Given at Guardian Angels Church, Mile End, on the occasion of Candidacy to the Permanent Diaconate on Gaudete Sunday, 14 December 2014.
One of my all-time favourite religious paintings is of a man pointing. He points behind him – like this. It’s a painting of John the Baptist. The artist portrays him like this – to say what? To say that John was not the light; he was not the light, only a witness to speak for the light. John’s calling was to point others towards Jesus –to say, ‘Look, there goes the lamb of God.’
John’s calling was special. He prepared the way for the Lord – to the point of laying down his life for him. Like John, we too are called to point others in the direction of Christ. How we’re called to do this is different for each one of us. But we should be in no doubt that we are each called. As we hear Paul tell the Thessalonians: ‘God has called you’. And he adds something very important: he says, ‘God has called you and he will not fail you.’
Paul says this very confidently, doesn’t he? And you know why? It’s because he had a vision of Jesus once; and heard Jesus tell him, ‘my grace will be sufficient for you.’
‘I will not fail you,’ in other words.
Paul prefaces these remarks by telling us to rejoice: ‘Rejoice ... you have been called.’
Here he’s very much in tune with Pope Francis, who tells us we must convey the joy of our relationship with the Lord. Francis is very clear about this: he says we communicate the joy of the Gospel by meeting the Lord every day in prayer. He tells us we should try to give time for this, all of us, every day.
If we do, he assures us, we will feel – in a lovely way – the Lord looking at us as he looked at Nathaniel and said to him, ‘I saw you under the fig tree.’
You remember, Jesus called Nathaniel by name. And Nathaniel was so surprised, he asked him, ‘How do you know me?’
And the Lord replied, ‘I saw you under the fig tree.’
The Lord has known each one of us all our lives. He has seen us when we pray. It’s through prayer that he reveals to many of us our vocation. It is such a blessing to find what the Lord wants us to do with our lives. St John Paul II used to say, ‘Vocation is the answer to the question, “Who am I?”’
I met an elderly man who recently discovered his vocation – or, I should say, his last vocation. His vocation in life has been to be a husband to his wife and a father to four sons. Now his wife is failing fast with dementia, he told me, ‘I’ve made a pact with God: that he must keep me here to see her through’ - see her through to death, he means.
He’s discovered the last chapter of his vocation story. And, in the midst of his deep sadness for his dear wife, he does find room for joy in knowing that he has been given these last years to see her through.
We see standing before us today three much younger men who feel the Lord calling them to a particular service in the Church; to take the step of becoming candidates for Ordination to the Permanent Diaconate. On your behalf, and the Church’s, I thank them for their generosity in offering themselves in this way.
By offering themselves in this way, they point others to Christ. If they become deacons, they will have a responsibility to proclaim, preach and teach about Jesus. This will require a lot of praying, as you can imagine; a real commitment to that daily encounter with the Lord.
It will call for something else too; it will require them to configure themselves to Christ. That’s what ordination does; it configures one to Christ. To become configured to Christ means they must try, already as Candidates, to be like Jesus in the way they care for others.
Another very beautiful phrase of Francis’s comes to mind – that when we reach out to those in need, we touch the wounded Body of Christ. When we touch the poor, we touch Christ.
Deacons do have a particular calling to charity; to reach out to those in need. We must pray for these three good men that they do indeed grow in charity – and pray for ourselves at the same time, that we grow in charity too. Pray that they and we learn to make our own those words of Isaiah’s which we heard a little earlier – learn to bind up hearts that are broken, bring freedom to those in prison, proclaim good news to the poor.
When we see three of our number offer themselves generously in this way, it should make us ask ourselves what more the Lord may be asking us to do too. That we have a calling to do something special for God is certain. This was movingly expressed by Blessed John Henry Newman in stirring words – which many of us have heard before but which bear repeating:
‘God has created me for some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.
‘He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work.
‘I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.
‘Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.’
On this Gaudete Sunday, we rejoice with Jeremy, Liam and Paul that the Lord is calling them to this definite service; and pray he might increase daily the Joy of the Gospel in their hearts.