{"id":6369,"date":"2011-08-20T10:05:20","date_gmt":"2011-08-20T14:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/deaconsbench\/?p=6369"},"modified":"2016-09-30T17:37:30","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T21:37:30","slug":"live-the-years-of-your-formation-in-deep-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2011\/08\/live-the-years-of-your-formation-in-deep-joy\/","title":{"rendered":""Live the years of your formation in deep joy…""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The pope spoke to seminarians in Spain today \u2014 and his words<\/a><\/strong> carry a message, I think, for deacon candidates, too:<\/p>\n

Dear friends, you are preparing yourselves to become apostles with Christ and like Christ, and to accompany your fellow men and women along their journey as companions and servants.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>How should you behave during these years of preparation? First of all, they should be years of interior silence, of unceasing prayer, of constant study and of gradual insertion into the pastoral activity and structures of the Church. A Church which is community and institution, family and mission, the creation of Christ through his Holy Spirit, as well as the result of those of us who shape it through our holiness and our sins. God, who does not hesitate to make of the poor and of sinners his friends and instruments for the redemption of the human race, willed it so. The holiness of the Church is above all the objective holiness of the very person of Christ, of his Gospel and his sacraments, the holiness of that power from on high which enlivens and impels it. We have to be saints so as not to create a contradiction between the sign that we are and the reality that we wish to signify.<\/p>\n

Meditate well upon this mystery of the Church, living the years of your formation in deep joy, humbly, clear-mindedly and with radical fidelity to the Gospel, in an affectionate relation to the time spent and the people among whom you live. No one chooses the place or the people to whom he is sent, and every time has its own challenges; but in every age God gives the right grace to face and overcome those challenges with love and realism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read it all. <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pope spoke to seminarians in Spain today \u2014 and his words carry a message, I think, for deacon candidates, too: Dear friends, you are preparing yourselves to become apostles with Christ and like Christ, and to accompany your fellow men and women along their journey as companions and servants. How should you behave during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,39,42,52],"tags":[701,11200,900],"class_list":["post-6369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deacons","category-pope","category-priests","category-vocations","tag-pope-benedict","tag-vocations","tag-world-youth-day"],"yoast_head":"\n"Live the years of your formation in deep joy..."<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The pope spoke to seminarians in Spain today -- and his words carry a message, I think, for deacon candidates, too: Dear friends, you are preparing\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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