Dying to self

Nicole and I returned this past weekend from our Diocese of Knoxville retreat for Deaconate Aspirants greatly blessed and spiritually refreshed, even if we found ourselves physically quite tired by the end of the weekend. Nicole greatly enjoyed the retreat, as she and I haven't been on a full weekend retreat since we were married. The closest we had come was a Knights of Columbus day of reflection we both happened to attend shortly after our wedding. Robert Feduccia-who we will be seeing plenty more of over the next four years because he'll be giving the Aspirants instruction on several topics-gave a wonderful retreat. His talk on the Holy Eucharist, in which he declared that we should "leave our troubles at the altar  with Jesus" reminding us that the element of bread is but wheat and water and that we are like wheat ourselves. In the Eucharist becoming the Body and Blood of Christ, we see again Christ sharing in our humanity and ourselves getting "a share in the divinity of Christ" as the priest or deacon intones at every Mass.


One reality that I am being compelled to confront is the fact that if the Lord allows me to approach candidacy and ordination, I will have little choice but to significantly curtail my level of political involvement in the community. Those of you who know me well know that this presents a certain personal challenge because my degree is in political science and I have had at least some level of involvement in party politics for most of my adult life. Indeed, I write three op-ed columns, but the most popular one continues to be my op-ed Examiner column on State politics. The proceeds from that column help me to pay for some of the extemporaneous expenses involved in the process of deaconate formation. Yet, after listening closely to the bishop's words in his talk to Aspirant retreatants, it is clear to me that I may not be able to continue writing that column if I am ordained-His Excellency made it quite clear that while our choice of political support is our own, that public support of individual candidates while serving in ordained ministry may not be something that he wishes to see his deacons do. To people who are used to being involved in the political world, that can seem somewhat harsh, but there may be a larger reason for it. As any Catholic knows, the Church is under what I would call an increased threat of persecution, and not only because of the HHS mandate, but because of the increased secularization of Western culture. Where politics are concerned, the Church is in a critical position to impact society through issue-based advocacy on those matters where the people of God ought to take a keen interest, but the support by the Church of particular candidates in a public way isn't desirable because there is simply no candidate for high office that fully embraces the teachings of the Church. It is true that there may be a candidate that is more acceptable than another from a Catholic perspective, but the laity govern the civil sphere and it is up to them to make informed choices when voting based on Catholic teaching. This places a double responsibility on the clergy, however, to inform the laity of Catholic moral and social teaching, because failure to do so in the past has (as Cardinal Dolan of New York so adequately put it some weeks ago) led the Church to the current situation in which we find ourselves.

As a deacon, I will not any longer be a member of the laity, and therein lies the rub that a great many people may not understand. Being a deacon is a ministry of service for the Church, however small that ministry might happen to be. All deacons are ordained, which means that they have received the Sacrament of Holy Orders. As members of the clergy, deacons share with priests and bishops (who are also deacons by virtue of their own ordinations-no priest or bishop in the world is not first and always a deacon) a life of service to the faithful. Even though permanent deacons have a secular life or a secular calling, being a deacon is not what a man does, as his job, profession, or livelihood-it is who he is, a servant of the people of God first and foremost, and an agent to them of Christ's Church. The laity are called to oversee the civil power, but the ordained are called to oversee the ecclesiastical order.


It is with that realization that I have come to understand that my political involvement will be quite limited as a deacon. If I, by God's grace, should be ordained, then I may not write a political column as I do now, and I certainly won't have the level of political involvement that I have had in the past...that prospect does not bother me. I understand that for me, the choice is between the service of God and His Church or the advancement of my own self-interest.


The deaconate is-at its very heart-about dying to self.