Full Keynote Address

Good evening. It would be an honor and a joy for me to take part at any time in a gathering like this one. But I am especially pleased to be joining you this particular year. That’s because we are meeting as the Church marks the fiftieth anniversary of Blessed Paul VI’s restoration of the permanent diaconate. Pope Paul did this, responding to the call of the Second Vatican Council, on June 18, 1967, with a motu proprio on the Sacred Order of the Diaconate.

In the decades since then, the diaconate has grown and flourished, and that is particularly true here in the United States. Permanent deacons have offered important service to the People of God, in the ministries of the word, of the liturgy, and of charity. It’s no surprise then that St. John Paul II, during his 1987 pastoral visit to the United States, spoke of the restoration of the permanent diaconate as “a great and visible sign of the working of the Holy Spirit in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.”

Of course, the Council restored the diaconate; it did not create it. The service of deacons in the life of the Church has very deep roots in Christian tradition. St. Paul, in his Letter to the Philippians, send greetings not only to the bishops but also to the deacons, and his First Letter to Timothy notes the qualities and virtues that deacons ought to have in order to be worthy of their ministry. In the centuries that immediately followed, the diaconate was a vibrant and fruitful ministry in the life of the Church. Men like St. Stephen in the first century, St. Lawrence of Rome in the third, and St. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth are among those who have carried it out in remarkable and beautiful ways. That long history is the context in which you serve the Church as a deacon. And on behalf of the Church, I thank you today for your ministry to us all.

Along with that reason to give thanks, we have another today. Because of the chosen topic for this year’s conference, we also ought to pause and thank God for his gift of our Holy Father, Pope Francis, and in particular, for the Pope’s apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, The Joy of Love, which is “on Love in the Family.” It is a letter than comes to us from the Pope’s own heart, but also from the universal Church. It is the fruit of the discernment and deliberations of not one but two gatherings with Pope Francis, in two successive years, of the Synod of Bishops from throughout the world. That is an impressive foundation for a document on a topic that is vitally important to the church and the world in our own time and in every time.

I admit that it is not a short read, but it is not a difficult one either. In fact, reading it can be quite a pleasure, as many of you already know. I would ask each of you, if  you have not already done it, to work through Amoris Laetitia. Study it, reflect on it, pray with it, enjoy it. I know you’ll find it well worth the time. In fact, any time you spend with this letter is sure to benefit not only yourself, but also your own family and also the people you serve in your diaconal ministry.

THE JOY OF LOVE

Since he was elected Bishop of Rome in March of 2013, Pope Francis has been constantly reminding us that joy is an essential part of Christian faith and life. The Joy of Love is only the most recent significant example of this. His earlier apostolic letter, on the proclamation of the Gospel in today’s world, is called The Joy of the Gospel. That letter opens with these lines: “The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness, and loneliness. With Christ, joy is constantly born anew” (EG 1). And who can forget the Holy Father’s comment, during a homily at a weekday Mass homily in the first months of his papal ministry, that the Church’s witness to the world is damaged by Christians whose faces too often carry a sour look (the actual phrase he used was “the face of a pickled pepper”).

So taking the theme of our conference, “Deacons: Sharing the Joy of Love,” I would like to spend some time reflecting with you on joy, and specifically on the joy that deacons are invited to know and to share with the world.

Joy in Jesus Christ

At the beginning of the second century, the great bishop and martyr St. Ignatius of Antioch called deacons “ministers of the mysteries of Jesus Christ.” These are compelling words, and all the more important because we know St. Ignatius had learned the Christian faith from the Apostle John himself. Any time you might spend reflecting on them and praying over them would be time well spent. They caution us all to beware of reducing, even unconsciously, our understanding of who you are and what you are as deacons. You are not simply an ecclesial assistant or helper, not a functionary, not a ceremonial appendage or a masters of ceremonies. And certainly not the next-best-thing for doing the work that a priest might otherwise do. 

You are – as the Vatican’s Basic Norms for the Formation of Permanent Deacons has put it – “a living icon of Christ the servant within the Church” (n. 1). That Congregation was merely echoing the teaching of Pope Paul VI Himself, who wrote that deacons are “a sign or sacrament of the Lord Christ himself, who ‘came not to be served but to serve’” (Ad pascendum, Introduction). So you are servants, yes. But you are not servants simply because there is work to be done and we need someone to do it. You are servants because you are configured by your ordination to Christ the Servant of all.

