Diaconal Ministry in a Time of Change
Deacons have always been at the heart of the life of the Church and among the primary effective agents for the proclamation of the Gospel in every age.
That’s why Pope Saint Paul VI wrote that "since the apostolic age itself the diaconate has had a distinctive and superior rank among these ministries and has always been held in great honor by the Church.” (Pope Paul VI, Ministeria quaedam)
He then recalls how the Apostle to the Gentiles explicitly greeted not only the Bishops but also the Deacons, (cf. Phil 1:1) and describes in detail the qualifications for this important ministry. (cf. 1 Tim 3:8-1)
Likewise, the saintly martyr, Ignatius of Antioch, described the ministry of the Deacon as the same as “the ministry of Jesus Christ, who was with the Father before all ages and has been manifested in the final time.” As Saint Ignatius equates the Deacon's ministry with Christ's, he also recalls the Lord's command to his disciples to love others as he had first loved them.
For the Deacon is called to be first of all the model of Christ, who came to serve and not to be served. The same Christ who told us that he who would be first should put himself last, should become like a little child and should be the servant of all, is the same Christ who through his Church calls the Deacon first of all the ministers. The same Christ who died upon a Cross as they cursed and spat upon him, is the one who calls the Deacon to love others as he has loved him. Which must be why the Didascalia Apostolorum, recalls the words of Christ, “Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant.” (Mt 20:26-27)
The overarching theme of my reflections today is this: that from the day that Saint Stephen first stood before the Sanhedrin, the the deacon in every age is called to respond to the unique challenges and opportunities which surround him in the here and now.
For that while the times of deacons Lawrence and Ephrem and Reginald were radically different, the Gospel they preached was always the same as was the diakonia of the Christ whom they sought to reflect in their lives.
Christ is the same yesterday, today and for always; the alpha and the omega; the beginning and the end. He is the one through whom we were made and he will will be the same Christ when he returns to judge the living and the dead.
But we, who are sent sometimes like sheep among wolves, are are sent to some radically different flocks, with some radically differently odors. The Church in the most rural parts of Springfield differs in so many ways from the Church in downtown Boston. The Church in Harvard Square is very different from the Church in the again mill towns of Fall River. The Church online is very different from the Church along the Via della Conciliazione in Rome.
The Church of 1924 New England and the Churches in which you minister today are as different as the nascent Churches of Corinth and Phillipi and Jerusalem. And different places, times and circumstances call for different skills and require different strategies.
Just think of the changes which we have experienced in our lifetimes. I used to think that everything seemed to be changing because I was getting old. I can remember my grandmother complaining the world was changing too quickly because there were no more trolleys on Burncoat Street in Worcester. But I suspect there is even something more challenging going on here.
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The elders among us were born in a post-war era of and opportunity when America and the Church in America were infected with a boundless optimism that just as we had saved Europe from evil, we would propagate the Church like never before. Our Churches were packed and our institutions reigned supreme.
The next decade would rock those presuppositions as we embarked on the Church’s frequently traumatic struggle for aggiornamento: wrestling with how to proclaim the Gospel in an increasingly secularized and confusing world. Everything seemed to be up for grabs. The Church responded, as best she could, while under the surface a scandal of unimaginable proportions percolated to the surface.
The Mass exodus of sisters and priests and the rise of “NONES” as the fasting growing segment of the American religious landscape, the transformation of religion into sectarian politics, the demise of the traditional nuclear family, the plummeting of institutional loyalty and the widespread unwillingness or inability to believe a common truth have destabilized everything.
Put that in a shaker with the internet, instantaneous communication and a 24 hour news cycle, add a pandemic and shake well and you get what we got.
But after all that, God chooses you and me, not to be a generic deacon or priest, but to ministers in all the messiness of particular places with particular cultures and personalities and problems and potential opportunities. And he chooses us specifically to bring our unique set of talents and abilities to bear in those places he has chosen for us.
God chose you. you did not choose him. And he chose you with your particular skills and qualities to proclaim his Gospel in this particular place and this particular time.
