Next week Tom Rzendzian will be ordained to the order of the diaconate. You may recall that among the sacraments of the church is one called Holy Orders. These orders are deacon, priest and bishop. They indicate offices of service to the church for its operation and growth.

These offices developed as the situation of the church changed over the course of time. It seems that the early Christian community felt that Jesus was going to return fairly quickly after his ascension and bring the kingdom of God to completion. However, as this “second coming” of Jesus was delayed, the church had to develop structures to assure quality control of the message and the worship of the faith.

At first one bishop or overseer was called forth for each community (which was often designated by the name of the city in which they lived). As the community became active in service to the needy among them, the office of deacon arose to assist the bishop in the administrative side of the operation of the church. Later on, these communities would become too large to be able to worship in one place, and presbyters (what we now call priests) arose to assist the bishops by presiding at worship services around the area. At one point in the liturgy, a piece of the bread that had been broken by the bishop at his Mass was brought to the place where the priest was leading the community and the particle was placed in the chalice of the precious blood as a sign of the unity of the Eucharist and the communities celebrating it, even though they were not together in the same place at the same time.

Many commentators on the Book of the Acts of the Apostles see the office of deacon coming out of the situation in chapter six where the complaint about the Greek speaking widows not getting their share of the food allotment leads to the apostles appointing seven to take care of this problem. The tradition of appointing a committee to deal with internal problems was thus set.

However, the picture gets complicated because several of the men who were listed among the seven appear as preachers and evangelists as well. They include St. Stephan, the first martyr, and Philip, who was instrumental in the baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch. So these figures seem to indicate that the office of deacon rather quickly expanded to include more pastoral work than the administration of the physical goods of the church.

Be that as it may, another historical situation led to the suppression of the office of deacon as a permanent office in the church. The Church’s reaction to the demands of the Protestant reformers led to the more supervised education of the clergy and this led to the creation of the pyramidal structure of the church, with the Pope on top, the bishops receiving their orders from the Pope and then passing them on to the pastors and priests in the parishes, who passed them on to the laity. The roles of deacon and subdeacon were relegated to solemn high Masses where their functions were confined.

One of the structural changes of Vatican Council II was the restoration of the office of deacon to a permanent rank in the church. In doing this the bishops looked back to the earlier time when deacons did function in a variety of ways in the church, but the bishops also wanted to highlight the fact that these men were already working in the world and so they would bring their ecclesial identity to the workplace as they became known as deacons. It was hoped that this would provide another place where dialogue could occur between the world and the church. It was the hope of the church, and indeed remains the hope of the church, that our deacons add an important level of witness of the faith to the world. This hope remains firm even as the deacons, like priests, become more engaged in churchy matters because of the need for help in sacraments, home and hospital visits, and even presence at parish and civic organizations.

You may know that deacons are allowed to perform Baptisms and weddings as well as assisting at Mass and preaching on occasion.

Deacons are members of the pastoral staff, and may attend staff meetings if their schedules permit. Tom joins Deacon Rich Werner as our two parish deacons. Their wives, Linda and Sharon, respectively, are also involved in the various aspects of their ministries and we greatly benefit from their dedication as well.

We thank the Lord for the service of our deacons and their wives.