All of this is indeed a reason for joy. I am confident that the more deeply you reflect on this reality, the more joyful will your ministry become. But it is also a great challenge. In order for you to carry out this service authentically, it is not enough simply to understand your identity, important as that is. It is essential that you continually nourish and protect it, through your own friendship with Jesus. As the Directory for the Ministry and Life of Permanent Deacons insists: “deacons must know Christ intimately so that He may shoulder the burdens of their ministry” (n. 50). 

Knowing Christ intimately, of course, can only come through personal prayer and regular participation in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. I know that the lives you lead are very full of rich and important realities: your families, your ministry as deacons, your careers, and much more all demand a lot of your time and attention, and rightly so. But without your personal commitment to nourishing your relationship with Jesus the Servant, all the rest of those very important things will wilt and suffer. On the other hand, nourished by a deep and real friendship with the Lord, your family life, your diaconal ministry, and so much else, will bear fruit even more abundantly.

During this beautiful time of year, I know many of you have been enjoying good and relaxing time working in your lawn at home, mowing, watering, fertilizing, planting. Since that is the case, let me offer you an image. If you think of your life – as a husband, father, son, citizen, and deacon – as your lawn, then your prayer time is the sunshine and the rain that’s necessary to make the grass grow thicker, more lush, and more beautiful. Your prayer time is also that fertilizer mix you occasionally spread over it, to make it even greener and to kill the annoying weeds.

The joy of love is, for every single Christian, a joy in Jesus Christ. For deacons, there are special and unique reasons for this joy. With this as a foundation, let’s consider other elements of the joy of love that Pope Francis is pointing us to and  which relate very much to each of your lives and the ministry that are called to live and to share as deacons.

Joy in family life

The joy of love is joy in family life and in the relationship that each family has with God. It might be easy to think about being part of family as simply a human thing. In other words, we might see being a son or daughter, a husband or wife, a father or mother as merely as part of the need to propagate our species. Or maybe something we do just to keep from becoming too lonely. Or as one cynical observer put it: “the reason people get married is so that they’ll always have someone to drive them to the hospital.”

Pope Francis’s teaching, echoing the teaching of the Church, insists that there is far more to it than any of that. As members of families, each of us is wrapped up in something important and meaningful – in fact, something sacred and divine. And when we understand it, the only authentic response can be joy.

Listen to and savor these remarkable words from the apostolic letter: “The word of God tells us that the family is entrusted to a man, a woman, and their children, so that they may become a communion of persons in the image of the union of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (29). Elsewhere in the letter, the Holy Father writes, “The Trinity is present in the temple of marital communion. Just as God dwells in the praises of His people (cf. Ps 22:3), so He dwells deep within the marital love that gives Him glory” (314). If only we could get each Catholic married person to spend some time praying over that single sentence, it would change the face of the Church.

And one more passage:

Don’t miss the fact that Pope Francis (repeating St. John Paul II) refers to God as “the divine family.” It is sometimes suggested that God created the universe and all that fills it “because He was lonely.” This could not be farther from the truth. Through all of eternity, God was not lonely, because God is a perfect communion of Persons, living in an eternal communion of love – a dance of love, as the Fathers of the Church referred to it.

What I have been describing is the joy that comes with knowing who we are as a family in God’s eyes, in God’s plan, and in relation to God himself. We might call it a joy in the supernatural aspect of family life. But as many of you here know very well, from your own experience, there is also a natural aspect of family life that can be a source of great joy. Our family relationships, when we nurture them, understand them, and protect them, are truly among the most fulfilling experiences we can experience in our lives on earth.

That joy, the Holy Father makes clear, has its origins in the marriage relationship. He writes: “Few human joys are as deep and thrilling as those experienced by two people who love one another and have achieved something as the result of a great, shared effort.” (130) Elsewhere in the letter, he reflects on the fact that St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest theologians in the history of the Church, wrote about marriage as “the greatest form of friendship” (123).

But the joy of the marriage relationships naturally grows and flows outward, beyond the couple. As many of you well know, children can be a major part of that outward growth. “Love,” Pope Francis tells us, “gives life” (165). I don’t need to explain to those of you who are parents the kind of joy that children, the fruit of the love between you and your spouse, can bring to a family, even when they come in the midst of difficult circumstances.

And then beyond children, and even in cases where children are not part of a marriage, other family relationships bring additional experiences of joy. The Pope, for example, insists upon the continued importance of the place of the elderly within the family framework. We could also talk about cousins and in-laws and the rest. In all of these relationships, we experience, in different ways, the love that is part of family life. Certainly it’s a love that must be nourished and protected and sometimes, because none of us are perfect, it must also be repaired and healed.