We need to trust in that, as did the saintly deacons Lawrence and Ephrem and Reginald, in three radically different times in other parts of the world. Let’s see if we can learn a couple lessons from them.
Saint Lawrence
We often remember Saint Lawrence as the Deacon who was roasted to death on a grill because he spoke truth to power.
In truth, he was born in Spain at the beginning of the third century
and was appointed the Arch-Deacon of the City of Rome, charged with the feeding of the poor and the coordination of all the other six deacons.
There is a lot of evidence that he was very good at his job and utterly dedicated to the poor, and fully cognizant of the Lord’s own words: “whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me.”
Lawrence was in his early thirties when the persecutions of Christians began under the Emperor Valerian. On the sixth of August, Valerian arrested Pope Sixtus II and six of his Deacons and had them beheaded.
The only reason Archdeacon Lawrence was spared was that he knew where all the treasures of the Church we kept. So, they gave him three days to hand over the Church’s entire wealth. Then they would behead him.
Lawrence quietly sold everything he could and gave it all to the poor.
On the third day, he walked the Palatine Hill to the Prefecture, accompanied by a crowd of Rome’s poorest citizens. Some were blind, some were cripples and all were dirt poor. When he was led into the Prefect’s august presence, he declared:
“The Church is indeed rich, far richer than your emperor or all the riches of the Kingdoms of this world.” He pointed to his poor companions and said, “Here is our wealth, a treasure of immeasurable value!’
At that, the prefect condemned Lawrence to the slowest and most painful death imaginable, chaining him to the top of an iron grill set over a slow fire that roasted his a little at a time.
Legend has it that the Deacon was so pleased to be thought worthy of participating in the Lord’s Passion and going to heaven that he seems unconscious of the flames, famously turning to his tormentors and reminding them that he was done on this side and they should turn him over.”
They built the Church of San Lorenzo in Panisperna on the site of his martyrdom and the origin of that name panisperna has long been in dispute. The most popular theory was that it was a corruption of the words pane and parma, or bread and ham, and that the site of his death was named after the bread and ham he would dispute daily to the poor. You can hear them saying I’m going down to visit the grave of that Deacon that used to give out the bread and ham all the time.
“Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,” Jesus tells us, “it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” And Jesus follows that by then saying: “Whoever serves me must follow me.”
Saint Lawrence followed him, all the way to the Cross. But in Lawrence’s case, it was a cross in the shape of a grille. He’s one of the most revered Martyrs of the early Church, having been burned to death while chained to a grill.
So what does Saint Lawrence, the Deacon who died for and with the poor he served tell us about diakonia?
He tells us that the most effective service of the poor man is not feeding him with a sandwich or quenching his thirst with a glass of water. No. The ultimate service of the deacon is to so confirm himself with the diakonia of Christ upon the Cross as to offer his very life for the poor whom God sends to him.
For true love is always an imitation of the Lord Jesus a love unto death, the “supreme sacrifice of love, consummated on the Cross. (cf. Jn 10:10) Pope Benedict reflects on this close association of diakonia and martyrdom:
“Christ is the suffering servant mentioned by the Prophet Isaiah, (cf. Is 52: 13-15) who gave himself as a ransom for many. (cf. Mt 20: 28) He urges his disciples, each one of us, to take up his or her cross every day and follow him on the path of total love of God the Father and of humanity: "he who does not take his cross and follow me", he tells us, "is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 10: 38-39)
It is the logic of the grain of wheat that dies in order to sprout and bring new life. (cf. Jn 12: 24) Jesus himself is the grain of wheat which came from God, the divine grain that lets itself fall to the ground, that lets itself sink, be broken down in death and precisely by so doing germinates and can thus bear fruit in the immensity of the world. (Pope Benedict XVI, 11 August 2010)
Servant of the Poor and courageous martyr, who looked just like Christ.
The Deacon Ephrem
As “Roman” Catholics, we often see Europe as the center of Christianity, but in truth the Church grew in both directions, including towards the East as far as Persia and India.
