Deacon Anthony Gooley, 15 February 2024
Last year, at our Australian Catholics Exploring the Diaconate Retreat on St Phoebe, Deacon Anthony Gooley kindly prepared and presented this reflection on ‘Diaconal Spirituality?’ It was then published in the National Association of Deacons of Australia newsletter. Both have given permission to republish here. Due to its length, the item will be shared in two parts.
I was invited recently to give a presentation on the spirituality of deacons. The invitation forced me to consider if there is a distinctive spirituality of or for deacons? If there is a
distinctive spirituality, of what might it consist? What would be the practices and orientations that would characterise such a spirituality? I was so grateful to the organisers for asking me to take on this question because it helped me to clarify some of my ideas and to try to integrate my thinking with what we now know of the deacon type words in the Second Testament. What follows is a version of my attempt to address the question.
Second Testament is my term for the New Testament. The terms new and old can suggest the old is superseded by the new, which it is not. Some authors use Hebrew Scriptures and Christian Scriptures. This is problematic because both testaments are Christian scriptures and because the Second Testament almost always quotes from the Greek or Septuagint version of the First Testament and not the Hebrew version.
Universal call to holiness
My first consideration in addressing the question is to situate diaconal spirituality
within the context of the universal call to holiness which is outlined in chapter five of
Lumen gentium (The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church).
I recommend spending some time with this chapter. Lumen gentium teaches that all
women and men in the Church are called to the same holiness and life of grace filled
with the Holy Spirit. Each of the baptised is called to open her/himself to the great
mystery and the prompting of the Holy Spirit so that grace, working in us, can conform us more closely to Christ. All the baptised are to make use of the means of nurturing spirituality that are available to us.
Lumen gentium acknowledged that there are different states of life and ways of living out the Gospel. Some are ordained, some are called to live a way of life according to a rule approved by the Church and committing themselves to that way of life by public vows, some are called into the vocation of marriage and family or others to single life as a dedicated commitment. Deacons are ordained and some of these men are married, and some are celibate. Demands of family life may shape elements of how spirituality is lived and expressed because control over times and places for prayer may be determined to some extent by demands of married life.
Different states of life are acknowledged in Lumen gentium, but these do not imply
different degrees of holiness. There had been a perception, prior to Vatican II, that each of the different states of life embodied degrees of holiness, and the reader can probably guess that these degrees of holiness moved in the direction of the highest levels of holiness possible to lowest and from monastic life, and contemplative orders, through to apostolic or active orders (a strange categorisation), to diocesan clergy and lastly the laity. This was not an official teaching, but the perception was real. It was strongly believed that the laity, and especially those in married life may not be able to obtain degrees of holiness available to others.
Deacons are called to, and are capable of, achieving holiness and a rich and deep spirituality within the context of their life, ministry, and work. There is nothing preventing a deacon from striving to use all the means available to him to nurture his spirituality. He should not be content with a shallow spiritual life.
Dominant orientations today
The dominant orientation for diaconal spirituality in many books and articles that I read, and exhortations from popes to deacons, take as its focus the deacon conforming himself to ‘Christ the servant’ by which is implied several supposed characteristics of diaconal spirituality which give it a special character. These supposed characteristics tend to cluster around ideas like humble service, lowliness, a special heart for the poor and lowly ones of this world.
Also, along these lines we find an exhortation toward kenosis or kenotic spirituality, that is, self-emptying. All such references are derived from a misreading of Mark 10:45, which contains some of the words from the diacon word group. Three other texts are frequently pressed into service to support this orientation, John 13, Philippians 2:4-11 and Acts 6:1-7. The first two of which have none of the diacon words and no connection with diaconal ministry and the last, which contains some diacon words, but no words which suggest care for the poor, humble service, or lowliness.
The focus on servant spirituality and humble service is derived from the larger problem of a mistaken case of identification of diacon words, of which deacon is one, with words for lowly or humble service. This mistake was made in the nineteenth century Lutheran context and found its way into translations of the Bible in the mid-twentieth century and in theological writing about diaconal ministry and ministry in general. Like a virus, this mistaken identification of the diacon word group with lowliness and humble service, has infected language about ministry. Because deacon is clearly a loan word from the Greek diacon word group such connotations have become so deeply identified with their ministry that it is like a case of long COVID. The effects of the virus manifest themselves long after the main pandemic has passed.
I don’t need to rehearse the whole argument here or re-present the work of John N Collins on the diacon word group. I provide a summary of the evolution of the mistaken identification of the diacon word group and Collins’ new profile in my book Deacons Today: New Wine, New Wine Skins. It will suffice to say that the diacon word group, from which we get our English terms, ‘a minister’, ‘to minister’, ‘ministry’, ‘ministration’ and ‘deacon’, and which we use to describe the ministry of a bishop (which in sacred literature is significantly called “diakonia” or ministry, LG 24), never denote benevolent concern for another or care for the poor or have associations with lowliness. On the contrary the words are chosen by the first Christian communities because of their association with high status tasks and commissioned activities on behalf of another and for the religious connotation of the word group.
The kinds of tasks and commissions of people such as imperial legates, magistrates,
governors and the like make use of the diacon word group.
“Deacons are called to, and are capable of, achieving holiness and a rich and deep
spirituality within the context of their life, ministry, and work.”
I argue that we will not find anything characteristic of diaconal spirituality in the embrace of the humble servant motif because it simply builds on and reinforces the mistaken identification of the diacon words. We should abandon such notions as being unhelpful. I do not argue that the corporal works of mercy are not worthy ministries for deacons. All Christians are exhorted to commit themselves to the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. They are simply not characteristic or emblematic for deacons. However, I do believe that humility is a key virtue for Christian living, and I think the ordained should make humility a central part of their spiritual armoury if they want to resist the temptations that may come from holding the status of ordained minister and the authority or deference that may attach to the clergy.
Humility is not so much about being the lowly door mat, as about having a realistic self-appraisal of one’s limitations and capacities and honest self-assessment of myself in relation to the community. Who are we really as we stand before God and the community? Not the minister but the person. We need to strip away a false self that is tempted to claim some privileged insight and capacity because we are ordained.
To be continued next week…
Liturgy on the Margins 