Today we celebrate Palm Sunday in ways no one could have ever imagined, although there have been times in the life of the church when our ancestors had similar experiences. Pope Francis has given a wonderful Palm Sunday homily [here] to a world weary of illness, isolation and violence. His words remind us all of some very important truths, and for those of us who serve in the particular order of deacons: our service can only truly be understood against the more fundamental reality that the church herself is a servant. Indeed, peeling the layers back even more, we remember this Holy Week that we are a servant church precisely because our God — who is love — is Servant. As Pope France put it succinctly, “God saved us by serving us.”
All of us who are baptized disciples of Christ, are immersed into the life of God and are called to “the imitation of Christ,” who came to serve and not to be served. The Holy Father recounts how often, especially during the liturgical celebrations of Holy Week, Christ — the Second Person of the Trinity — is referred to as a Servant. Created in the image and likeness of God, we are to live as Christ did: pouring out his life for the health and salvation of others. In a moving passage, Pope Francis reminds us:
Dear brothers and sisters, what can we do in comparison with God, who served us even to the point of being betrayed and abandoned? We can refuse to betray him for whom we were created, and not abandon what really matters in our lives. We were put in this world to love him and our neighbors. Everything else passes away, only this remains. The tragedy we are experiencing at this time summons us to take seriously the things that are serious, and not to be caught up in those that matter less; to rediscover that life is of no use if not used to serve others. For life is measured by love. So, in these holy days, in our homes, let us stand before the Crucified One – look upon the Crucified One! – the fullest measure of God’s love for us, and before the God who serves us to the point of giving his life, and, – fixing our gaze on the Crucified One – let us ask for the grace to live in order to serve. May we reach out to those who are suffering and those most in need. May we not be concerned about what we lack, but what good we can do for others.
All of this applies to each and every one of us. What, then, can it mean to those of us who are deacons? It is a potent reminder to us that we are ordained, not simply to do what all of us are supposed to do as a result of our sacramental initiation (discipleship), but as a result of our ordination at the hands our bishop, to renew our commitment to be true leaders in service (apostleship). We are not ordained to serve so that others do not have to! We serve first as a result of new life in Baptism; we serve further as animators (to use St. Paul VI’s word) of that service by others. We share in the bishop’s own diakonia, a diakonia first lived through Paschal Mystery of Christ which we celebrate this week.
I encourage everyone, but especially deacons, to pray over Pope Francis’ wonderful homily today. May this Holy Week during a time of global pandemic be for all a time of renewal, of overcoming death, of new life in the Christ.
This Sunday, 25 March 2018, is Palm Sunday. But 28 years ago, it was the Fourth Sunday of Lent (Laetare Sunday) — and on that date I was ordained a deacon of the Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Washington, DC by our Cardinal-Archbishop, James A. Hickey.
At that time I was a Commander in the United States Navy, under orders to report to the US Naval Security Group Activity, Hanza, Okinawa, Japan as Executive Officer. For the previous three years, while assigned to the National Security Agency, I had participated in the deacon formation program of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC. When my orders to Okinawa arrived, I contacted Deacon Tom Knestout, our deacon director, and then-Father Bill Lori, priest-secretary to Cardinal James Hickey (and now the Archbishop of Baltimore). Father Lori, God bless him, jumped to the meat of the issue, “Shall we ask the Cardinal to ordain you early, before you leave?” Within 10 minutes, the Cardinal had approved the request and the date was set.
To see families, large and small, approaching the font, is an inexpressible joy.) Twenty-eight years ago, I could not have imagined the journey to come; I suppose we can all say that about our lives!
It was just fifty years ago today that the Order of Deacons was renewed as a ministry to be exercised permanently in the Catholic Church. Fifty years ago today, 18 June 1967, Blessed Pope Paul VI acted on the 1964 recommendation of the world’s bishops at the Second Vatican Council. He promulgated motu proprio Sacrum Diaconatus Ordinem, 
From the beginning, then, the renewal of the diaconate as a “particular and permanent” order of ministry has been about sacramental grace. The diaconate must never be reduced simply to the sum of its various “functions” which might easily be performed by others without ordination. However, the Council and the Pope recognized that those performing those functions in the person of Christ and in the name of the Church should be strengthened by the sacramental grace of ordination.
