Homily, 10-4-21: Monday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time
This last Saturday, three men were ordained as permanent deacons for the Archdiocese of Detroit. Please keep them in your prayers as they begin their new ministry. It was also the 22nd anniversary of my own ordination. And it brought back thoughts and memories of the three years of formation that led up to that day. The years of formation were often very challenging as Jenni and I often butted heads with some of the couples on the formation team who we viewed as being a little too progressive at the time.
During formation we had a review meeting where Jenni and I had to sit down face-to-face with two of the more progressive couples. Prior to the meeting, I was asked to submit a document that expressed my thoughts on the diaconate formation process and how it could be improved. I assumed they really wanted to know my thoughts, so I spent a great deal of time preparing a three-page, single-spaced document in response to their request. When we went in for our meeting, after spending half of an hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament, there were the four of them sitting at a table. Each had a copy of my document in front of them and most of the documents were marked up extensively with red ink. There was quite a bit of tension in the air as they started out asking us to describe our spirituality. We simply replied that it was basically Franciscan spirituality. I