Fathers & Sons in the Body of Christ

I’ll never forget Corpus Christi 2015.

The Feast of Corpus Christi (currently designated in the Roman Missal as the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ) is traditionally celebrated today, the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. However, in our calendar in the United States, we will celebrate it this coming Sunday.

I love this feast day because of what it celebrates and focuses us on: The Body and Blood of Christ, the joy of the institution and presence of the Eucharist, and our call to be members of Christ’s Body, and to take Him into the world in our own lives and actions.

A Diaconate Apirant – A “Yes” from our Diocese

As such, it’s particularly meaningful to me that today is the day that I received a long-awaited letter from Father Christopher House, the Director of the Office of the Diaconate in our diocese, informing me that I have been selected to be a member of the diaconate class of 2020 in our diocese, with my formation to begin formally this coming fall. Today, Corpus Christi 2015, I begin a new journey.

It’s notable and important to mention something that’s been weighing on my heart and heavy on my mind the last several months since I applied for consideration for this:

The Chalice

When I submitted my application packet for the diaconate formation program to the diocese, I immediately started to feel a draw back to really focus and reflect on the chalice whenever the priest would elevate it at Mass. For years, knowing that my dad wasn’t Catholic, I would silently pray to myself at the elevation, “God, if it be your Will, please call my dad into communion via your precious blood.”

Three years ago at the Easter Vigil, I was blessed with the honor to stand with him and sponsor him as he entered into full Communion in the Church and received the Holy Eucharist for the first time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that prayer that I said for years, and how the deacon assists the priest at Mass by helping to prepare the chalice, and then later at the final doxology of the Eucharistic Prayer, by elevating the chalice as the priest raises the paten with the Eucharistic bread.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning of the deacon assisting in this way, and then about the primary ministry of the deacon being service out in the world, on the streets, where we need more and more to make Christ present… the connections between the deacon and the chalice, between service and sacrifice, between each of us and the role and service we’re called to within Christ’s Body.

Fathers & Sons

And then, as I continue to reflect on that silent prayer to Christ present in the chalice, and my own father’s journey, I find it funny that I found out about my admission while flying home on a work trip… in the Admirals Club at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, asking my oldest son to read the letter to me over the phone.

He couldn’t stand to wait, and neither could I. He got it honestly, I suppose. It was a special moment for him and for me. I’ll admit – I teared up a bit.

Fathers and sons, men and women, ordained and lay. Music directors and diaconate aspirants. We all have our place in the Body of Christ – we’re all called in various ways, and when He gives us the grace to answer that call and act upon it, wonderful things begin to happen.

Pray for vocations.