Nine new deacons head out with ‘a thirst for charity and service’ 

Nine men were ordained permanent deacons at Holy Rosary Cathedral Oct. 7. They join the 24 deacons already serving in hospitals, parishes, prisons, and various ministries across the Archdiocese of Vancouver, focusing on service, charity, and the Gospel.

Here are excerpts of Archbishop J. Michael Miller’s homily on that day.

It is with great joy that we gather this evening, surrounding these, our candidates for the diaconate, with our hopes and our prayers. We are deeply grateful to the good Lord who grants to us these nine men who are about to be eternally marked for service in our local Church.

Dear brothers, after the good Lord, I am grateful to you for following the courageous example of Mary, as heard in this evening’s Gospel of the Annunciation. Within her heart, she had the faith and generosity to say “yes” to God’s unexpected call: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be done with me according to your word” (Lk 1:38).

This fiat gave Mary a new vocation, a new calling: to be the Mother of the Messiah. But that privilege didn’t make life easy for her. With trust and abandonment, she took on whatever God had in store for her future.Today, then, we thank the Lord for the “yes” of our brothers, for their willingness to give themselves freely and joyfully to the ordained service of God.

The first deacons, just like ours, were summoned forth from within the Christian community specifically to serve the physical and spiritual needs of their brothers and sisters.

St. Stephen: Ministry of the Word

Stephen was among those first chosen. In him deacons have a great model for their ministry of the Word. This ministry requires of them ongoing meditative study of God’s Word and an unwavering commitment to live by it. Brothers: in the exercise of this ministry, turn to St. Stephen, asking that, like him, you may be “full of the Spirit – God’s Holy Spirit – and of wisdom” (Acts 6:3) in your proclamation of the Good News.

St. Lawrence: Ministry of Charity

Though not among the original seven deacons, I would also like to mention the deacon and martyr St. Lawrence. He, too, has accompanied you on your journey, and we venerated his relic at the beginning of this Mass. He models for you what it means to be a minister of charity.

In the third century, the Emperor asked Lawrence, who administered the temporal goods of the Roman Christians, to bring him the Church’s treasures, so as to save himself from persecution. Lawrence did as he was commanded. He came to the Emperor, showing him the poor that he had been attending to. “These are the riches, the treasures, of the Church,” he said. Nonetheless, he was martyred. 

St. Lawrence teaches all of us, but especially deacons, not to be attached to possessions, but to be “poor in spirit,” to be detached so as to serve those in need. Brothers: for your ministry to be fully diaconal, it must include some form of direct service to the poor. I am depending on you, in the words of Pope Francis, “to help the Christian community to recognize Jesus in the poor and the distant, as he knocks on our doors through them.”

Love the poor in a preferential way, as Jesus did. Be united with them in working toward building a more just, fraternal and peaceful society where we are all “fratelli tutti.” This is especially important today as you can and must play a vital role in working towards the healing and reconciliation so needed between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples in our Archdiocese and Province.

Service and Charity

Dear candidates: your charity and service as deacons are, of course, not simply another means of social service. Rather, you serve because you have been summoned by Jesus, anointed by Jesus, sent by Jesus, and have modelled your lives on Jesus, who lived among us “as one who serves” (Lk 22:27) and “came not to be served but to serve (Mt 20:28).

As we continue now with the Rite of Ordination, let us ask the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Rosary, to awaken in all of us – but now especially our ordinandi – a heartfelt desire to serve her Son with attentiveness to his Word, with love for divine worship and with a thirst for charity and justice.