St. Martha Parishioner to Be Ordained a Permanent Deacon in October

Our parishes have been blessed by the ministry of Deacons for decades now, and very soon we expect one of our own parishioners will be formally called to receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders as a Permanent Deacon. Tom Hines, along with his wife Sue and their children, have been members of the St. Martha Parish family for a long time, remaining parishioners even after they moved over to North Attleboro. The Hines family has been active in the parish and collaborative, and Tom has served as a Minister of Communion to the homebound, catechist, Parish Finance Council member, and helps us with live stream video. Now he has discerned God’s call in his life to serve as a deacon, and has completed his four years of academic, pastoral, and spiritual formation. His class of candidates will be ordained on October 15, 2022, and our parishes will celebrate his ordination with a Mass of Thanksgiving on Sunday, October 16. So mark your calendars, and pray that he gets assigned to serve our collaborative parishes!
 
We have had deacons since almost the very beginning of the Church, even before the Order of Presbyters (priests, as we know them today). The New Testament describes the ministry of deacons originated to serve “at table” (later adapted to serving at the altar), and especially caring for those in need (Acts 6:1-7).   One of the first deacons was St. Stephen, who (like St. Lawrence whose feast we celebrated this week) gave his life proclaiming the Gospel in service of God’s people as a deacon. By the Middle Ages, an emphasis on the role of priests contributed to a minimizing of the diaconate into a step along the way for candidates to the priesthood (i.e., transitional deacons). The Second Vatican Council restored the Order of Deacons to serve on a stable basis, hence we call them “permanent deacons.”
 
While we think of God as the one whom we are called to serve, Jesus Christ described himself as one who came to serve. Therefore, the teaching of Vatican II reminded us that ordination is fundamentally about a call to serve both the Lord and the People of God. It is fitting, then, that the first of the three degrees of Holy Orders (deacon, priest, and bishop) is named based on the Greek word for service: diaconia. While all Christians are called to serve others, the deacon is an official sign of this service and he solemnly promises to be a living example of such service for others. Our parishes have embraced the ministry of deacons, starting with our own Deacon Ken Oles, who served our parishes for a total of forty years until he passed to the Lord in 2019, and Deacon Bert Guerin who served St. Martha Parish, who also served for many years before his retirement in 2015. More recently our Deacons Joe Flocco and Jim Kearney discerned their vocations as deacons while parishioners of St. Mary, and at ordination were assigned to serve both parishes of our collaborative. Senior Deacon Tony Cipriano (semi-retired) from the Diocese of Fall River now lives in our parishes and serves at a few weekend Masses.
 
We do not know for certain where the future “Deacon Tom” will be assigned, but he and I have both requested that he be assigned to our parishes. Even with our other deacons, there is still plenty of ministry for him to do and Masses he could serve. We do look forward to celebrating his ordination and a Mass of Thanksgiving with him in October, and I ask you to pray for him as he prepares to embrace this new sacrament and identity in the Church.