Many people might be unaware of the history behind these three items, so let me cover each briefly. Before doing that, however, we should keep one traditional factor in mind. Throughout the Catholic tradition, East and West, it has been a well-established principle that “married men may be ordained but ordained men may not marry.” Following ordination, then, the longstanding norm (until the 1984 Code of Canon Law) was that, once ordained, a man could not marry — or marry again, in the case of a married cleric whose wife has died. In other words, the very reception of Holy Orders constitutes an impediment to entering a marriage. The 1984 Code (c. 1078), however, permits a request for a dispensation from the “impediment of order” which would then permit the widowed deacon to re-marry. More about this below.
The three issues mentioned today are all questions that up until now have required a petition from the cleric involved to the Holy See for resolution. None of them were things that could be decided by the local diocesan bishop or the regional episcopal conference (such as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops). So let’s take a closer look at these three situations.
“The passage to new marriage for a widowed permanent deacon”: This is a situation which has been faced by many of our deacons over the past decades. Obviously a married man cannot and does not make the promise of celibacy prior to ordination as a Deacon: we do not promise a hypothetical: “I promise to embrace the celibate life IF my wife predeceases me” is not part of our liturgical and sacramental lexicon. However, once ordained of course, that married deacon is impeded from entering another marriage. First, of course, because he is already married! But if his wife dies, he is still not free to marry again because he has assumed that “impediment of order” I mentioned above. St. John Paul II developed three conditions under which a widowed permanent deacon might petition for a dispensation from the impediment of order (notice, by the way, that this is not a “dispensation from celibacy” since the married deacon has never made such a promise from which to be dispensed in the first place). These three reasons, which need not concern us at the moment, have taken various forms over the years, including some revisions by Cardinal Arinze which made the likelihood of obtaining such a dispensation most highly unlikely. The petition for this dispensation right now begins with a petition from the widowed deacon to the Holy See, via his diocesan bishop (or religious superior). What the C9 is suggesting is that in the future, this petition would go from the Deacon to the Episcopal Conference (or, if the Conference develops such procedures) to the diocesan Bishop.
Jesuit Father Thomas Reese has published an interesting piece over at NCRonline entitled 
Father states that “[Women deacons] disappeared in the West around the same time as male deacons.” On the contrary, male deacons remained a distinct order of ministry (and one not automatically destined for the presbyterate) until at least the 9th Century in the West. This is attested to by a variety of sources. Certainly, throughout these centuries, many deacons — the prime assistants to bishops — were elected to succeed their bishops. Later in this period, as the Roman cursus honorum took hold more definitively, deacons were often ordained to the presbyterate, leading to what is incorrectly referred to as the “transitional” diaconate. However, both in a “permanent” sense and a “transitional” sense, male deacons never disappeared.
Father Tom writes that his hesitancy concerning the diaconate itself “is not with women deacons, but with the whole idea of deacons as currently practiced in the United States.” (I would suggest that this narrow focus misses the richness of the diaconate worldwide.) He then turns to the Council to provide a foundation for what follows. He writes, “The renewal of the diaconate was proposed at the Second Vatican Council as a solution to the shortage of native priests in missionary territories. In fact, the bishops of Africa said, no thank you. They preferred to use lay catechists rather than deacons.” This statement simply is not true and does not reflect the history leading up to the Council or the discussions that took place during the Council on the question of the diaconate.
As I and others have written extensively, the origins of the contemporary diaconate lie in the early 19th Century, especially in Germany and France. In fact there is considerable linkage between the early liturgical movement (such as the Benedictine liturgical reforms at Solesmes) and the early discussions about a renewed diaconate: both stemmed from a desire to increase participation of the faithful in the life of the Church, both at liturgy and in life. In Germany, frequent allusion was made to the gulf that existed between priests and bishops and their people. Deacons were discussed as early as 1840 as a possible way to reconnect people with their pastoral leadership. This discussion continued throughout the 19th Century and into the 20th. It became a common topic of the Deutschercaritasberband (the German Caritas organization) before and during the early years of the Nazi regime, and it would recur in the conversations held by priest-prisoners in Dachau. Following the war, these survivors wrote articles and books on the need for a renewed diaconate — NOT because of a priest shortage, but because of a desire to present a more complete image of Christ to the world: not only Christ the High Priest, but the kenotic Christ the Servant as well. As Father Joseph Komonchak famously quipped, “Vatican II did not restore the diaconate because of a shortage of priests but because of a shortage of deacons.”
Certainly, there was some modest interest in this question by missionary bishops before the Council. But it remained largely a European proposal. Consider some statistics. During the antepreparatory stage leading up to the Council (1960-1961), during which time close to 9,000 proposals were presented from the world’s bishops, deans of schools of theology, and heads of men’s religious congregations, 101 proposals concerned the possible renewal of the diaconate. Eleven of these proposals were against the idea of having the diaconate (either as a transitional or as a permanent order), while 90 were in favor of a renewed, stable (“permanent”) diaconate. Nearly 500 bishops from around the world supported some form of these 90 proposals, with only about 100 of them from Latin America and Africa. Nearly 400 bishops, almost entirely from both Western and Eastern Europe, were the principal proponents of a renewed diaconate (by the way, the bishops of the United States, who had not had the benefit of the century-long conversation about the diaconate, were largely silent on the matter, and the handful who spoke were generally against the idea). Notice how these statistics relate to Father Tom’s observation. First, the renewed diaconate was largely a European proposal, not surprising given the history I’ve outlined above. Second, notice that despite this fact, it is also wrong to say that “the African bishops said no thank you” to the idea. Large numbers of them wanted a renewed diaconate, and even today, the diaconate has been renewed in a growing number of African dioceses.
Let’s break this down. First, there never has been, nor will there ever be, a “part-time deacon.” We’re all full-time ministers. Here’s the problem: Because the Catholic Church did not have the advantage of the extensive conversation on diaconate that was held in other parts of the world, we have not fully accepted the notion that ministry extends BEYOND the boundaries of the institutional church itself. Some of the rationale behind the renewal of the diaconate in the 19th Century and forward has been to place the Church’s sacred ministers in places where the clergy had previously not been able to go! Consider the “worker-priest” movement in France. This was based on a similar desire to extend the reach of the Church’s official ministry outside of the parish and outside of the sanctuary. However, if we can only envision “ministry” as something that takes place within the sanctuary or within the parish, then we miss a huge point of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and, I would suggest, the papal magisterium of Pope Francis. The point of the diaconate is to extend the reach of the bishop into places the bishop can’t normally be present. That means that no matter what the deacon is doing, no matter where the deacon is working or serving, the deacon is ministering to those around him.
Not unlike the previous point, this is a common misperception. However, it is only made if one reduces “being a deacon” to the functions one performs. Let’s ponder that a moment. We live in a sacramental Church. This means that there’s more to things than outward appearances. Consider the sacrament of matrimony. Those of us who are married know that there is much, much more to “being married” than simply the sum of the functions associated with marriage. Those who are priests or bishops know that there is more to who they are as priests and bishops than simply the sum of what they do. So, why can’t they see that about deacons? There is more to “being deacon” than simply the sum of what we do. And, frankly, do we want priests to stop visiting the sick in hospitals or the incarcerated in prisons simply because a lay person can (and should!) be doing that? Shall we have Father stop being a college professor because now we have lay people who can do that? Shall we simply reduce Father to the sacraments over which he presides? What a sacramentally arid Church we would become!
With all respect to a man I deeply admire, I expect that most deacons who read this part of the column are still chuckling. Yes, I have been treated with great respect by most of the people with whom I’ve served, including laity, religious, priests and bishops. On the other hand, the experience of most deacons does not sustain Father’s observation. The fact is, most people, especially if they’re not used to the ministry of deacons, don’t associate deacons with ordination. I can’t tell the number of times that I’ve been asked by someone, “When will you be ordained?” — meaning ordination to the priesthood. They know I am a deacon, but, as some people will say, “but that one really doesn’t count, does it?” I had another priest once tell me, “Being a deacon isn’t a real vocation like the priesthood.” If it’s respect a person is after “beyond their competence” (to quote Father Reese), then it’s best to avoid the diaconate.
The Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy focused over the last few days on the ministry of deacons. Today the Holy Father celebrated Mass in Saint Peter’s Square and thousands of the world’s deacons were there. The Holy Father’s homily is a short but powerful lesson in diakonia.
Deacons Today: Servants in a Servant Church 