Ask a Deacon: What is a Deacon?
In Acts of the Apostles you will read that, after some deliberation within the Christian community, the first seven men were presented to the apostles to be deacons, and the latter “laid hands on them.” Deacon Stephen, one of the seven, was so effective in preaching the Gospel that he was hauled in front of the Sanhedrin, tried, convicted, and then stoned to death. We read in Acts that throughout the trial, Stephen had “the face of an angel.” And at the end of an impassioned and Spirit-led oration, he looked up and said he could see “the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” It was then that they stoned him, and he forgave the men that murdered him before he succumbed to his wounds.
This is not the typical lifespan of a deacon. But it is typical of what the diaconate is in the sense that Stephen was, from first to last, a servant of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Originally, men called to the diaconate would be called just to the diaconate. I mean that, at the start, it was not merely a steppingstone to the priesthood. Deacons were important to the function and ministry of the Church in their own right. St. Ignatius of Antioch (d. 110) wrote that deacons are officials to whom Christians should listen. So well-regarded were deacons, in fact, that there were many deacons of the Middle Ages who were chosen to be pope, meaning that they were ordained priest and bishop of Rome all at once.
Because deacons would sometimes have authority over priests, St. Jerome (d. 420), priest, translator of the Latin Bible, and famous grumpy-pants, once complained that deacons had too much power. Over time, then, the diaconate became a “transitional” part of the formation process to become a priest. Every priest is ordained a transitional deacon first and then ordained a priest. So, for many centuries, the permanent diaconate disappeared in the West but retained in the East.
So, what is a deacon?
A deacon is ordained; so, he is a cleric and no longer a layperson. A deacon is ordered not to the ministerial priesthood, to Christ the priest, but rather to Christ the servant. We teach that Jesus instituted the priesthood at the Last Supper. But St. John’s version of the Last Supper has Jesus washing the feet of the apostles. There we read Jesus say, “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.” (Jn. 13:15) This model of servant is the identity into which the deacon is ordered.
This means that, while the deacon can bless objects, baptize, witness a marriage for the Church, and bury the dead, he cannot confect the Eucharist. He cannot Confirm. He cannot hear Confessions. He cannot give Last Rites. The deacon is first and foremost a servant of the Church. Also, permanent deacons tend to be married. So permanent deacons are typically men who should be able to model service to the Domestic Church, the family, as well as the Church Universal. It was the Second Vatican Council that decided that the permanent diaconate should be restored. And in doing so, the Church reminds us of this specific kind of service.
In the rite of ordination, after he is ordained, the deacon is handed the Book of the Gospel and is told by his bishop: “Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you have become. Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach.” The deacon is, then, a herald of the Gospel, a servant of that Good News, and he is someone who allows his entire life to be formed by that Gospel as a kind of prophetic witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, to His love, and to His desire to bring us close to the Father and His bride the Church.
As I prepare for Mass, I clasp the Book of Gospel close to me as a reminder of this identity. And I pray that in doing so, I may allow the Word of God to continue to transform my life as he has done for so many deacons since the founding of the Church. I consider myself very blessed to have been ordained a deacon, and it has blessed my marriage and family immensely. I pray too that my service will always be of benefit to the Church.
Deacon Omar will be giving a lecture on Holy Orders in his Catholic 101 seminar series, for any college students who would like to attend and ask more questions.