The Deacon's Bench
Despite the gray autumn skies and sprinkling of rain the morning of Oct. 5, the inside of the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament was brightly lit as excited friends and families waited for the 2013 permanent diaconate ordination to begin.
As the Archdiocesan Chorus of Detroit burst into the entrance hymn, “Only Begotten, Word of God Eternal,” the faithful stood and watched the long line of priests and deacons process up the aisle.
Near the end of the procession walked the three men to be ordained to the permanent diaconate for the Archdiocese of Detroit: Leon “Skip” Anthony Rodgers, Matthew Donald Wisniewski and Marc George Rybinski.
Rodgers, 64, of Westland, was a parishioner of St. Raphael Parish in Garden City; Wisniewski, 43, of Allen Park, was a parishioner of Christ the Good Shepherd Parish in Lincoln Park; and Rybinski, 50, of Chesterfield, was a parishioner of St. Mary Queen of Creation Parish in New Baltimore.
Their parish assignments as permanent deacons would be given at the end of the ordination Mass.
Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron, who served as ordaining bishop for the Mass, expressed in his homily before the Prayer of Ordination that it is for the service to God’s world that these men were to be consecrated through a death to self, and through life in Jesus Christ.
“You’re part of the New Evangelization,” the archbishop said. “You have been recruited, you have signed up.”
Congratulations and welcome! Ad multos annos!
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