In two days, my classmates and I will be back on the floor as the Litany of Saints is sung over our prostrate bodies. Our time spent on the floor, listening to the Church praying for our sanctification, will be some of the last moments of our pre-clerical life. Soon afterwards the bishop will pray over us and, like dead men come back to life, we will arise and step forward to be ordained as deacons.
This will mark the beginning of what some have jokingly referred to as, “the longest year of my life”—the transitional diaconate. The “already-but-not-yet” of clerical life, when a man preparing for the priesthood enters into Holy Orders but still stands outside the Order of the Presbyterate. The deacon is commissioned to minister at baptisms, weddings, and funerals, to dispense blessings, and to preach. He is permitted to assist in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and to proclaim the Gospel. But he is not yet able to anoint, consecrate, or absolve. The transitional deacon feels this tension of the already-but-not-yet and longs to participate more fully in Christ’s ministry in the world as a priest.
Focusing solely on this “not-yet” and losing sight of the “already” that ordination to the diaconate inaugurates, however, would make us blind to the grace that God is pouring out upon us, here and now.
By our ordination, my classmates and I will become ministers of the Church, serving in the name of the bishop and participating in his apostolic mission. We will pour out the life-giving waters of baptism on little children and anoint them with Holy Chrism. We will bring the final consolation of Viaticum to the dying, join men and women in Holy Matrimony, and bury the dead. Most importantly (at least as friars of the Order of Preachers), we will begin the preaching for which we have spent years studying and sharpening our skills. On the horizon is the glory of the priesthood drawing us onward, but this future glory does not dim the grace that is at work in our diaconal ministry.
Pressing on to the glory that awaits—be it the priesthood, a marriage, a promotion at work, or the glory of heaven—does not mean forgetting what God is giving us here and now. God, by his grace, has brought my classmates and me to this moment of ordination to praise, to bless, to preach, and to serve, here and now. Through this weekend’s ordination he is giving us the grace to fulfill this ministry here and now, and it is precisely through this ministry that he will prepare us for the glory to come.
It is easy for us, as a heaven-focused Church, to put all our stock in the future glory that awaits, the “not-yet” that lies just outside our grasp. But that future glory depends on our receiving in faith and hope what God is giving to us here and now, trusting that they are the means he has appointed for our drawing closer to him.
Christ has called us each in a particular way to labor in his vineyard here and now and witness to the truth of the gospel in our daily lives. To live that call—that vocation—our hearts must be open to the grace that Christ is offering to us in the circumstances of his providence. It is a privilege to be a Christian and to live this mission, just as it is a privilege to be ordained to the Order of the Diaconate and to serve the Church. A privilege that has been a source of sanctity and transformation for those who have accepted its particular grace.
Please pray for us, that we may accept this grace the Lord has given us. And know of our prayers for you, “that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding” (Col 1:9).
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Image: Photo by Dominican Friars Foundation on Flickr (used with permission)
