord has called you is a gift. In fact, Pope St. John Paul II wrote that a vocation to holy orders is a “gift which infinitely transcends the individual.”
The pope meant that your vocation to holy orders is a gift for you, and, at the very same time, a gift for the universal Church. Your vocation, into which you enter today in a new way, is a gift to those who love you the most, your families. But your vocation is also a gift to those whom you will serve in sacred ministry, your future parishioners, your students and all the souls to whom you will minister. And your vocation is a gift to your brother deacons and priests, and to me, your bishop, and to all who will labor with you in the vineyard of the Lord.
God the Father, in the mystery of his divine love for you as sons, has called you to this vocation. And, as Fr. Holdren so beautifully reflected upon last evening, the Father has called you as a son to be a coworker with him in the vineyard. You will labor with the Father, and not for the Father, you will be a coworker with your bishop and not for your bishop.
Your vocation is a gift to each one of us because, by the mystery of God’s grace, you can help to proclaim the Kingdom of the Lord, to be a minister of the Word, and a minister of charity.
Your vocation is also a gift to yourself because it is the discovery of the very thing for which you were made, the way of living that will draw you into unity with the Lord, and become the means of your own salvation.
You receive this gift freely, and, by grace, you become the gift.
In the memoir he wrote on the 50th anniversary of his priestly ordination, John Paul II wrote that “faced with the greatness of the gift, we sense our own inadequacy.”
Everyone called to serve the Lord senses his inadequacy for the task. That is why your call is more than a gift, it is, in fact, also a mystery. Why did the Lord call me and not someone else? Someone who is, perhaps, more talented than me, smarter than me, or more eloquent in speech? And yet, God called you to be consecrated and sanctified in the truth and to be sent into the world.
John Paul II said that “a vocation is a mystery of divine election.”
Everyone who has discovered his vocation, no matter what it is, knows that the Lord’s call is a mystery. We cannot understand why the Lord has chosen us for the things to which he calls us. The divine logic of Providence is never clear to us. But we know that God has called us, and that, however unworthy we feel, we must follow him.
“You did not choose me,” the Lord says to his apostles in the Gospel of John, “but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.”
We can be certain that because the Lord has called us, in the grace of ordination he will give us the strength to respond to that call.
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There were less than two weeks between John Paul II’s ordination to the diaconate, and his ordination to the sacred priesthood. For you, there may be a year. But John Paul II spent the time between those ordinations in prayer, and though the time may be longer, you should do the same.
The diaconate ought to be a time in which you take up the gift and mystery of your vocation; in which you enter the mystery of holy orders, and in which you begin to give yourself, in a new way, as a gift to the universal Church, for the salvation of souls, in a life of celibate love. The deacon is a servant, and the call to service is at the foundation of receiving the Lord’s gift, and becoming yourselves a gift.
You are here because the Lord has called you. He knows why he has called you, and you can place your trust in that. And he knows that your ordination is a gift, and each one of us joins you in giving thanks for the gift and mystery of your vocation.
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