The Eastern Churches grew up in a very particular culture which fostered the faith of Deacon Ephrem, a mystic and a poet of what we would today call Syria.
Most of what Saint Ephrem left us are in his writing. Some of them were homiletic commentaries on the scriptures, some theological treatises, and perhaps the most influential of them were hymns and poems, some of which are still sung in the Syriac Churches.
What these works contributed to the most was an understanding of who God really was. By composing homilies and hymns for the Liturgy, he constructed the theological framework of the Syrian Orthodox Church and influenced what the Liturgy and the Church’s life is all about in all our Churches.
Let’s take a look at some of the pieces he wrote, to see what this holy mystic deacon had to say, which, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI: his words are where “theology and poetry converge” to proclaim truth. (Pope Benedict XVI, 28 November 2007)
He wrote some of the most beautiful hymns the Church has ever sung, with either one of her lungs. He wrote over four hundred of them to console, encourage, and teach his fellow Christians, but most of all to praise God in the Sacred Liturgy.
Perhaps his most famous hymns is on Christ the Light. Despite it’s difficulty to translate from the original Syriac, it is sung weekly in the churches of Eastern Syria and the Maronite Church.
Let’s take a quick look at five of its verses, which form a sort of little Gospel, telling us everything we really need to know.
First let me read the hymn. I’d sing it, but my Syriac is really
rusty!
Hymn to the Light
Christ is our light
Christ is our light and the joy of the just
Begotten of God, yet born of a Virgin
He comes to rescue us from the dark
and fill us with his light.
In him, all darkness fades away
As morning dawns all darkness fades away
He rises in the east, as glory shines,
and darkened eyes are made to see
his radiance reaching the depths of our abyss.
Defeating even death
Night and death are vanquished
the gates of hell lie broken
and all who dwelt in darkness are clothed in light
The dead rising from the dust in song.
Until he comes again
For our light and salvation and life
who ascended to the Father
will come again in glory
to shed his light on all mankind.
So, run out to meet him
Run out to meet him, light your lamps
and find your joy in him who rejoices in you
for he comes in radiant glory.
So what is this hymn saying? It say that Christ is our light and he has been since we were hiding under the blankets, afraid
that the witch in the dark closet or under the bed liked to scare
little kids.
He has come because he, the one through whom all things were
made, loves us and wants to rescue us from all the dark places:
from sin, and death and the fear of death. From selfishness and
betrayal and the lie and cruelty and hate. He comes to rescue us
in love…and light.
And he can do this because he is not only the one through whom
light was made, but he is the light, and in the splendor of his
face, all darkness fades away. He is the morning star, rising in
the east, with healing in his wings, and even when he comes the
cataracts of sin and fear fall from our eyes and we are made to
see.
His light reaches even into the darkest abyss of our heart, where
night and death are vanquished, the gates of hell lie broken and
the dead rise from the dust, singing his name.
And on those days when it gets so very dark, we need never fear
again, for he has promised he would return to shed his light on
all mankind. And all we have to do is to be willing to run out to
meet him and to trust that we will find out joy in him as he has
rejoiced at the thought of us since first we were conceived in our
mothers’ wombs.
For he comes in radiant glory, to delight his priests, his good and
holy priests, he comes to delight you with his marvelous light.
Here’s a second hymn, On the Nativity of Christ (De Nativitate 11: 6-8), wherein Deacon Ephrem expressed his wonder before the Virgin in inspired tones:
The Lord entered her and became a servant;
the Word entered her, and became silent within her;
thunder entered her and his voice was still;
the Shepherd of all entered her;
he became a Lamb in her, and came forth bleating.
The belly of your Mother changed the order of things,
O you who bring order to all!
Rich he went in,
and poor he came out:
the One who is the Highest went in,
and came out lowly…
He that feeds everyone went in,
and came out feeling hunger.
He who refreshes all went in,
and came out knowing thirst.
He who clothes the world in beauty went in,
and came out naked and bare.
And, finally, there is Ephrem’s hymn of the Eucharist and the burning coal. He takes the burning coal theme from the Prophet Isaiah.