Speaking of this joy does not mean pretending that the same relationships are not also marked sometimes by sorrows, frustrations, pains, and disappointments. Certainly the Holy Father makes clear that he is well aware of this as well. In fact, one of the gifts that Pope Francis has given us is his encouragement to recognize more openly the pains and difficulties that families experience, and to respond to it with greater compassion and mercy.

Toward the beginning of his letter, as he provides a beautiful overview of the presence of family life in the pages of sacred Scripture, the Holy Father points out that even in these biblical stories, this “bitter truth” about family life is clear (19). Later he insists that the Church’s doctrines and ideals related to family must never become “dead stones to be hurled at others” (49). His concern and pastoral attentiveness for the weak, the disheartened, even for those, as he puts it, “who have made shipwreck of their lives” (197), should be an example to all of us involved in pastoral ministry.

Yet the Holy Father writes: “marital joy can be experienced even amid sorrow; it involves accepting that marriage is an inevitable mixture of enjoyment and struggles, tensions and repose, pain and relief, satisfactions and longings, annoyances and pleasures.” (126) (By the way, for what it’s worth, the same can be said of the life of priests and bishops!)

Here I would like to point out that Amoris Laetitia offers plenty of insights and wise guidance for married couples and anyone who is part of a family (that is, all of us). In this regard, chapters four and five of the document are especially rich and relevant. They are the heart of the letter, the most original part of it, and the part most clearly marked by Pope Francis’s own distinctive personality and style of teaching. I suggest that every married couple, even if they read no other parts of the letter, should read those two chapters. Perhaps that’s something you could consider passing along to the people you serve in your preaching, teaching, marriage preparation, pastoral counselling, and the rest.

It is there, for example, that the Pope offers an extended reflection on St. Paul’s wonderful hymn to love in chapter thirteen of his First Letter to the Corinthians. You know the passage, in which St. Paul offers a litany-like description of real love: “Love is patient, love is kind; love is not jealous and boastful, it is not arrogant or rude….” And on it goes. It is a fitting choice for reflection in the letter, of course, because it appears so often in the marriage liturgy. In fact, 1 Corinthians 13 was probably the first reading at many of your own weddings.

Chapter four of Amoris Laetitia features an extended reflection by Pope Francis on this passage, breaking it down and exploring the richness of each phrase. What do these phrases that describe the love we are called to in our families mean? Why are they important? What do they look like in real life? Here we find no so much a teacher presenting doctrine or theology – though there is some of that – but rather a wise and holy pastor offering profound insights and worthwhile guidance. I can only imagine the benefits that would flow from the experience of a married couple reading through that portion of the letter together a little bit each evening.

Joy in justice in the world

There is a still another aspect to the joy of love that becomes clear in the Holy Father’s apostolic letter and that has everything to do with the life and ministry of permanent deacons. The joy of love extends beyond family life, farther outward, to the community and the world in which each family finds itself. As Pope Francis makes clear, the joy of love is a joy in justice in the world, joy in the relationships that the family has with the rest of society.

It can be tempting, living as Christians in the world, to develop a sort of bunker mentality. There is, after all, a lot about our culture that is threatening to our faith. The entertainment pouring from so many movie screens and radio stations, the morally poisonous material that is never more than a few clicks away on the internet, the consumerism that calls us to the malls, the individualism that tempts us to look out only for ourselves and our own security while we ignore those who are most in need around us. That is not the complete picture of our society, but there is no question that it is part of it. And it all beckons us to turn our backs on God and the way of life God calls us to lead.

Pope Francis wants us to know that the Christian response to that is not to hide our faces from it all. It is not to remain aloof from it all, to let the world “go to hell” while we maintain a pure, no-contact zone around us, raising our children in a holy bubble, distrustful of anyone who thinks differently than us, and simply saying our prayers. That would be simpler and in some ways easier, but it is not the Catholic way.

For Christian families, the Holy Father writes, having and raising children “are not the only ways of experiencing the fruitfulness of love. Even large families are called to make their mark on society, finding other expressions of fruitfulness that in some way prolong the love that sustains them…. Families should not see  themselves as a refuge from society, but instead go forth from their homes in a spirit of solidarity with others…. Married couples should have a clear awareness of their social obligations.” (181)

Ask yourself for a moment whether you would want to learn from the Pope the secret to a happy family life. Would you be interested? I suspect you would. Well, in section 183 of Amoris Laetitia, the Holy Father says plainly, “Here is the secret to a happy family.” That should perk up our ears. What does this wise and holy man point to as the secret to a happy family? The passage is worth quoting at some length: