Deacon Keating: “The Deacon Has Been Lacerated By Christ’s Own Mission To Find The Lost”

Over the weekend, I posted the talk I gave during the Jubilee for Deacons in Rome. Now I’m pleased to offer the address Deacon James Keating gave on the subject of the Deacon as Image of Mercy in the Family.

From Church Life Journal:

The mission of the deacon in relation to the family is profoundly cyclical: the deacon is raised in a family as a boy and, statistically, will fall in love and begin his own family before the call to diaconate is discerned; and then after ordination, other families will call out to him to have his ministry bless their communion in many ways. The deacon is in communion with the Gospel and from this communion is sent to strengthen the communion others have with their loved ones and God. Since the Gospel has holy communion at its core (cf. Jn 14:18–21; Jn 15:5), deacons serve familial communion by proclaiming the Gospel to them. The origin and fulfillment of all communion of persons is found in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—a communion humans can participate in by way of the Incarnation of the second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Christ communicates his life among us (cf. Lk 22:27) and within us (cf. Jn 7:38). It is this communion with Christ’s divine life that the sacred minister stirs into flame within families and between spouses as he labors to announce the Gospel to the domestic Church.

The family, however, is not simply a community to be served by ecclesial ministers; it is “a manifestation of the Church” itself.[3] At its deepest level, through the many sacraments entered into by family members, the familial community finds its identity in Christ and, hence, reveals itself to be Church. The family is a gathering of believers and, as such, is called by and sent from Christ to those hungering for the Good News. The first proclamation of the Gospel by a family is simply its witness to a love that is promised and sustained until death. This promise is possible only when the spouses are taken up into the supernatural grace of Christ loving his Bride, the Church. In the family, it is not simply the “will power” of the spouses that secures communion with one another and the children; it is the mystery of Christ’s own spousal love which empowers the permanence of familial communion. It is here in this mystery that the deacon can enter simply, but powerfully, as one who bears in his body the grace of being permanently available to the servant mysteries of Christ (cf. Lk 22:27; Jn 13:14–15; Lk 14: 15-23; Lk 10:29ff).[4]

As an effect of the grace of Holy Orders, a man becomes “useful” to families by his own character conversion through diaconal formation and in the post-ordination gift of being a man who participates in the servant mysteries of Christ, the sent-servant.Since his ordination day, the deacon has been lacerated by Christ’s own mission to “find the lost.” Ordination has opened the man to being affected by Christ’s own compassionate gaze as it rests upon those in pain. It is from this “opened” altered man, one wounded by Divine Love, that a deeper communion with God may be mediated to the family. This communion may be attained and sustained by way of a deacon praying with them, serving their familial needs through the works of mercy, and guiding them through their difficulties out of his own Word-saturated mind and heart.

Such a man is powerful in one respect; he bears the brand marks of Christ’s own longing to serve (cf. Lk 22:27). In this longing, a deacon is configured to Christ’s own compassion to pour “oil and wine” into the wounds of families, a mixture known to flow when the agent of healing, mediated by the deacon, is the Gospel (cf. Lk 10:33–34).