Then one of the seraphim flew to me, holding an ember which he had taken with tongs from the altar. He touched my mouth with it. “See,” he said, “now that this has touched your lips, your wickedness is removed, your sin purged. (Isaiah 6:6)
It is the image of one of the seraphim who picks up a burning coal with tongs and them touches them to the lips of the Prophet in order to purify him. We usually speak of the passage as a symbol of God purifying us to proclaim his holy Gospel. But Ephrem sees it as a symbol of the reception of Holy Communion. The burning coal is the Body of Christ, which purifies us. Here is what he says. (De Fide, 10:8-10)
In your bread hides the Spirit who cannot be consumed;
in your wine is the fire that cannot be swallowed.
The Spirit in your bread, fire in your wine:
behold a wonder heard from our lips.
The seraph could not bring himself
to touch the glowing coal with his fingers,
it was Isaiah's mouth alone that it touched;
Isaiah’s fingers could not touch it
nor could his mouth swallow it;
but the Lord has granted us to do both of these things.
Ferocious fire comes down on us to destroy sinners,
but the fire of grace descends on the bread and settles in it.
Instead of the fire that destroyed man,
we have consumed the fire in the bread
and have been filled with life.
Enough for our study of early Maronite hymns. It is enough to say that the profound beauty of the liturgical hymns of Saint Ephrem built the foundation for the Liturgy and belief of the Churches in the East, and enflamed the hearts of those first Syriac believers. That’s why Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed Deacon Saint Ephrem the only Deacon Doctor of the Church, calling him the “Doctor of the Syrians.”
But for all his high-faluting hymn writing, Ephrem, like Lawrence, died giving his life in service for those who needed him. He died of a virus he caught while ministering to the victims of a pandemic, proving that some aspects of diaconal ministry never change.
Doctor of the Church and servant of the poor.
Deacon Reginald Pole
You remember Henry VII, don’t you. (played I’m Enery the Eighth, I Am). Well, that wasn’t quite our Henry, but you get the idea…
King Henry VIII was famously married to Queen Catherine of Aragon, was depressed by the lack of a male heir. He was famously desperate to have his marriage of Catherine annulled (plus he had fallen in lust with the young Anne Boleyn, but that’s another story). Despite fifteen years of marriage, Henry and Cathrine were unable to produce a son who would live for more than two months, although they did have one surviving daughter, the Princess Mary.
Henry was, fearful, no doubt, that the same kind of violent civil war would break out as had already occurred less than three generations back. And so, he sought to annul his marriage to Queen Catherine of Aragon.
There was a clear ground for the annulment in that Catherine has been his late brother’s wife, and according to the Book of Leviticus such a marriage was, to quote Henry, “blighted in the eyes of God.” The problem was, he has sought and received a dispensation from this impediment from Pope Julius III. However, in order to annul the marriage, he suggested that the Pope really didn’t have the power to annul such a biblically based impediment, and so his dispensation didn’t really count.
So, in 1527, Henry petitioned Pope Clement VII to annul his marriage to Catherine. The petition was famously denied.
Which is where Reginald Pole comes in.
Reginald was born the King’s cousin and his family was very well off. Reginald’s mother was named governess of Henry’s only child, Mary and Reginald was rumored to be a potential suitor to the young princess. In fact, Reginald would remain close to Mary and become her chief advisor in restoring the Catholic religion once she would succeed her father, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The young Reginald was renowned for his strict faith and dedication to his studies, although, equally, for his enjoyable company. He was usually the brightest and best educated person in the room, but also the easiest to talk to. One Bishop with whom he studied wrote of him that “over and above his talent and his learning and the uprightness of his character, and more wonderful than all these, to my thinking, in a man of so great a race, is the exceeding sweetness and humanity of his disposition.”
I mentioned that Reginald’s education was paid for by the crown, and when he was sent to Paris at the age of 30, the king asked for a favor in return from his beloved cousin. He told him to survey the professors in Paris and get them to write up a paper endorsing his efforts to annul his marriage to Catherine.
