Call to Priesthood

By the laying on of the hands of the Bishop the sacrament of Holy Orders is conferred upon the Priestly Candidate by which “the anointing of the Holy Spirit, they are signed with a special character and are so configured to Christ the Priest that they have the power to act in the person of Christ the Head” (Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests). The ministry of the priest can best be described through the words of the Homily for the Mass of Ordination; “Priests are established co-workers of the Order of Bishops…called to the service of the People of God…so as to serve Christ the Teacher, Priest, and Shepherd, by whose ministry his Body is built and grows into the People of God…to preach the Gospel, to shepherd God’s people, and to celebrate the sacred Liturgy, especially the Lord’s Sacrifice…let what you teach be nourishment for the People of God, so that by word and example you may build up the house which is God’s Church…strive to put to death whatever in your members is sinful, and to walk in newness of life…carry out the ministry of Christ the Priest (celebration of the Sacraments) with constant joy and genuine love, attending not to your own concerns but to those of Jesus Christ…strive to bring the faithful together into one family, so that you may lead them to God the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit…Keep always before your eyes the example of the Good Shepherd who came not to be served but to serve, and who came to seek out and save what was lost.”

Call to the Diaconate

The relationship between the bishop and deacons goes back to the earliest days of the Church. In the Acts of the Apostles, it was the bishops who ordained the first seven deacons when they “prayed and laid hands on them” (Acts 6:6). It is through the bishop that the deacon receives the authority to exercise his ministry. While it is true that deacons assist parish priests, which is what most parishioners see deacons doing on a daily basis, his primary ministerial responsibility in assisting the bishop with his duty of evangelization takes place outside the parish: in the encounter with widows, atheists, prisoners, the indifferent, the indigent, the homeless, racists, the fallen away, the disenfranchised — those who neither attend Mass nor are enrolled in the parish. These are people on the margins, who have fallen through the cracks, who no one sees, who live in the shadows. Simply said, deacons can reach people the parish priest cannot. After encountering the marginalized and sharing the Gospel, the deacon, like the friends of the paralytic on the stretcher in Luke’s Gospel, brings them to the healing ministry of the priest.