It was here that young Reginald faced his first qualms of conscience, having studied Canon Law, he realized that Henry was doing something more than stretching it to get what he wanted. He chose a kind of middle course in his paper on the subject, suggesting that, in his words
“The king standeth even upon the brink of the water and he may yet save all his honour, but if he put forth his foot but one step forward, all his honour is drowned."
Henry tried bribing Reginald by offering him all kinds of ecclesiastical preferments, knowing how single-mindedly religious he was, but his bribes were to no avail. Of one letter Pole received from the King he writes:
“The king, has sent me some books to instruct me in the opinion he wishes me to adopt; ordering me, at the same time, to presumably say exactly what I think!”
In fact Pole would soon compose a paper entitled Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione, or Toward the Defense of Ecclesiastical Unity, in which he boldly denounced the king's policies and chose Church over King. Fortunately, he was studying in Padua by they point and was beyond the reach of Henry’s furious grasp. He writes to another friend, “I declined to return home until the king should have returned to his home, namely, the Church.”
So the King vented his fury of Pole’s family, who were all arrested and thrown in the Tower of London with all of their properties seized. Eventually, most of them would be executed, perhaps most famously his mother. But more on that in a minute.
In response, Pope Paul III named Reginald Pole a Cardinal, and offered to ordain him. But here’s the second interesting moment, for Pole would agree only to be ordained a deacon, seeing himself as a simple servant. Indeed, he would spend most of his active life as a Deacon, not being ordained a priest and Bishop until he was ordained the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury fours years before his death.
Reginald’s now seventy year old mother, Margaret (remember, she had been governess to the future Queen Mary…all sounds a bit like a soap opera by their point), was ordered to be beheaded. Problem was, they chose (perhaps on purpose) an inexperienced executioner, who took more than a dozen blows, hacking away at her neck, before it would come off.
Of her horrible death, Pole wrote to a friend:
I have always been sensible of God’s great goodness in having made me the son of a woman no less illustrious for her virtues than for her rank, but now he has granted me a yet more signal grace. My mother has received the crown of martyrdom; for because she held fast to our Catholic faith, and could by no means be shaken, she has been beheaded by Henry s orders. She was seventy years old, and this is her reward for all the care she had bestowed upon his daughter.
I was completely overcome when I heard the news, but let us be of good cheer; she has been added to the number of our patrons and advocates in heaven.
The rest of the Cardinal Deacon’s life was rife with diplomacy and he eventually returned to England as a Papal Legate and close advisor when the Catholic Queen Mary succeeded her father Henry.
The third great decision of Cardinal Deacon Pole’s life is muddied a bit by the fog of history, but was influence day his merciful nature. With the restoration of the Church, there was a predictable desire by some to martyr just as many Protestants and Henry had killed Catholics. Every indication is that the one Cardinal in England and representative of the Pope was reluctant to embrace the blood lust.
The only written evidence we have is for his having intervened to secure the commutation of several convicted heretics, “merely enjoining a penance on them and giving them absolution.”
So, what great lessons are to be taught by this sixteenth century English deacon to the deacons of today? I suggest there are three of them.
COURAGE HUMILITY MERCY
The courage to speak truth to power and face the consequences for himself and his family. The humility to forgo earthly honors in deferring ordination and a Bishop when he was made a Cardinal. And the mercy which he showed to those protestants who had persecuted his own family when he returned triumphant as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Three Deacons in three different ages
Three very different men in three very different times.
An administrator deacon who effectively fed the poor, but was driven equally by his faith, courage and mercy.
A mystic monkish sort of deacon, whose profoundly theological hymns helped to build the Syric Orthodox Liturgy and who, in the end, gave his life in taking care of the sick.
And a Renaissance Cardinal Deacon, Diplomat and wealthy relative of royalty, whose courage, humility and mercy reflected the face of Christ.
They all reflected Christ. Christ upon the Cross. Who in the perfect sacrifice of praise laid down his life, emptied himself of everything in a great act of love.
And you, the deacon, today, in this time and place, are called to do the same. Deacons Lawrence, Ephrem and Reginald….pray for us!
